His father was James Sharp 1766-1852.
His mother was Jane "Jennie" Joyce.
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James and Margaret were married on 5 April 1826.
They had at least ten children.
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The 1850 Federal Census for the Western District of Rockingham County, N.C., page 85, records James (46) and Mary (49) [Margaret] Sharp with children John (22), Alexander (18), Calvin (16), Benja F. (14), Sarah J. (9), James M. (7), Joseph T. (3), and Mariah (6/12). Next door is J. A. Sharp Jr. (26) and his family: Mary (23), Samuel D. (5), Mary E. (3), and Fannie E. (6/12)
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The 1860 Census for the Northern Division of Rockingham County, N.C., page 114B: James A. (56) and Margaret (49) Sharp with children James (16), Joseph (13), and Susan (10).
James has real estate valued at $5,000 and personal property at $8,414.
James has 5 slaves in what appears to be a family: male (40), female (43), female (15), male (13), and male (4)
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Susie Marshall Sharp was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina on July 7th, 1907 to James M. and Annie Britt Blackwell. Her mother and father were the parents of ten children, seven of whom lived to maturity, five girls and two boys. In addition to Susie, those who reached maturity included Sally Blackwell, Annie Hill, Thomas Adolphus, Louise Wortham, Florence Abigail, and James Vance.
All but Sally and Florence survive Justice Sharp.
Justice Sharp was the 7th generation of Sharps to live in Rockingham County.
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As a child James Merritt Sharp attended school in a one room, log schoolhouse. Determined as a teenager to broaden his education, he, on his own motion, attended Whitsett Institute in Whitsett, North Carolina with money he earned from raising tobacco. By the age of eighteen, he was teaching school.
In 1900, Mr. Sharp established Sharp Institute, a co-educational day and boarding school.
In order to obtain a post office for the Institute, Mr. Sharp had to pick a name for the neighborhood, and did so, naming the community Intelligence, North Carolina.
Opening in October of 1900 with 50 students, the enrollment climbed to 225 by 1906. Known by then as one of the best preparatory institutions in north central and northwest North Carolina, the school burned in 1907, ending J. M. Sharp's career as "Professor Sharp" as he was affectionately known by institute alumni.
Even before the fire, J. M. Sharp was reading law. The fire that ended a career of teaching led to a career in the law as he passed the Supreme Court's Bar examination in 1908 after studying under the famous Wake Forest Law School Dean, N. Y. Gulley.
He began his 44-year practice of the law in Stoneville, North Carolina, moving to Madison in 1910.
Four years later, in 1914, he moved his practice to Reidsville, North Carolina where he remained for the next 38 years, continuously practicing law, serving his community and rearing his family.
During his years in Reidsville, he built a reputation as a tenacious trial lawyer who as his last law partner, Norwood Robinson, said "never had a guilty client".
Constantly active in the political and social life of his community, he served in the North Carolina State Senate in 1925 and 1927, representing the 17th Senatorial District. He was county attorney for the county of Rockingham and served a number of successive terms as President of Reidsville's Chamber of Commerce and the Rockingham County Farm Bureau.
While in Vance County recruiting students for his Institute, Professor Sharp stayed with the family of a faculty member. There he met the faculty member's sister, Annie Britt Blackwell (March 4, 1884 - April 9, 1971), the daughter of John Pomfret Blackwell and Sally Wortham Blackwell. She also was hired as a teacher at Sharp's Institute and in 1906, J. M. Sharp and this gracious, steadfast and learned lady of faith were married.
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The first of J. M. and Annie Sharp's ten children, a girl, was born on July 7, 1907 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina where the Sharps briefly lived following the destruction of the Institute. She was given the name Susie Marshall after her mother's younger sister, Susie, and her Civil War grandfather, James Marshall Sharp. Between 1907 and 1924, nine more children were to be born to the Sharps. As the oldest, Judge Sharp early on assumed a responsibility to assist her mother with the day-to-day rearing of her younger siblings. On two occasions before she left home in 1924 to attend the North Carolina College for Women (now known as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) tragedy struck the Sharp family thrusting Judge Sharp into an increasing role of responsibility while at the same time molding her character.
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J. M. and Annie's second child, James Merritt, was born in 1910. Like Judge Sharp, he greatly admired his father and wanted to help him by being his father's stenographer or, as he called it, "stenog". That was not to be, however, for at the age of four he was stricken with a brain tumor and died 6 weeks before his sixth birthday. Young Susie, a girl of nine, told her daddy that she would be his "stenog". Thus began her focus on her father's work as a lawyer.
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In 1921, twin boys, John and James, were born to J. M. and Annie Sharp. At twenty-two months of age, the twins developed colitis from drinking spoiled milk and died within three weeks of each other. Annie Sharp's grief over the terrible, quick loss of her two healthy sons was overwhelming. So overwhelming was her grief that Judge Sharp, at age 16, had to assume day-to-day responsibility for the running of the household. With the help of the family's maid, Matilda Purcell, Judge Sharp prepared the meals, cleaned the house, and tended to her younger brothers and sisters. Contemporaries of Judge Sharp can still vividly recall more than seventy years ago her leading her neatly dressed siblings into the Main Street United Methodist Church for Sunday School. The strengths she gained from dealing with this family tragedy were to stand her in good stead the remainder of her long and distinguished life.
Another child was Florence Abigail Sharp. (1919-1985)
She married a Newsom.