I am a native of Houston, Texas and attended Texas Christian University
and the University of Houston as a commercial art major. I was a
graphic technician for Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation, Houston
for six years before quitting to have my first son in 1959. My husband
Vernon Austin and I moved to Decatur, Alabama with our sons, Alan and Mark
in 1970. 
I attended Calhoun Community College and Athens College, where I received a B.S. Ed. in Art Degree in 1972. While teaching art at Hartselle High School I completed a M. Ed. in Secondary Education and a B.F.A. in Art at the University of Montevallo in 1974.
That same year I started teaching art at Calhoun College. For twenty years I have taught drawing, painting, design, art history, art appreciation and computer graphics at the main campus. I was Director of The Art Gallery at Calhoun for fifteen years. I completed a Ph.D. in Administration of Higher Education at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1980, and in 1985 I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to the Netherlands.
Since retiring four years ago, I have continued to teach art courses part time for Calhoun. My hobbies are playing with my grandson, travel and genealogy. During the past six years I have published five local histories about early Alabama and Tennessee pioneers. Many enjoyable hours are spent web-surfing for ancestors on the World Wide Web.
I have been working for some years now to get this database for John
Calhoun Austin onto the Web. I also have collected data on the following
southern areas: Alabama Counties: Morgan, Lawrence, Madison,
Limestone, Winston, Franklin, Blount, Cullman, Walker, Cherokee, Marshall,
De Kalb, Jackson, Colbert, and Lauderdale. Tennessee Counties:
Hardin, Sumter, Bedford, Jefferson, and Marion. I also have some
data for counties in North and South Carolina. I would be happy to share
data with anyone doing research in these southern counties, and would appreciate
comments and corrections to the John Calhoun Austin database. Thank
you.