My Genealogy Hound

Stephen A. Downs is a lawyer, of the firm Downs & Sutton, of Nashville, Ark., and was born in Hempstead County, Ark., near the present town of Hope, in 1862, being the only child born to Stephen A. and Virginia B. (Brummell) Downs, the former born in Mississippi and the latter in Arkansas. Mr. Downs removed to the latter State in the fifties with his parents, who made a settlement near Hope and here, and in Clark County, his father lived until his death, which occurred during the war. The parents of the subject of this sketch were married in October, 1860, and the father enlisted in the first company of Confederate troops from Hempstead County. He died at Arkadelphia while in camp there in August, 1861, County. He was a captain in the Confederate army, six months before the birth of the subject of this sketch. His widow was married in 1871, to John B. Copeland, and they now make their home in Howard County, three miles north of Nashville. Stephen A. Downs was reared to a farm life, but received only little schooling. At the age of eighteen years he began working for himself, and the next year, from January 17, 1881, he attended school for seven months and a half at Corinth, prior to this being unable to write his name. After laboring for some time he went to Bingen, and after attending school here for seven months and a half, he taught a three months' summer term of school, after which he spent a short time at farm labor. In 1883 he became a clerk in the general mercantile house of Rector & Yowell, in Nashville, after which he again taught a three months' summer term of school. In January, 1884, he entered the State University of Fayetteville, an institution he attended three years, the summer months being spent in pedagoguing as a means of defraying his expenses in college, doing also various duties at the university to assist in paying his way. The January of 1887 prior to his graduation he was taken sick, and did not get to entirely finish his term. After recovering, he engaged with the Home Nursery at Nashville, and for four months was engaged in selling fruit trees, the succeeding year being spent in teaching school. In the fall of 1888 he entered the law department of the Cumberland University, of Lebanon, Tenn., on June 6, 1889, graduated as a B. LL. He then returned to Nashville, taught for a short time, and in November of the same year formed a partnership with Henry S. Sutton, who graduated from the same institution and in the same class as himself. They are now established in an excellent and paying practice in Nashville, and do a general collecting, real estate and life insurance business, and show excellent judgment in the management of these enterprises. He deserves much credit for the determination and enterprise which have placed him where he now is, and his career would be an excellent example for others to “go and do likewise.” He belongs to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and he is an active worker in the Sunday-school. He is a member of the fraternity, Pleasant Valley Lodge No. 30, of which he is secretary, and he is a total abstainer in the use of intoxicants and tobacco.