Maryn’s great grandmother and great grandfather had the foresight to think that education was important and sacrifice to make it happen. The family’s six girls went to Young Harris College and the two boys went to the state college in NC. The brothers were entrepreneurs and bankers who created companies, some of which are still going strong today. The sisters were all teachers.
Maryn’s grandmother graduated in 1909 and became a teacher in Tennessee. She married and with her husband managed a farm in Georgia. Unfortunately, the day after her last child was born, her husband died of spinal meningitis, leaving her to raise 7 children in the middle of the Depression.
Importance of Education
When the bank foreclosed on her home she moved with the 7 kids to a farm in Tennessee near the Ocoee River. The house had no electricity or running water, and it was the middle of the Depression. Because she had her college degree, she was able to work as a teacher and to take care of the family. She found ways to work the farm, pay the bills, raise all 7 children to adulthood, and send them to college or business school (most had some sort of scholarship). She lived to the ripe old age of 98. The Tennessee farm is still in the family and is an operating farm.
