Early Life and Education
James Vann was born the oldest of three children of Wah-Li Vann and a Scots trader, at Spring Place (in present-day Georgia) in February 1765 or 1766. Wah-li was of the Anigategawi or Wild Potato People clan. James had younger sisters Nancy and Jennie.
The children grew up within the Cherokee culture and clan of their mother. As the Cherokee had a matrilineal system of property and hereditary leadership, the children traditionally gained their status in the tribe from their mother's people. Their maternal uncles were more important to the rearing of the children, especially the boy James, within the Cherokee nation than was their father.
The Vann children were likely bilingual, learning some European-American culture from their father. Wah-li later married Clement Vann (possibly related to Joseph), who acted as a stepfather to the children. (Sources disagree about the identity of Vann's biological father: Gary E. Moulton of the University of Nebraska, suggests Clement Vann. William H. Vann, Jr. in his self-published genealogy book, Vann Generations with Cherokee Origins from John Joseph Vann & James Clement Vann I of NC, SC, TN, GA ca 1750-1989, identified Joseph Vann. Virginia Vann Perry chooses another James Vann, and Belinda Pierce, a contemporary genealogy expert, thinks John Joseph Vann was the father. "According to the experts at the Vann House in Chatsworth, Georgia, Vann's father is unknown.")
Read more about this topic: James Vann
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“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)
“I do not know that I meet, in any of my Walks, Objects which move both my Spleen and Laughter so effectually, as those Young Fellows ... who rise early for no other Purpose but to publish their Laziness.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“One can think of life after the fish is in the canoe.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 23, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“A woman might claim to retain some of the child’s faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)