Heritage & Heart: The Yawn Family Lineage

by val white

I’ve always believed that the past has a way of whispering through us — in the way we gather, the flavors we crave, the stories we tell without even realizing where they began. My family name, Yawn, traces its roots all the way back to a man named Nicholas Yonn, who arrived in Orangeburg, South Carolina, around 1737 with his wife, Christina Susannah. They came from the region that straddles the German and Swiss border — a place of rolling green hills, good bread, and people who knew the value of community.

From Nicholas came generations who made their way south — through Orangeburg to Georgia — until they finally settled in the red clay of Telfair County. My grandfather, Valda Eugene Yawn, was born in Rhine, Georgia, in 1936, the son of Morgan Cook Yawn and Meardie Ennis Knight. By then, the Yawns were fully Southern — but you could still feel that quiet Old World sensibility woven into their way of life.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to the idea of heritage as habit. The Yawns were farmers, cooks, and craftsmen. They believed in making do, in setting a table that felt generous even when times weren’t. There was an unspoken rhythm to life: work hard, give thanks, gather often. And isn’t that what so much of the Southern experience really is — a translation of European traditions into the language of the American South?

When I set a table, hang a wreath, or pour tea on a cool afternoon, I like to think I’m continuing something Nicholas and Christina began nearly three centuries ago. They couldn’t have imagined their descendants would one day be sipping tea by the Florida coast, writing about Oktoberfest and gratitude — but I think they’d understand the sentiment just the same.

Because at its heart, heritage isn’t about names in a book or dates on a page. It’s about the way memory moves through us — the way a simple act, like lighting a candle or frying chicken schnitzel, can become a quiet kind of prayer.

And in that way, I suppose we all return — again and again — to where it began.