Background
Hilary Abner Herbert was born on March 12, 1834, at Laurens, South Carolina, United States. He was descended from English ancestors who settled in Virginia in 1630. His father, Thomas Edward Herbert, was a planter; his mother, Dorothy Teague Young, had been educated in a Moravian school for young women at Salem, North Carolina, and was the founder of a successful school for girls which was continued after her marriage in Laurens and, after 1847, in Greenville, Alabama.