Raised in a poor family, although he had the necessities of life, Jarvis worked when he was young in three hundred acre farm owned by his father, while he was studying about the common schools.

[1] An educator by training, Jarvis opened a school in Pasquotank County and would later be one of the founders of East Carolina University.

Jarvis enlisted in the military at the beginning of the American Civil War and served in the Eighth North Carolina Regiment.

[1] He won election in his own right in 1880, defeating Daniel G. Fowle for the Democratic nomination and narrowly winning over Republican challenger Ralph Buxton.

In office, Jarvis convinced the legislature to authorize construction of the North Carolina Executive Mansion, although it was not completed until 1891.

[1] Term limited, Jarvis stepped down as governor in 1885, but was appointed United States Minister to Brazil by President Grover Cleveland.

In 1896, Jarvis was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, where he supported William Jennings Bryan in his last major political act.

He was instrumental in the founding of what is now East Carolina University in Greenville, where the oldest residential hall on campus is named in his memory.

In 1898, while not directly involved, Jarvis's political rhetoric may have contributed to the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, a violent coup d'état by a group of white supremacists.