Herman Dale Jackson was the third son of Herman William and Annie Rachel Dunton Jackson, born December 7, 1930 near Chesapeake, in rural southwestern Missouri. Jackson's ancestry included English, Scotch-Irish, French Acadian (Louisiana 'Cajun') and Missouri Sioux. His forebears came to what is now Missouri in 1796, when the land was still under the rule of Spain. The religious preferences of his immediate ancestry were Baptist, Methodist and Disciples of Christ. His great-great-grandfather, the Rev. Jason E. Dunton, was a Methodist minister who had been excommunicated for practicing spiritualism and lecturing on socialism in the late 19th century.