JAMES STUART PILCHER is a name highly honored in Nashville, Tennessee, for it belongs to a man of the highest integrity and splendid attainments. As a lawyer Mr. Pilcher has won a reputation for exhaustive research and sound judgment on legal affairs, and his wide experience has made him one of the leading lawyers of the state.
He fought in the Southern army to maintain the Confederacy, and when that became a “lost cause,” he turned his energies to his share of the labor to help the South to her feet once more, and has never ceased to bend his energies toward making her once more a happy and prosperous part of the Union.
Mr. Pilcher was born in Eutaw, Alabama. His father was Dixon Green PILEHER, and his mother Jane Hope (Carothers) PILCHER. His parents were born in South Carolina, his father in York district, and his mother in Union. His father was a descendant of one of the old English families that settled in Virginia early in the history of the colony, and his mother was descended from that sturdy Scotch stock that settled first in Pennsylvania, and following the Alleghany mountains came down into the Carolinas and formed the backbone of the Continental army in the days when Tarleton and Green were matched against each other. She also had aristocratic Huguenot blood in her veins. Such an ancestry is a glorious heritage.
In his childhood Mr. Pilcher’s parents removed to Mississippi, and settled near the center of the state. Here he grew up and received a fair education. His boyhood was spent amid the stormy days that preceded the outbreak of the war, and he enlisted to help fight for the Southern cause. It was in the early part of 1862 that he was enrolled as a soldier in the Vaiden Light Artillery, and he served with this command until the close of the war. He was paroled by the United States authorities on the 10th of May, 1865, having before that determined to take up the law as a profession. He entered the law department of Cumberland University, and made a brilliant record as a student, being graduated from that institution as the “First Honor” man of his class.
For a few years Mr. Pilcher practiced his profession in Starkville, Mississippi. He then removed to Austin, Texas, only remaining there a short time before coming to make his permanent home in Nashville. This was in 1876, and he has practiced law in Nashville ever since, with an ever increasing reputation as a successful member of the bar.
Mr. Pilcher has never sought political honors, preferring to devote all of his time to his profession, and to the demands that his profession made upon him. In politics Mr. Pilcher has always been a stanch Democrat, believing most firmly in the principles of that party, considered from the standpoint of a Southern man. In religious matters, he is of the Southern Presbyterian church, and is a member of the First church, of Nashville.
Mr. Pilcher married Miss Margaret Hamilton CAMPBELL, a worthy daughter of her illustrious father, the late William B. Campbell, governor of Tennessee, and colonel of the “Bloody First” Tennessee Regiment in the Mexican war. Their children are Stuart Carothers, William Bowen Campbell and Frances Owen PILCHER, all residing in Nashville, Tennessee.
Source: Hale, Will T, and Dixon L. Merritt. A History of Tennessee and Tennesseans: The Leaders and Representative Men in Commerce, Industry and Modern Activities. Chicago: Lewis Pub. Company, 1913. Volume 4
