James Jefferson Thomasson was born April 27, 1851 at Liberty Hill in Heard County, Georgia, the son of Thomas Jefferson Thomasson and Sarah Ann (Tomlinson) Thomasson. His mother died August 12, 1851 and his father about two years later. He was reared by his uncle, Beverly Daniel Thomasson and educated at the Carrollton Masonic Institute, paying his way by teaching part time and other work. He spent a part of two years in railroad engineering and later surveyed mineral lands in Alabama.

Thomasson went to Arkansas in 1872 and later taught school in northern Louisiana. He returned to Georgia in 1873 and spent 1874 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he read law in the offices of Van Dyke, Cook and Van Dyke, but returned to Carrollton in the fall of 1874 and married Miss Amanda F. Blalock.

In 1880 he moved with his family to Arkansas where he taught school for six years. When his health failed he entered journalism in the village of Okolona, practicing law in connection with his newspaper. In 1890 he established the Prescott Democrat in Prescott, Arkansas, continuing this until September 1893, when he was appointed by President Cleveland a member of Townsite Board No. 12 in the Cherokee Strip (now Oklahoma). Returning to Prescott he resumed journalism and for several years was recording secretary of the Arkansas Press Association and head of the public school system of Nevada County.

In December 1899 he returned to Carrollton and purchased The Carroll County Times, which had less than 500 circulation and an outdated plant. By the time he sold this paper in 1941 at age ninety the paper had a circulation of nearly 5,000 and a modern newspaper and job plant. Mr. Thomasson throughout the years was a leader in the growth and progress of Carroll County.

Thomasson was a lifelong Democrat, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and a lifelong prohibitionist. He served as the official historian for the Coweta Circuit Bar Association and was the official historian of Carroll County. He was a member of the Georgia Press Association, the National Editorial Association (NEA), and the World Press Congress. He was vice president of the NEA for Georgia for several years.

Thomasson died December 28, 1946.