[1] He grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he attended public schools before apprenticing as a clerk in a law office.
[2] During the American Civil War, Jeffords served as a clerk in the Quartermaster's Department of the Army of the Tennessee from June 1862 to December 1863.
[1] On February 25, 1868, General Alvan Cullem Gillem, who had been given post-Civil War command over a region including Mississippi, named Jeffords to the state supreme court, along with Thomas Shackelford and Ephraim G.
[3][4][1][5] He was a delegate to the 1872 Republican National Convention, which renominated U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.
Jeffords was elected as a Republican to the 48th United States Congress, carrying nearly 70% of the vote.