E.A. HURST was born February 29, 1836, four miles southeast of Tazewell. His father, Issac M., was a son of Aaron and Sallie (McNew) HURST, whose parents were among the early settlers around the “Old Garrison” on Ball Creek. Aaron owned a large boundary of land between the “Old Garrison” and Big Spring (now Springdale), where he lived and where Isaac was born July 17, 1828. Isaac was a member of a large family. He grew up on the farm, and received a very good education for his day. He taught school, farmed, traded in stock and sold good; was married to Fannie B. STONE, a sister of T.W. STONE, Esq., and lived on the farm till his death in December, 1862. He was a Democrat before the war, and when it broke out was one among a very few of the stanch Union men of his neighborhood, and suffered on that account; was magistrate of his district at the time of his death.
When the war was closed; E.A. HURST was a small boy, the eldest of a family of four children. The property of the family was pretty well swept away by the war, but he was kept in school until April, 1868, when his mother remarried, and he, a few years thereafter, left home. From this time to 1878 he worked on the farm, taught school and went to school alternately, and managed, by close application, to obtain a very fair education in the English branches, mathematics, and the rudiments of Latin.
In 1878 he went to Texas, where he remarried two years, and then returned and read law under P.G. FULKERSON, and was admitted to the bar October 17, 1879. He at once formed a partnership with Capt. J.C. HODGES, of Morristown, who already had a very fair practice in Claiborne County. This partnership was dissolved in 1882, and he practiced alone until the formation of the existing partnership.
On July 27, 1882, he was married to Ollie CARR, a daughter of John H. and Mary CARR, and a sister of W.S. CARR. He is clerk of the Missionary Baptist Church at Tazewell, of which he has been a member since February, 1881, and to which his wife also belongs. He has occupied a station in the Masonic Lodge at Tazewell, ever since he joined, in October, 1881; was master during the year 1886. He is a Democrat in politics, as are the principal member of his and his wife’s families. He has been engaged in some other minor matters of business other than law; was a member of the firm of Fulkerson, Carr & Hurst, and is a member of the firm Hurst & Chance, real estate agents, at Tazewell, and of Hurst & Graves, lawyers, at Maynardville. He has some small personal property and realty worth about $2,500.
Goodspeed Publishing Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of from Twenty-Five to Thirty Counties of East Tennessee. Chicago: Goodspeed, 1887.