This website hopes to provide an information archive about the Mayna Treanor Avent Cabin and the artist herself. Mayna Treanor Avent was my great grandmother - my mother’s father’s mother. She died in 1959 before I was born - but her artwork was all around our family growing up in Tennessee. As a child and well into adulthood, along with my family, I spent many days at the Avent cabin as it was maintained by my family until 1992 when it was returned to the National Park. All through my life, my mother Mayna Avent (MacKinnon) Nance, who was an artist in her own right, would recount stories of her grandmother until my mother passed away in 2020.
Mayna’s son James Avent lived in worked for Standard Oil in China from 1919-1949. All three of James’ children with his wife Jeanette, who was from Illinois - Jacquline, Mayna, and James Jr. - were born in China. When taking their home leave back to the US, they would use the Cabin as a summer retreat. To the children and the rest of us family members, Mayna Treanor Avent was known as “Nai Nai”, Mandarin Chinese for a fraternal grandmother.
Bryan Avent MacKinnon, May 2022
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奶奶
Nai Nai