Julia Child was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams in 1912, in Pasadena, California, the daughter of John McWilliams, Jr., a Princeton University graduate and prominent land manager, and his wife, the former Julia Carolyn (“Caro”) Weston, a paper-company heiress whose father, Byron Curtis Weston, served as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Child was the eldest of three, followed by a brother, John McWilliams III, and sister, Dorothy Cousins.In high school, Child was sent to the Katherine Branson School in Ross, California, which was at the time a boarding school. At six feet, two inches (1.88 m) tall, Child played tennis, golf, and basketball as a youth and continued to play sports while attending Smith College, from which she graduated in 1934 with a major in History.Child grew up with a cook who served her family. She did not observe or learn how to cook from the family’s cook. Child did not learn to cook until she met her would-be husband, Paul, who grew up in a family very interested in food.Following her graduation from college, Child moved to New York City, where she worked as a copywriter for the advertising department of W. & J. Sloane.