John Jefferson Cowart was born in December 1866 in Statesboro, Georgia. Cowart was a real estate agent who resided in Greenville, South Carolina for more than forty years. For a brief period of time, around 1919, Cowart relocated his family to Badin, North Carolina where he served as rental agent for the Tallassee Power Company. He died in Miami, Florida on November 10, 1948.