Virginius Nelson Carney

Virginius Nelson Carney was born in 1879 in Portsmouth, Virginia to Nelson and Martha Carney. He attended Norfolk Mission College from 1892 to 1895 in preparation for university, and went on to attend Lincoln University, leaving in 1899. According to census records, he may have attended the University of Chicago around 1900. He earned a bachelor's of divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1904, and began pursuing another bachelor's degree at Yale College, also attending classes in the Sheffield Scientific School. He completed the coursework for a bachelor's degree in 1907, but his diploma was withheld due to non-payment of tuition.

He went on to a long career in education, serving as a school administrator and teacher in Augusta, Georgia; Newark, New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; and Portsmouth and Richmond, Virginia. He was married to Mary Elizabeth Sullivan. He retired in the 1950s and died in 1959 in Philadelphia, where he was living with his son, James Carney.