Kentucky: A History of the State, Perrin, Battle, Kniffin, 4th ed., 1887,
Green County.

JAMES J. COURTS was born November 11, 1852, in Greensburg, received a good
English education at Greensburg and Urania College, Glasgow, and learned
the saddler's trade with his father.  In 1872 he went to Iowa, was a
telegraph operator, also a clerk in a hotel at Malvern, and afterward
taught common schools in Kansas.  After two years sojourn in the west he
returned to Greensburg and engaged at his trade till [sic] January 13,
1874; until 1884 was engaged as traveling salesman through the South.  On
January 13, 1886, became associate editor of the Greensburg Times, and on
February 9 took full charge as editor and proprietor.  In 1879-80 he served
as marshal of Greensburg.  February 9, 1886, he was united in marriage to
Miss Mercie C., a daughter of Rev. R. C. and Mercie (Cosson) Alexander, who
are natives respectively of Christian and Pulaski Counties.  Mr. Alexander
is a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and son of William
Alexander, who was a colonel in the war of 1812; his parents came from
Ireland.  He married Mercie T. Emerson.  James J. Courts is a son of
Braxton E. and Eliza J. (Durham) Courts, to whom seven children were born
and five reared: James J., John W. (now dead), Mary J., William E.
(deceased), and Braxton E.  B. E. Courts was born June 17, 1826, twelve
miles east of Glasgow, and is the youngest child, and only son of three
children born to Jesse M. and Mary J. (Price) Courts.  Jesse W. Courts was
born in Barren County; when a boy was a salesman in Glasgow, afterward
merchant on Nobob Creek; in 1828 he went to St. Louis, where he worked
at carpentering one year; later went to Hannibal, Mo., and while there lost
his wife, after which his son was returned to Kentucky, while he himself
continued his journey westward to the Rocky Mountains.  He finally returned
to Quincy, Ill., where he died of cholera, aged fifty-five years.  He was a
son of William and Clarissa (Winn) Courts, natives of Culpeper County, Va.
They were married in Fayette County, Ky., to which county they immigrated
early, and were also early settlers of Barren County.  William, with three
brothers, served during the Revolution, one on a man of war; the other
two, with William, were early settlers of Kentucky.  One, John Courts,
built and ran a powder-mill in Barren County, but it blew up, and he then
went to Hart County, where he built and ran its first powder-mill.  The
grandfather of B. E. Courts was a farmer and a manufacturer of linseed
oil, and died in 1848 at the age of eighty-four years, at Edmonton,
Metcalfe County.  His father came from England; his mother was a Douglass
and of Scotch-Irish origin.  The mother of B. E. Courts was born in Barren
County, a daughter of Daniel and Mary (Lewis) Price, natives of Richmond,
Va., and early settlers of Barren County, Ky.  He was a wheelwright, a
farmer, a solider in 1812, moved to Iowa during the Black Hawk war (B. E.
Courts going with him), settled near Keokuk, and lived to be over ninety
years old.  B. E. Courts was taken to St. Louis, then to Belleville, Ill.,
and in 1844 returned to Edmonton, Metcalfe Co., Ky., where he learned the
saddler's trade.  In 1849 he located in Greensburg, where he has lived
ever since, except six years in Elizabethtown and Lebanon.  During the war
he was engaged in the dry goods and grocery business for a brief period;
in 1863 was appointed sheriff of the county and elected the same year by
900 majority; but did not serve on account of troubles; served seven years
as Unites States store-keeper; in May, 1884, was appointed postmaster of
Greensburg, and was removed in December, 1885.  He has a farm of 270 acres
in a good state of cultivation.  In April, 1850, he married Eliza J., a
daughter of John and Margaret (Shreve) Durham, and of English descent.
B. E. Courts acted as quartermaster while the troops were being enlisted
for the war in 1862-63.

Courts Cosson Alexander Emerson Durham Price Winn Shreve Lewis
Durham Douglass
=
Glasgow-Barren-KY Christian-KY Pulask-KY Edmonton-Metcalfe-KY
Hart-KY Elizabethtown-Hardin-KY Marion-KY IA KS MO IL England Ireland

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/green/courts.jj.txt