JAMES H. SPIVEY. Since the opening years of the nineteenth century the Spiveys, of whom our subject is a lineal descendant, have scattered to various and remote parts of the American continent, and each succeeding generation has furnished a slip to graft the family on to some new community and thus infuse new blood and new vigor into ever-changing and restless society. During the period above noted the forefathers of the subject of this review were fastened, as planters, to the soil of North Carolina, where the family was founded about the birth of or during the infant years of our republic.
Lovett Spivey, grandfather of our subject, was born in this favored locality of the old Tar Heel state. When a young man we find him living in Coffey county, Tennessee, where his son William was born. Of his children, William, father of our subject, and Henry met accidental deaths in Drew county, Arkansas, from damps in a well; James also died in Arkansas; David was killed in the Confederate service; Jane; Jennie married J. R. Stewart, of Waxahachie, Texas; and John R. resides at Hamburg, Arkansas. Lovett Spivey finally moved out to Drew county, Arkansas. He was counted among the moderately successful farmers where he lived before the war and lost some slave property in consequence of that struggle.
William Spivey was reared in his native state and was only twenty-eight years old at death. He married Nancy Richardson, a daughter of George Richardson, of Coffey county, Tennessee, and his widow lives in Jack county, Texas, in the company of her children. At his death Mr. Spivey was the father of George, who was killed at the Jenkins Ferry fight during the Civil war; James H., our subject; Annie, wife of James Taliaferro, of Louisville, Kentucky, and Lovett and William, farmers of Finis, Texas. James H. Spivey remained with the home circle until past his majority and then took up the work of the farm for himself. He was born in DeSoto county, Mississippi, August 27, 1848, and the next year his parents removed to Drew county, Arkansas. The rural schools of the time gave him his educational equipment and at twenty-five years of age he married and established a new home in the locality where he was brought up. His wife was Rachel Harrison, a daughter of George Harrison, who settled there from Marshall county, Mississippi, where Mrs. Spivey was born in 1852. Their wedding occurred in October, 1873, and their children are: Carrie, wife of G. M. Jenkins, of Temple, Oklahoma, with issue, Ima, Morris and James; Hugh, a clerk in Jacksboro; William, who is just out of school; and George and Ray complete the list.
In 1880 Mr. Spivey came to Texas and settled at Finis, in Jack county, and resided in that locality until 1894, when he removed to a small place and a new one near the limits of the county seat. Here he began the building of a home and has added other parcels of land, as his finances warranted, until three hundred acres constitute his well-improved homestead. He is a stockholder in the Jacksboro Mill and Elevator Company, a Democrat in politics and has served many years as a trustee of the Jacksboro schools.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, p. 340.