Jane Barnell was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, to George Barnell, a Russian Jewish itinerant wagon maker, and his wife, a woman of Irish and Catawban ancestry. When she applied for her social security card in May 1939, she gave her parents as George Barnell and Nancy Shaw. Her mother's name is not mentioned in the interviews she gave. She was their second child, and she had three sisters and two brothers. She was named after her maternal grandmother. Her mother was from York County, South Carolina. By two years of age, she was capable of growing a beard. Her mother took her to hoodoo doctors and other folk healers to remove her condition.