Early Life
Isaac Erwin Avery was born at Swan Ponds in Burke County, North Carolina, the fourth son of Isaac Thomas and Harriet Erwin Avery, who in total had 16 children. Three of the brothers, including Col. Clark M. Avery of the 33rd North Carolina, would be killed during the Civil War and another crippled for life.
Avery was the grandson of Waightstill Avery (1741–1821), a fiery American Revolutionary War hero who served as the first attorney general of North Carolina and who had once been challenged to a duel by Andrew Jackson. Isaac attended the University of North Carolina for one year in 1847, but left to manage a plantation for his father in Yancey County.
Avery later formed a partnership with Charles F. Fisher and Samuel McDowell Tate to act as contractors in the building of the Western North Carolina Railroad in the mid-1850s.
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