My Genealogy Hound

James Skelton Driver, though still comparatively a young man, has already had an active career in agricultural pursuits and is recognized as a careful, energetic farmer of Mississippi County, who, by his advanced ideas and progressive habits, has done not a little for farming interests hereabouts. He is a son of James D. Driver, whose sketch appears in this work, and in his youth received good educational advantages, which he improved to the utmost, being an attendant at Alton, Ill., and Frankfort, Ky. After his marriage, which occurred in Memphis, Tenn., in 1885, to Miss Carrie Kenney, a daughter of the late M. W. Kenney, of Memphis, Tenn., he moved upon one of his father’s plantations and set energetically to work to clear it of timber, and put it in good condition for farming. Fifty acres had already been cleared, and he has since put 150 acres more under the plow and has erected several buildings, including his residence, which is a substantial frame building. He employs about twenty-five people to keep his plantation in good condition, and has always taken great interest in everything that bids fair to be of benefit to the community in which he resides. He and his wife are the parents of two little children, son and daughter: Cecil and Savilla May. Mrs. Driver’s father, M. W. Kenney, was the tarpaulin manufacturer of Memphis, Tenn., and died there on the 13th of August, 1878, of yellow fever, being the first victim of that dreaded scourge in that city. He was fifty-one years of age and was born in Philadelphia, Penn., in which city he remained until eight years of age. When a young man he married a young lady of Wilmington, Del., and afterward went by steamship to Florida, thence to Memphis about 1850, and was married there to his second wife, whose maiden name was Miss Caroline Klinck, her father being John G. Klinck, whose ancestors came to America in that famous old ship, the ‘‘Mayflower.’’ He was the first man to start a newspaper in Memphis, which took the name of the Evening Bulletin, and was one of the committee to receive the Marquis de La Fayette when on his tour through the United States. He was also connected with the Memphis Appeal, now one of the most popular journals of the day in that city.