My Genealogy Hound

A. J. Craig, probate and county court judge of Independence County, was born on the farm upon which he now lives, one mile east of Jamestown, in 1844. He is a son of John L. and Margaret A. (Hardin) Craig, the former of whom was born in Alabama, in 1801, and the latter in Lawrence County, Ark., about 1817. When a young man Mr. Craig removed to Independence County, Ark., where he married, and spent the remainder of his life, his death occurring in 1864; he was one of the earliest settlers of the county, locating in the dense woods, where he cleared a farm and reared his family. Mr. Craig was a member of the Methodist Church, of which church his widow, who is still living, is also a member. The latter is a daughter of Joseph Hardin, who was one of the pioneers of what is now Lawrence County. A. J. Craig was the fourth child in a family of five sons and three daughters. He received a common-school education, and during the last two years of the late war, served in the Confederate army, in Company C, Morgan’s regiment, Price’s cavalry troops; he was at the battles of Cape Girardeau, Helena, Pilot Knob, and many skirmishes, operating in Missouri, Kansas and Indian Territory, until the surrender at Jacksonport, in June, 1865, when he returned home. In 1867 Mr. Craig married Louisa, daughter of Cary and Margaret Simms, who came to Independence County, when she was a little girl. Mrs. Craig, who was a native of South Carolina, died in 1878, leaving one son and two daughters. In 1879 Mr. Craig married Dorcas Engles, of Independence County. She is a daughter of William D. and Margaret Engles, natives, respectively, of Kentucky and Missouri, who removed to Independence County, Ark., when young. Mr. Engles died in 1845; he was a member of the Methodist Church. Mrs. Engles is still living, aged seventy-one years; she is a daughter of Job and Elizabeth Stark, who both died in Independence County, as did the parents of Mr. Engles. One son and one daughter have blessed the second marriage of our subject. Judge Craig has spent his entire life on the farm of his birth, which contains 127 acres, about eighty acres of which are under cultivation; forty acres he inherited from his father, and the balance he has earned. From 1878 to 1886 he served as justice of the peace, being elected to the office of county and probate judge in 1886, serving in that capacity with much ability, and was re-elected to the same office in 1888. He is a Democrat politically, and he and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.