James Henry Church, a prominent lawyer, was born near Elk Cross Roads, Ashe County, N. C., May 5, 1852, the son of Wiley and Margaret (Ray) Church, the former born in said county, March 15,1812, the son of a native of that State. The father is a farmer, living at our subject’s birth-place, a prominent man, and was postmaster under President Lincoln’s first administration. He is a Baptist. The mother, horn in that county in 1817, is the daughter of William Ray, and a Baptist. Our subject, the youngest, except one, of nine children, received a good common-school education, and left the farm when of age to engage in teaching, which he followed in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He finished his education at the Masonic Institute, Moutain City, (Taylorsville), Tenn., and began law in May, 1874, under Hon R. R. Butler, gaining admittance to the bar in July, 1875, and began practice. He became a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, serving on the Jonesboro Circuit in Washington County, Tenn., one year, and went West. He returned from Kansas to Mountain City, and since January, 1881, has been exclusively engaged in his profession of law, and is an able and successful lawyer. May 5, 1874, he married Virginia L., the daughter of the the said Hon. R. R. Butler, born December 19, 1850. Their children are Richard Connolly and a twin sister Hattie Elixabeth, born August 25, 1875 (the sister deceased the 9th of the following November), and William Rollin, born December 26, 1877. The mother is a Methodist.

Transcribed from Godspeed’s History of TN (1896)