Tangipahoa Parish Biographies

Tangipahoa Parish Biograhies

JESSE CRAWFORD WALLER has made a prominent name for himself in Western Kentucky as an educator, and for two years has been superintendent of the city school system of Hopkinsville. He represents an old family of Louisiana, though the Wallers on first coming from England settled in Spottsylvania County, Virginia. His grandfather, Harris Waller, was born and spent his life as a planter in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana., and owned and cultivated a large estate there. He married Olive Watson, who was born in 1806 and died in 1888, having likewise spent her life in Tangipahoa Parish. It was in that parish and on the old plantation that Jesse Crawford Waller was born December 1, 1878. His father, Jesse Crawford, Sr., was born there in 1834 and died in November, 1878, as a victim of the yellow fever. His death occurred, it will be observed, about a month before his son and namesake was born. He had spent his rather brief career as a planter on the old homestead. He was a democrat and a member of the Baptist Church. The maiden name of his wife was Fannie Magee, who was born in Tangipahoa Parish in 1846 and died there in 1886. She was the mother of four children : Homer, who represents the third generation in the ownership and management of the old plantation home in Tangipahoa; Harris, who died in infancy; and a daughter who also died in infancy; and Jesse C., the youngest. Jesse C. Waller attended public schools in his native parish, also an academy, and has been a successful teacher from the time he was twenty-one years of age. The first three years he taught in the rural schools of his native parish. At intervals of his school work he has taken advanced studies until he holds several degrees. He spent one year in Mississippi College at Clinton, another year at Tulane University, New Orleans, and for four years was a student of Georgetown College at Georgetown, Kentucky. He received his A. B. degree from Georgetown in 1907. After a year of residence he was graduated with the A. B. degree from the University of Chicago in 1908, and in that year was elected superintendent of schools of Georgetown, Kentucky, thus returning to the city where he had spent several of his delightful student years. For nine years he was active head of the Georgetown schools. In the meantime for four successive summers he went East to Columbia University in New York, and in 1914 his advanced studies were rewarded with the Master of Arts degree by Columbia. In August, 1918, Mr. Waller was elected superintendent of schools at Hopkinsville. He is at the head of one of the largest city school systems in the state, having four school buildings, a staff of thirty-nine teachers and with 1,200 scholars enrolled. Mr. Waller takes a prominent part in the activities of the State Educational Association, is a member of the National Education Association, is a democrat in politics, and is a teacher of the Men's Bible Class in the Baptist Church at Hopkinsville, and for five years was on the board of deacons of the church at Georgetown. He is affiliated with Mt. Vernon Lodge No. 14, A. F. & A. M., at Georgetown. During the war he was a member of various local committees assisting in Red Cross, Y. M. C. A. and other campaigns. Mr. Waller, whose home is on East Ninth Street, married at Georgetown Miss Nora Lee Pullen, daughter of W. E. and Mary Ellen Pullen, residents of Georgetown. Her father is a retired merchant. Mrs. Waller is a graduate of Mrs. Sallie Burgin's School of Music, and is a skilled instrumentalist and prominent in musical circles at Hopkinsville. Mr. and Mrs. Waller have two children: Eleanor, born August 17, 1908; and J. C., Jr., born December 23, 1918.
["History of Kentucky" By Charles Kerr, William Elsey Connelley, Ellis Merton Coulter
Published by The American Historical Society, 1922 - Submitted by K. Torp]