CAPTAIN J. W. JEFFERSON, LaFayette
JAMES WARREN JEFFERSON is the son of JOHN W. and ELIZABETH JEFFERSON,
nee LYNCH. He was born in Sussex County, Del., December 14, 1847. The
father, a farmer and live stock dealer, moved with his family to St.
Clair County, Ill. in 1851, and died in June of the following year. At
his death, his property all went to pay his debts, leaving his family
destitute. The wife had borne her husband three children--JAMES W.,
SAMUEL M., and MARY A.; the latter an infant at the time of the father's
decease. The mother was a woman of unusual ability and good sense.
Strongly pressed, after the death of her husband, to commit her children
to the care of those supposed to be better able to take care of them,
she determined to keep them, and to labor for their education and
support. No one not living in one of the then frontier States can form
an idea of the magnitude of the work she so nobly undertook and so
faithfully carried out. In the sublimest sense of the word, "by the
sweat of her brow," she earned the bread for the sustenance of her
children. When the father died, no one was poorer in money or property:
but she was rich in judgment, energy and honesty. By the labor of her
own hands she fed her babes, and as they grew older, taught them, by
precept and example, that key-note to success--work--honest, patient and
faithful work. As a reward for her watchful care and labor, she lived
to see each of her children grow up strong and healthy, morally,
physically and intellectually, and enter and pass through their academic
and college studies, the acknowledged leaders of their respective
classes; to leave those classic halls, fully qualified to take up their
chosen life work. MARY A., the youngest, to teach the children of other
women the lessons to be learned in the graded schools of our enlightened
and beneficent public school system; SAMUEL M., to preach the Gospel as
God had given him the intellect to comprehend, and the eloquence to
unfold; and JAMES W., the eldest, the practice of law--that profession
than which no other offers to man a better opportunity to develop his
manhood; that intellectual field fill with quagmires and quicksands,
with moral wrecks of men tempted and fallen; that field in which the
brightest genius of the world has shone where the greatest and best men
of all ages have given their services, that the guilty might be punished
and the innocent vindicated; that wrong and crime and oppression might
be put down, and right and law and justice lifted up. She lived to see
the children born in penury, and raised from poverty by her hand, grown
to manhood and womanhood, fully qualified and well prepared to take
their place in the great struggle of life. Her work was done! With a
smile on her face, she died, December 30, 1877, aged 58 years.
JAMES W. entered the common school at the age of 6 years, and was an apt
pupil and faithful student. He evinced great delight in his studies,
especially mathematics, in which he acquired unusual proficiency.
Throughout his experience, in the common schools or in college, he never
found a problem that he could not solve, and in that branch of his
studies never recited an imperfect lesson. After finishing his studies
in the High School, he went on the farm, where by his labor, he assisted
his mother in the support of her family. Later, he became Assistant
Inspector and Contractor of Forage for the Government, and subsequently
engaged as traveling salesman for a wholesale firm in St. Louis.
He has traveled in every State, and has been in nearly all the larger
cities east of the Rocky Mountains. In 1867, he made a trip through the
chain of lakes from Buffalo to Duluth; and he has followed the Missouri
and Mississippi from Fort Benton and Lake Ithaca to the delta. He has
visited the fashionable watering places of the East, and stood on the
famous "Beach" at Galveston. He has drank at the sparkling springs of
Minnesota, and tasted the brackish waters of the Brazos. From the
summit of Bunker Hill, he has viewed the crooked streets of cultured
Boston, and from the hills of Colorado looked down upon the uncultivated
homes of the untutored savage.
From boyhood his mind was made up to be a lawyer, and while traveling
from town to town, in his own room at the hotel, until late at night,
and at all other times, when he could steal a moment from his business,
he read borrowed books, and laid the foundation for his legal education.
In 1871, he entered Indiana State University, and in 1874, completed the
scientific course, standing at the head of his class. While at the
University, he had command of the drill corps of the college. He is a
thorough tactician, and a proficient civil and military engineer. He
was admitted to the practice of law in June 1874, and in the following
August, moved to Lafayette, and formed a partnership with William H.
Bryan, which was dissolved July 1, 1875, when he engaged in the practice
alone. Hard work and close attention to business soon won for him a
success almost unparalleled. Without money, influence or friends, a
stranger in a strange place, he came to LaFayette, not four years ago;
yet by his energy, and the zeal with which he has guarded the interests
of his clients, he has built up a practice, from which he now enjoys an
income sufficient for all his wants. In 1876, MR. JEFFERSON organized
and took command of the LaFayette Guards--the oldest military company
now in the service of the State. He resigned his command July 13, 1877.
CAPT. JEFFERSON devotes much of his time to commercial settlements, and
to real estate law. He is a hard worker and a close student; and,
although young, as an attorney his success is fully demonstrated, and he
occupies a prominent place among the leading lawyers of the State.
Combination Atlas Map of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, pg. 36
Kingman Brothers, 1878