James Madison Crews was born on April 15, 1848 in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, and died on December 7, 1885 at Dayton, Alabama. On June 24, 1864, at age seventeen, he enlisted in the Confederate States Army and was mustered into Company H of the 15th Alabama Infantry Regiment. In 1867 he was licensed to preach and in 1870 attended Southern University, Greensboro, Alabama. This school was under the Alabama Methodist Conference, and in 1918 consolidated with Birmingham College to become Birmingham Southern College, at Birmingham, Alabama. Crews was awarded the A.B. degree in 1873, and the A.M. degree in 1874, both from Southern University. In 1875 he was assigned by the Conference to Centenary Male Institute in Summerfield, Alabama as a minister. At the time of his death, he left a wife and two children in Dayton. He is buried at Dayton Cemetery along side his wife Ora Elizabeth Askew Crews.