James Robinson Graves

American Baptist preacher, publisher, evangelist, debater, author and editor

James Robinson Graves (April 10, 1820 – June 26, 1893) was an American Baptist preacher, publisher, evangelist, debater, author, and editor. He is most noted as the original founder of what is now the Southwestern family of companies. Graves was born in Chester, Vermont, the son of Z. C. Graves, and died in Memphis, Tennessee. His remains are interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.

In 1855, Graves established Southwestern Publishing House in Nashville, Tennessee. The company's name was chosen because, at that time, Nashville was in the southwestern part of the United States. Southwestern originally published The Tennessee Baptist, a Southern Baptist newspaper, and religious booklets which were sold by mail for 20¢ and 30¢ each. Prior to the Civil War, most Bibles were printed in the North, rather than the Confederacy. Graves acquired stereotype plates from the North and began printing Bibles for sale in August 1861. He also produced and sold educational books. The company resumed publishing in 1867. In 1868, Graves discontinued the company’s mail order business, and began training young men as independent dealers to sell Bibles and educational books door to door as a way to earn money for college. Graves retired in 1871. Contemporary fellow ministers in the Southern Baptist Convention praised his preaching abilities. Thomas Treadwell Eaton wrote, "We have seen him hold a congregation packed uncomfortably, for three hours and a half without any sign of weariness on their part. This was not done once or twice, but scores of times." Denominational leader James Bruton Gambrell described one of Graves' sermons at a small church in Mississippi as "The Greatest Sermon I Ever Heard." Scholars have recognized Graves as an early and chief promulgator of the Landmark movement. The subject's Nashville publishing house, Graves, Marks, & Co, which later became South Western Publishing, published all of fellow 'Landmarker' Amos Cooper Dayton's books. Both were expelled as 'schismatics' between 1858 and 1859 from the Nashville First Baptist Church due to their theological perspectives on their apostolic connection.

In the 1830s, J. R. Graves’s older brother, Zuinglius Calvin Graves (1816–1902), moved to Ashtabula, Ohio to teach school. Soon mother Lois, sister Louisa and J. R. had relocated there as well. All three Graves children married while there. In 1845, J. R. Graves married Lucinda Ellen “Lua” Spencer, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Spencer. They relocated to Nashville, Tennessee and had four children – none of whom lived to adulthood. Graves married a second time in 1856, to Louisa Jane Snider, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. George Snider of Jackson, Tennessee. They had five children. Louisa Jane Graves and Graves’s mother Lois died in 1867 during a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee (where they had relocated circa 1866). In 1869, Graves married Georgianna Snider, Louisa’s sister. They had three children. Georgianna died in 1932. Most of the family members are buried in Elmwood Cemetery at Memphis, Tennessee and the Nashville City Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee.