James Harrell Quessenberry Sr. — Jim’s father — was born 5 August 1923 in Wynne, son of Elkanah Abner Quessenberry and Bessie L. Phillips. Wynne High 1941. Navy Armed Guard, Asiatic-Pacific, 1943–45. He married Clarah Anne Smith of Birdeye on 14 January 1945.
After the war they lived in one portion of the 1903 W.M. Smith House with Anne’s brothers and their wives. In 1956 they built 3343 Highway 163 — parcel 002-00834-000 — across Pope Creek, west of the highway. The 1959 Aberdeen-Angus Journal names him with Maurice Jr. and Jimmie Johnston as the three men following the pattern set by W.M. Smith Sr. after the founder’s death. Farming: soybeans, rice, wheat, and the cattle.
When Jim Jr. wrecked and spent a year recovering, this was the household that held him. The name Quessenberry is the same German Questenberg line that drifted through Virginia and Floyd County; it lands on Crowley’s Ridge because Elkanah married Bessie in Cross County in 1905 and their youngest son married the Smith daughter who had grown up in the house on Pope’s old Walnut Camp.
