James Dobbins Springer was the son of Elijah Wilburn Springer and Jane Hillhouse. (See Zion Cemetery, Lawrence County, Missouri). The family came to Lawrence County, Missouri from Giles County, Tennessee around 1840.
His only sibling, Sarah Ann, married Lemuel Whaley Allen, Sr. James Dobbins Springer carried the name of his uncle, James Dobbins Hillhouse, and his maternal great-grandfather, James Dobbins, who was a Revolutionary War soldier in South Carolina. James Dobbins Springer was known to family and friends as "Jimmie D.". He was married three times: Tersa Ann Inman (1834-1861), m. July 31, 1856, (3 children-Robert Hillhouse, Margaret Jane (McDonald) and James Bowie); Nancy Elizabeth Morris (1841-1881), m. Dec 3 1865, (7 children-William Andrew, John Morris, Lemuel Allen, Mary Elizabeth (Robbins), Sarah Ellen (Forrester), Edgar, and Nancy Ann (Lockhart); and Hulda Elvira White (1854-1919), m. July 19, 1882, (3 children-George Benton, Dora Alice (Browning) and Bess Grace (Corbin). During the Civil War he was a corporal in the Lawrence County Home Guards and later served as a sergeant in the Enrolled Missouri Militia. He began studying for the ministry in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1870 and was ordained March 27, 1877, by the Ozark Presbytery at its meeting with the Mt Zion congregation in Dade County, Missouri. He delivered his first sermon at a school house on Honey Creek in Lawrence County. He served churches in Lawrence and Stone counties and was the founding pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Aurora. For a complete listing of the churches where he served during his ministry, visit this website:

http://www.cumberland.org/hfcpc/minister /SpringerJamesDobbins.htm

He died January 24, 1906, at the home of his daughter, Margaret McDonald, in Hoberg, Missouri of a "disease of the brain" according to the King Funeral Home Records. Funeral services were held January 25, 1906, in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Aurora, Missouri.

Jim L Wilson