After the Civil War, he was a customs collector, doctor and school superintendent at Key West, Florida.
Jeptha Vining Harris was born on May 27, 1839, in the Abbeville District of South Carolina.
[5][6] Harris received his college and medical education at the University of Mississippi, graduating in 1859.
[7][8] Jeptha V. Harris married Mary Louise Perkins of Lowndes, Mississippi on March 5, 1861.
[9] Soon after he completed college and medical school, Harris served as an assistant surgeon in the Confederate States Army and Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War.