Early Life
John Sevier was born in Rockingham County, Virginia (then part of Augusta County), near what is now the town of New Market. He was the oldest of seven children of Valentine "The Immigrant" Sevier and Joanna Goad. His father was descended from French Huguenots, and had migrated to Baltimore in 1740 and gradually made his way to the Shenandoah Valley.
Sevier's father worked variously as a tavernkeeper, fur trader, and land speculator, and young John initially pursued a similar career path. At a young age, he opened his own tavern, and helped plat the town of New Market, near his birthsite (the town claims Sevier as its founder). In 1761, he married Sarah Hawkins, and gradually settled into a life of farming. Some sources suggest Sevier served as a captain in the Colonial Militia under George Washington in Lord Dunmore's War in 1773 and 1774.
Read more about this topic: John Sevier
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The new man is born too old to tolerate the new world. The present conditions of life have not yet erased the traces of the past. We run too fast, but we still do not move enough.... He looks but he does not contemplate, he sees but he does not think. He runs away from time, which is made of thought, and yet all he can feel is his own time, the present.”
—Eugenio Montale (1896–1981)