Hon. Eliphalet Jarvis, lawyer, and senator of the Ninth Senatorial District, was born five miles north of Sparta January 14, 1850, the son of Reziah and Margaret (Sapp) Jarvis. The father, born in North Carolina about 1794, died in White County, Tenn., in 1868, and the mother, a native of Tennessee, is still living in White County. The father, coming to White County in early life, was a successful farmer and a Democrat, and the misfortune of blindness befell him in 1857. Our subject, educated chiefly at Cumberland Institute in White County, worked on the home farm and taught school until he began the study of law in 1875 under Col. W. J. Farris, of Sparta. Since obtaining a license to practice in the early part of 1876, he has been exclusively devoted to the law. In August, 1886, unexpected to himself, he was nominated candidate for State senator of the Ninth Senatorial District (eight counties) by the Democratic party. Mr. Jarvis’ majority over the Republican nominee, J. W. Dorton, of Cumberland County, was 1,001. At the first meeting of the Senate our subject was placed on six different standing committees, the judiciary, and that of finance and ways and means being the most important He is a promising young lawyer, and fast winning his way to honorable distinction. December 28, 1876, he married Mollie Gilliland, a lady born in Polk County, Tenn., in 1857. They have had five sons. Mr. Jarvis and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. He is distantly connected with ex-Gov. Jarvis, of North Carolina.

Source:   Goodspeed Pub. Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present; Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of the Counties of White, Warren, Coffee, DeKalb, and Cannon, Besides a Valuable Fund of Notes, Original Observations, Reminiscences, Etc., Etc. Nashville: Goodspeed Pub. Co, 1887.