JAMES J. BRIGGS was born in Cass County, Ind., May 3, 1837, and is the seventh of the eleven children born to Alexander and Jane (Stanley) Briggs, natives respectively of South Carolina and Tennessee, and both of Irish descent. Alexander was taken by his parents to Tennessee when he was a small boy; when a young man, he went to Pennsylvania and farmed two years, and then came to Fountain County, this State, entered 160 acres of land, and farmed until 1832, when he sold out and moved to Cass County, where he bought a farm and lived until 1840; be then came to Liberty Township, this county, bought a farm and resided thereon until his death in 1849. He was married in Fountain County, and for over twenty years was a minister in the Christian Church. James J. Briggs lost his father at the age of twelve, and he was bound out to Mr. A. L. Paterson, of Tippecanoe, with whom he remained until he was twenty-one. In 1858, he came to Prairie Township, this county, and for three years farmed on shares; returned to Tippecanoe, bought a small farm, and in the spring of 1865 came back to White and for two years farmed on shares again; he then bought eighty acres in this township, which he has converted into a good farm. July 5, 1858, he married Sarah McKim, a native of Racine, Wis., who bore him six children, and died May 20, 1881, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. August 31, 1882, Mr. Briggs married Mrs. Anne (Van Meter) Briggs, a native of Cass County, and the mother of four children by her first husband. In politics, Mr. Briggs is a Democrat and for the past ten years has been Assessor of the township; he is a member of the Baptist Church and his wife of the Methodist.

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