Childhood
Zebulon Vance was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina near present-day Weaverville, the third of eight children. His family is known to have owned a relatively large number of slaves (18). His uncle was Congressman Robert Brank Vance, for whom his elder brother, Robert B. Vance, was named. At age twelve he was sent to study at Washington College in Tennessee, now known as Washington College Academy.The death of his father forced Vance to withdraw and return home at the age of fourteen. It was during this time that he began to court the well-bred Miss Harriette Espy by letter.
To improve his standing, Vance determined to go to law school. At the age of twenty-one, he wrote to the President of the University of North Carolina, where he was a member of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, former Governor David L. Swain, and asked for a loan so that he could attend law school. Governor Swain arranged for a $300 loan from the university, and Vance performed admirably. By 1852 Vance had begun practicing law in Asheville, and was soon elected county solicitor (prosecuting attorney). By 1853, he and Harriette Espy were married, and they would subsequently have four sons.
Read more about this topic: Zebulon Baird Vance
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
Ah fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray’d,”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
“The quickness with which all the “stuff” from childhood can reduce adult siblings to kids again underscores the strong and complex connections between brothers and sisters.... It doesn’t seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we’ve traveled. Our brothers and sisters bring us face to face with our former selves and remind us how intricately bound up we are in each other’s lives.”
—Jane Mersky Leder (20th century)
“Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world.”
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)