Early Life and Family
Garner was born near the village of Detroit in Red River County in eastern Texas, to John Nance Garner, III, and his wife, the former Sarah Jane Guest. Garner attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, for one semester before dropping out and returning home. He was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He eventually studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1890, and began practice in Uvalde, Uvalde County, Texas.
In 1893, Garner entered politics, running for County Judge of Uvalde County. (Although the County Judge in Texas is now primarily the chief administrative officer of a County, comparable to the Mayor of a City, the office is a judicial position and the County Judge sits in small civil cases, misdemeanor criminal cases, and probate cases.) At that time, Democrats entirely dominated politics in Texas, and the Democratic nomination for an office was tantamount to election. Thus the Democratic primary election was the real election, with the general election being a formality.
Garner was opposed in the County Judge primary by a woman - Mariette Rheiner, a rancher's daughter. They married a week after meeting. They had one child, Josiah Charles Nance Garner.
Garner was elected County Judge, and served until 1896.
Read more about this topic: John Nance Garner
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or family:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)