JD Vance Family History

James David Vance, better known as the politician JD Vance, was born on August 2nd, 1984 to Donald Bowman and Beverly Vance in Middletown, Ohio.  His father deserted the family when JD was young.

JD wrote in Hillbilly Elegy that his childhood was marked by poverty and abuse.  His mother struggled with drug addiction and there was a revolving door of husbands and father figures for him to deal with.  He and his elder sister Lindsay were eventually to be raised by their maternal grandparents Bonnie (Mamaw) and James (Papaw) Vance.  It was only by that time that JD would take on his maternal last name of Vance.

JD did escape his lot at Middletown.  He followed his cousin Rachael and joined the marines, later serving in Iraq.  Afterwards Mamaw pushed him to complete his undergraduate studies at Ohio State and to earn a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School.

There he received mentoring from David Frum, the Bush-era speechwriter, and from Amy Chua, a law professor and “tiger mother.”  And with the publication of Hillbilly Energy in 2016 he was able to reach a wider audience.

JD was active for a time, under the mentorship of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel, as a venture capitalist.  But his interest was in politics.

He moved back to Ohio and in 2021, with Thiel’s backing, launched his bid for the US Senate seat.  Better known and better backed than his rivals, he won in the Republican primary and went  to defeat the Democratic challenger in 2022.

JD’s backstory got the attention of Donald Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric.  When their father became the Republican nominee for President in 2024, they pushed for JD to be his running mate.  Donald Trump accepted their recommendation.  And when Trump won in November 2024, JD was elevated to Vice President in waiting.

He was not that popular during the campaign.  His support for traditional values and remarks about “childless cat ladies” alienated him from urban progressives.  But he had backing within the Trump Republican party and he could well emerge as the Trump successor in 2028.

Hillbilly Elegy

It was in 2016, after Yale, that JD Vance at the age of thirty-two – having moved to San Francisco and been mentored by Peter Thiel – published his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

In this book JD described his own Appalachian upbringing and family background while growing up in Middletown, Ohio.  He pointed out that their culture valued such traits as loyalty and love of country.

But there was a desperation and despair in their lives.  He wrote that the hillbilly culture also fostered social disintegration and economic insecurity.  And he told tales that highlighted their lack of a work ethic.

This included the story of a man who quit his job after expressing dislike for his work hours and of a co-worker with a pregnant girlfriend who would skip work unexcused.  The account became personal as well.  JD wrote of his grandparents’ alcoholism and of his mother’s long history of drug addiction.

His antipathy toward those who seemed to profit from their poor behavior while he himself struggled was given a political twist, the rationale for Appalachia’s swing from voting Democratic to voting Republican.

Many critics have disputed the reality of his depiction of Appalachian depravity.  But there is no doubt that JD in his book had struck a nerve.  He appeared authentic; and he could explain the grievances of the white working class and the reasons for their support for Donald Trump.  JD earned fame for his views and soon became a regular feature on the cable news circuit.

JD’s Own Line

Scots Irish.  JD’s ancestry is Scots Irish and he described this heritage as follows in Hillbilly Elegy.

“I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) of the Northeast.  Instead I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition – their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and mill workers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends and family.”

These Scots Irish originated in Scotland but had sought sanctuary in Ireland in the 17th century because of religious persecution.  Yet their land tenure in Ulster was generally not secure.  Many left to seek out an alternative life in America.

In the case of JD’s ancestors, some genealogical trees have shown the following line of descent:

• from Andrew Vance, the Ulster immigrant to America in the early 1700’s
• to Captain Ephraim Vance,  the Virginia pioneer and frontiersman of the mid-1700’s
• and to Abner Vance, born in Virginia or North Carolina around 1760

But can this line be proved?  The documentary evidence seems lacking.

Abner Vance.  The starting point here is the Abner Vance shown above.  The descent from Abner is somewhat better documented.

This Abner was a Revolutionary War veteran who afterwards had come out to Tug Valley in what is now Mingo county in West Virginia.  There he found work as a surveyor.  He and his wife Susie raised a large family, the two youngest being Richard (JD’s likely ancestor) and his sister Elizabeth (Betsy).

The last chapter of Abner’s life is an insight into the quarrelsome nature of the Scots Irish in Appalachia at that time.

Abner’s daughter Elizabeth had been living, by all accounts, a promiscuous life.  Abner believed that she had been having an affair with a local doctor named Lewis Horton.  In a fit of rage Abner shot and killed him.  He was then charged with the murder, with first his wife Susie and then his son Richard being named as accessories.  After two trials, Abner was found guilty and was hanged in 1819.

Interestingly, Elizabeth later begat a son, known as Bad Jim Vance, who became a leading figure in the notorious Hatfield-McCoy feud that flared up after the Civil War. He helped to keep the conflict going and led the attack on the McCoy family cabin in 1888 after which he was killed.  Elizabeth had a daughter named Nancy who would marry Ephraim Hatfield.

Appalachian Lives.  The reported line in Appalachia – from Abner Vance to JD’s grandfather James Lee Vance – went as follows:

• Abner Vance (1759-1819)
• Richard Vance (1792-1850)
• Meekin Vance (1819-1880)
• Meekin Vance (1846-1929)
• Meekin (Meek) Vance (1875-1919)
• Wilburn (Carl) Vance (1905-1929)
• James Lee (Papaw) Vance (1929-1997)

This period saw these Vances move in Appalachia from Logan and Mingo county in West Virginia to Breathitt county in eastern Kentucky.

After Abner not much is known about these Vances in West Virginia, except that they generally had large families and married within their set (as last names such as Browning, Workman, Marcom and Hensley repeat).  Were they, as Terra Vance has alleged, so-called Melungeons who worked almost as slaves in the new coal mines and coal camps in West Virginia?  Probably not.

JD Vance identifies more with their lives in Breathitt county.  He has returned fairly often to pay his respects to the family at their cemetery in the mountain and to visit the public library where he and his sister would sometimes research family history.   In 2017 he bought property, located some three miles from Jackson, which he understood had been owned by his ancestors.

Breathitt county, however, had not been immune to the family violence found elsewhere in the region.  In 1874 the Kentucky Governor had to send 60 members of the state militia to Jackson, the county seat of Breathitt, in order to restore order among six feuding families.  The violence continued, peaking in the early 1900’s.  Breathitt came to be known as  Bloody Breathitt.

Middletown, Ohio.  In the early 1900’s Appalachian migrants began to stream out of their mountain homes to the factories of the north.  Wilburn Vance moved to Cincinnati, Ohio.  Here he worked as a laborer for the Kroger Packing Company.  Sadly he was to die there of pneumonia in 1929 at the tender age of twenty-three.

His son James Lee, JD’s grandfather, had been born in Breathitt county that year.  When he was a teenager Papaw met his future wife Bonnie as World War Two ended and they ran off to Middletown, Ohio.  This place had grown up around a giant steel mill.  Papaw, despite being a violent alcoholic, had a good life there as a worker for the American Rolling Mill Company.

But this business – and the town that depended on it – plummeted as heavy industry moved out to east Asia. By the time that JD was growing up, the days of company social outings and gold-plated pensions were long gone.

JD’s Wife Line

In contrast to JD’s rough background, his wife Usha, whom he had met at Yale, was from educated Indian stock.  Her parents had belonged to a Telugu Brahmin community in the West Godavari and Krishna districts of Andhra Pradesh.  They emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980’s, settling in San Diego.

Her paternal ancestry can be traced to Chilukuri Buchipapayya Sastri back in the 18th century.  He lived at Saipuram in Krishna district.  Later a branch of the family migrated to Vadluru in West Godavari district.  Her mother Lakshmi née Yechuri was from Pamarru in Krishna district.

Her great-aunt Chilukuri Santhamma, who lives at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, is considered to be India’s oldest active professor at the age of 96 in 2024.  She has written a book based on the ancient Hindu sacred text of Bhagavad Gita.  Her paternal grandfather Chilukuri Rama Sastri taught physics at IIT Madras.  The institute now runs a student award in his memory.

JD Vance’s Family Tree

• Abner Vance (1759-1819) from North Carolina or Virginia m. Susannah (Susie) Howard (1767-1860) in 1779
• – John Wesley Vance (1780-1853) m. Hannah Rader
• – Tabitha Vance (1787-1864) m. Francis Browning
• – William Vance (1789-1853) m. Nancy Burnsides
• – Mary Vance (1789-1867) m. Matthias Keene
• – Alena Vance (1791-1865) m. Joseph Dempsey
• – Richard Vance (1792-1850)
• – Elizabeth (Betsy) Vance (1794-1873)

• Richard Vance from Virginia m. Mary Anne Sims (1792-1860) in Kentucky in 1813
• – Abner Vance (1813-1885) m. Christina Elkins
• – Nancy Vance (1814-1910)
• – John Wesley Vance (1815-1886) m. Martha Hall
• – Richard Vance (b. 1816) m. Matilda Browning
• – Meekin Vance (1819-1880)

• Meekin Vance from Virginia m. Phoebe Workman (1822-1900) in 1837
• – Martha Vance (1836-1900) m. Moses Marcom
• – Andrew (AJ) Vance (1841-1923) m. Rebecca Hensley
• – Sarah Vance (1843-1890) m. Andrew Browning
• – Mary Vance (1845-1878) m. Luke Curry
• – Meekin Vance (1846-1929)
• – William Vance (1847-1878) m. Amy Curry
• – Malinda Vance (1853-1922) m. Lewis Nelson
• – Mariah Vance (1858-1938) m. Abijah Workman

• Meekin Vance from Logan county, West Virginia m. Elizabeth Hensley (1850-1910) in Wayne county, West Virginia in 1868
• – Mary Ann Vance (b. 1869) b. John Marcom
• – Meekin Vance (1875-1919)
• – James Vance (1881-1957) m. Dicy Messer
• – Phoebe Vance (1887-1951) m. Lewis York

• Meekin (Meek) Vance from Logan/Mingo county, West Virginia m. Laura Francis (1876-1966) in Mingo county in 1901
• – Andrew (Ira) Vance (1904-1971) m. Thelma Castle
• – Wilburn (Carl) Vance (1905-1929)
• – Mose Vance (1911-2002) m. Jennie Griffey
• – Estella Vance (1915-1968) m. Curtis Bradley
• – Clarence Vance (1915-1975) m. Ethel Cordle
• – Clifford Vance (1919-1986) m. Opal Hedrick

• Wilburn (Carl) Vance from Mingo county, West Virginia m. Goldie Taulbee from Kentucky (1910-1993) in Ohio in 1928
• – James Lee Vance (1929-1997)

• James Lee Vance from Breathitt county, Kentucky m. Bonnie Blanton (1933-2005) in Ohio in 1948
• – James (Jim) Vance (b. 1951) m. Donna
• – Lori Vance m. Daniel Meibers
• – Beverly Vance (b. 1961)

• Beverly Vance m. Donald (Big Don) Bowman (1959-2023) from Hamilton, Ohio around 1983, later divorced.  Beverly married (1) Jeffrey Lewis (2)  Donald Bowman (3) Robert Hamel and (4) became Beverly Aikins and later rehabilitated. After Beverly, Donald rem. Cheryl McCarty in 1988 and moved to Florida.
• – Lindsay Lewis (b. 1979), m. Kevin Ratliff with three children
• – JD Vance (b. 1984), the author of Hillbilly Elegy