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.
Read more about this topic: Isaac E. Avery
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“The problem is simply this: no one can feel like CEO of his or her life in the presence of the people who toilet trained her and spanked him when he was naughty. We may have become Masters of the Universe, accustomed to giving life and taking it away, casually ordering people into battle or out of their jobs . . . and yet we may still dirty our diapers at the sound of our mommy’s whimper or our daddy’s growl.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)