The short life of prominent attorney H. Clay James
He was one of Scott County's brightest attorneys at the turn of the century. Then his life was snuffed out at a young age by illness.
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The short life of prominent attorney H. Clay James
Mention the name “H. Clay” in Scott County, and most people will immediately think of the historian H. Clay Smith, author of Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past.
But there was another H. Clay in Scott County’s past who might have been immensely more prominent had his life not been cut short by illness just as he was reaching his prime.
Look through newspaper archives out of Knoxville, and you’ll see one name appear over and over whenever court cases from Scott County are mentioned: H. Clay James. He wasn’t just an attorney from Scott County in the 1900s; he was the attorney from Scott County — the one who both tried accused criminals and defended them, the one who captivated courtrooms and demanded attention when he spoke.
Perhaps the only reason H. Clay James didn’t go down in history as one of the most prominent Scott Countians who ever lived is because his life was so short. He died in 1906 at the age of just 37, befelled by a mysterious illness that kept getting worse and worse until it finally claimed him. That was the same year that Scott County’s other H. Clay — H.C. Smith, the historian — was born.
Henry Clay James was born May 1, 1869, in Virginia. Unfortunately, his early life is a complete mystery — perhaps because he died so young, before the narrative of his childhood could fully be recorded. There’s no written record of who his parents were, and the only background information comes from an obituary that was printed in a Knoxville newspaper when he died, mentioning that he was born in Wythe County, Va. While there were a number of Jameses living in Wythe County in 1870, H. Clay James is found in neither the 1870 or the 1880 census. There is an 1870 census record for a Henry James living in Memphis, who was born in Virginia in 1869, but he was listed as black. Scott County’s H. Clay James was white.
H. Clay James came onto the scene in the 1890s, when he married Bettie Walker (1873-1944) from Crossville, Tenn. She was the daughter of John Monroe Beaty Walker and Mary Adeline Frost. They had four children: Virginia White Walker James, born in 1895, Mary Elizabeth James, born in 1899, Charles Clay James, born in 1901, and Bettie James, born in 1906.
H. Clay moved his family to Scott County for work. The first record of him living here was in 1895, when he was appointed the postmaster of the Huntsville Post Office.
So who was this mysterious young attorney? Where did he come from? He may have been one of the very few Scott Countians who was Harvard-educated. An old Harvard University student roll in Massachusetts from 1890 shows that a 20-year-old H. Clay James was enrolled there. Before that, it is as if he simply didn’t exist. There’s no record of him anywhere.
Later records show that he entered the law profession in Wartburg, employed by attorney Will H. Wright, who would later serve as district attorney general. He was admitted to the bar when he was in his mid 20s, and entered a partnership with W.H. Potter in Huntsville. Potter served as a state prosecutor, was elected Scott County Judge, and was later elected to the state legislature.
In a county that was predominantly Republican, and had been since the Civil War, James was a prominent Democrat. That, perhaps, made him an unlikely partner for Potter, who was a staunch Republican and was elected to the state senate as the GOP’s nominee from this area. But the partnership worked, and the two men found plenty of success in the field of law by working together.
James quickly became one of the most prominent attorneys in Scott County. Newspaper records from the first five years of the 1900s bear witness to the many cases he was involved in — both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. Most murder and manslaughter cases from that era involved James on one side or the other.
In 1905, when the state’s 2nd Judicial District became overburdened by its large case load, the Tennessee General Assembly created a temporary circuit court. Governor John I. Cox appointed James as the judge of the temporary court.
At the time of his death, the Journal & Tribune newspaper in Knoxville noted: “As a judge he was quite able for a new man and a man of his experience as a lawyer. He was popular with member of the bar and had bright prospects in his profession when his career was cut short by death. As an attorney he was employed by a number of corporations in Scott County, representing the C., N. O. & T. P. railway and being general attorney for the Robinson interests. He was just reaching a point in life when he could accomplish most.”
In August 1906, while holding court at the Fentress County Courthouse in Jamestown, James fell ill. He battled the illness for several weeks, but then it became serious. He was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a form of kidney disease. It quickly became clear that he would not survive the illness. He died on Oct. 1, 1906, at the age of 37. He was buried at his wife’s family cemetery, the Frost Cemetery, in Crossville. His wife and her parents are also buried there.
Bettie Walker James and her children left Scott County after H. Clay’s death. Charles “Clay” James followed in his father’s footsteps as both an attorney and a Democrat. He served on Knoxville city council in the 1940s and was a candidate for Congress in Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District. He was single until near the time of his death, and shared a home with his sister, Virginia. He died of a heart attack in Knoxville in 1964.
H. Clay James’ last surviving child, Bettie James Sowell, died in 2003 and was buried at Frost Cemetery.
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