[3][4] Nettie Pettway Young's paternal grandfather and father were enslaved in Alberta, Alabama.
Thus, his last name was Pettway until he gained his freedom when he was an adult and moved to the Young Plantation to sharecrop.
[5] Nettie only attended around eight months of school in her life due to the family not being able to afford to send her or her siblings.
Nettie was a co-manager and quilter starting at the very beginning of the Freedom Quilting Bee’s existence.
When she joined the Freedom Quilting Bee, she began to use patterns common among her peers, and this, she said, stifled her creativity.