Jasper was the son of Matilda H. Beckham and Joel Norris, whose family came to Georgia from South Carolina. Joel married Matilda in Monroe County, Georgia, but by 1850 they were living in Harris County, Georgia. Sometime before 1861, the apparently now fatherless family moved to the newly formed Brooks County, Georgia, where Jasper enlisted in first Company I and then (after reorganization) Company C, the Seaboard Guards of the 26th Regiment GA Volunteers. He was captured at Gettysburg in 1863 and sent to Point Lookout, Maryland, the Union prison. In October 1864 he signed an oath of allegiance to the United States and served in a Union army unit until the end of the war, after which he returned to Brooks County, Georgia, married Mary Susan Studstill, and reared a family, dying before 1900.