Frederick James Moynihan, the son of Patrick Moynihan, a stonemason, and his wife Sophie Ingrouille (or Ingroville), was born at Saint Sampson, Guernsey, on 16th July 1842. On 23rd December 1866 he was married at All Souls Church, in Marylebone, London, to Mary Ann Francis, the daughter of Francis Francis. Moynihan had studied at the Royal Academy Schools where, in 1867, he was awarded a silver medal for the best model from the antique (Royal Academy, 'Annual Report', (1867), p. 23). He was a pupil of John Henry Foley (1818–1874), RA, whose 1861 statue of Lieutenant General Sir James Outram is similar in style to Moynihan's later statue of the Confederate soldier General James Ewell Brown Stuart. In November 1884, the sculptor emigrated with his family to the United States of America, achieving citizenship in February 1903.