"WHO IN HELL HAS GOT ME ANYWAY?"
Everything we know about Simon James (1770??-1822??) as of 18 August
2001
(please send additions, corrections, or questions so as to improve later
versions)
by great-great-great grandson Harold Henderson 219/324-2620, [email protected]
Simon James was born in southwestern Wales, probably around 1770.
We have no picture or description of him. But we can say that he was
physically strong, as he dug graves and wrestled ghosts. He was mentally
independent, since he was a Baptist preacher, not an adherent of the
established Anglican church. (This probably means he had a good carrying
voice, too.) The four of his children we have been able to track into later life
seem to have been ardently religious and well-informed. He seems to have
been responsible, but more often a deputy than a leader; able, but not well-off;
a literate individual, who left us almost nothing in writing.
Family tradition has it that Simon learned the trade of weaver but later on
became a Baptist preacher. He first appears in the historical record in a letter
from William Richard of St. Clears in Carmarthenshire, Wales, to Rev.
Samuel Jones of Pennypeck Church, near Philadelphia, dated 22 March
1796. The letter reads in part, "I wrote to you lately by the hand of Simon
James, a young man from Pembrokeshire, member, and of late, a preacher
in the church of Blaenywain, where your worthy cousin, David Robert, is
deacon."
Pending better knowledge of the time and place, it seems unlikely that
"young" would refer to anyone over 30, and equally unlikely that anyone under
20 would
have been a preacher. So we can guess that he was born around 1770. The letter's
turn of phrase suggests that Simon served as Richard's amanuensis. (1)
The exact identity of the church mentioned in this letter remains unclear. There
are two candidates so far. "Blaenywaun," a Baptist church and village in St.
Dogmaels, in Pembrokeshire near Cardiff, is on the coast. (2) A place called
"Blaenwaun" is found on the Carmarthenshire border with Pembrokeshire in the
parish of Eglwys Fair a Churig (or is it Llanwinio?), Derllys hundred. It is just one
parish away from the parish of Meidrim, home ground of emigration leader
Theophilus Rees. (3)
No later than 1794, Simon met Elizabeth (last name unknown), born in the
same part of the world 20 January 1772. Their marriage record has not surfaced,
but their oldest and longest-lived child, Phebe, was born in Wales 16 August 1795.
(4)
Phebe lived to the age of 93, but she had no memories of Wales. In the spring
of 1796, she and her parents embarked for the New World with a party of friends
and neighbors on the ship Amphion. (5) The emigrant party was led by Thomas
Philipps and Theophilus Rees, wealthy men who paid for many others' passage.
Why did they go? Some accounts emphasize that the French Revolution and
ensuing wars had bred political and religious repression in England. Philipps had
sons who were political refugees in the U.S. already. Other accounts add that
inflation sparked by the wars encouraged large landowners to squeeze out their
tenants ("enclosure"). In addition, many Welsh people were apparently drawn to the
New World by the story that Prince Madog, son of Owain Gwynedd, had come to
America in 1170 and that a tribe of Welsh-speaking Indians, the Madogwys, still
lived in the heart of North American continent. (6)
*
The Amphion touched at New York and Philadelphia. Its Welsh passengers
first resided in Philadelphia and nearby Chester County. That fall some of them
moved to the western Pennsylvania town of Beulah, then in Somerset County (now
Cambria County). Rev. Morgan J. Rhys had purchased 20,000 acres there to resell
to his Welsh brethren. A second party, including Simon James and family, came to
Beulah in the spring or summer of 1797. (7) During their seven-year stay there,
Simon and Elizabeth had at least two more children, Daniel and Mary. (8) Simon
became a citizen of the United States in Somerset County on 6 September 1802.
(9)
Simon James evidently did some preaching in Pennsylvania and was active in
trying to sell land and encourage settlement at Beulah. The land may have been too
rough and road access too difficult. For whatever reason, the settlement at Beulah
seems to have floundered and eventually dissolved in dissension. This dissolution
must have been a heavy personal and financial blow to the Jameses, but we cannot
know for sure.
In 1801, Rees, Philipps, and four other members of the Amphion party
negotiated to buy 3196.8 acres -- the entire northeast quarter of township 2, Range
13 in the Ohio country "U.S. military lands" (then Fairfield County, now Licking
County) -- from Samson Davis of Philadelphia, provided that the land looked as
good as it sounded.
A party of three -- Chaplain Jones, Morgan Rees, and Simon James -- was
deputized that August to travel west and look it over. According to William Harvey
Jones, they returned and delivered a favorable report by 4 September 1801, when
the deed was signed. Smucker says merely that the purchase took place "in 1801 or
earlier." (10)
The following year, Theophilus Rees, David Lewis, David Thomas ("big Davy
Thomas") and their families moved to the Welsh Hills. Once more, Simon James
went along -- this time to "build a cabin on the Phillips [sic] tract, and clear some
land, and then to return to Cambria which he did." Not until the fall of 1804 did he
make a third and presumably final journey from Beulah to bring his own family to
the new settlement in Ohio. (11)
According to William Harvey Jones, the James family first built a cabin in the
summer of 1804 "near the present [1905] location of the Evan Davis house, most
likely at the spring on the farm now owned by D.E. Williams, just north of the
school house." This was the first settlement in the "Pugh tract," 400 acres in
Granville Township. In later years they lived in a cabin on the Philipps tract, near
the east boundary of the Henry Williams farm, north of the road. "Later still,
Simon James moved to the Brushy Fork valley (Dry Creek), west of the William
Griffith homestead." Simon's Run in the north part of the county is said to derive
its name from his discovery of coal in its banks. (12) Aside from the family story
told below, there is no evidence that he ever lived in the town of Granville itself.
In Licking County Simon and Elizabeth had at least two more children -- one,
possibly Elve, died in infancy and was the first burial in the Philipps Cemetery in
the Welsh Hills. The other, Hannah, probably their youngest, was born in 1809.
(13)
In September 1808 the Welsh community organized the Welsh Hills Baptist
Church. The name of Elizabeth James appears on a monument in the Welsh Hills
Cemetery commemorating the nine founding members, but it is not at all clear that
she was one in fact. William Harvey Jones gives the name Elizabeth Thomas
instead. Smucker gives the name Elizabeth Jones instead. Strangely, there is no
record that Simon James was involved in the church's founding, or indeed that he
was ever a member. (14)
He was definitely around. On 6 February 1808 Theophilus Rees gave land for a
graveyard, "and on said day Rees, son of David Thomas, was buried therein, which
was the first interment. David Lewis, and Simon James, dug the grave." (15) In
April 2001 Robin and I were unable to locate this stone in the Welsh Hills
Cemetery.
Simon James paid taxes in Licking County in 1809, 1810, 1814, and 1816.
(16) On 15 August 1812, he mortgaged 380 acres in Range 12, Township 2,
Section 1 of Licking County to a David Roberts of New York City for $380 -- a
mysterious transaction, since the area had only a barter economy, and remained so
for a generation to come. (17) It's hard to see how he could have redeemed the
property by repaying the money plus "lawful interest" by 1 May 1814. He did pay
taxes in 1814 on 75 acres in Range 13, Township 2, Section 1 in Licking County.
*
Somewhere around this time occurred the event for which Simon James is
most vividly remembered, as recounted by his granddaughter Hannah Caroline
Thrall Campbell in a letter probably written in the early 1900s. She heard it from
her mother Hannah James Thrall:
"I just recall one [incident] that mother [i.e., Hannah] used to tell me and laugh
over. At one time the little town was terribly rent and torn by a so-called *ghost*
that appeared frequently in some most ghostly attire scaring the women and
children nearly to death. One night he knocked at grandfather's home and one of the
children opened the door and ran back giving a terrible scream, but her father
happened to be there and he jumped and caught the fellow, threw him on the floor
and began pounding him with all his strength.
"The ghost got scared and yelled for mercy but grandfather, without speaking a
word, just kept pounding away till at last the ghost cried out, 'Who in hell has got
me anyway?' Then grandfather spoke. 'Simon James has you. No, you are not in
hell yet but soon will be for if you are a man I'll kill you and if you are the devil I'll
keep whacking away.' At last he told the ghost that if he would throw off his rig,
show his face, tell his name and promise to quit the dirty business he would let up
on him but just as sure as any more of this was heard of the officers should have
him right away. When he threw off his mask grandad knew him at once as a man
living just out on the edge of town. That ended the Granville ghost." (18)
Simon James appears as a head of household in the fourth census of the United
States in 1820. (19) Soon afterwards, the family's older children began marrying
and leaving home (20):
* Phebe, 16 August 1795 - 16 August 1888, married Owen Owens, a Baptist
preacher, on 1 March 1821. No known children. In later years they lived in
Harmony Township, Morrow County, and Owen preached a big revival at the
Chester Baptist Church.
* Rachel, perhaps born around 1798, married Rufus Blackmer or Blackmore on
27 July 1821. Possibly some children. This family has so far proved impossible to
trace.
* Daniel, 1802 - 18 October 1876, married Mary ____ not much before 1835.
Seven known children; on existing evidence Daniel may have had two wives named
Mary. He was a shinglemaker and the family was quite poor. He was known as "the
philosopher of the Welsh Hills" for his cheerful and learned indifference to that
poverty.
* Mary, 4 July 1804 - April 1893, married Henry Aye on 8 July 1824.
Fourteen known children. Her grandson Henry Curtis Aye listed her library and
described her as "an exceptionally well educated woman, largely, almost wholly
self-educated, doubtless with a good substantial background in her Welsh, Baptist
preacher father. No one in the community [Vermillion County, Indiana] was in any
sense her equal, and none even approached her in knowledge of the Bible. Very few
ministers of that age could teach her anything about religion or the Bible text." (21)
* Elve, nothing known.
* Hannah, 11 April 1809 - 27 March 1875, married Worthy Thrall 15
November 1832. Seven known children. Worthy died young, and Hannah's
children remembered falling asleep to the sound of her loom as she worked to
support them. She saw her youngest, Leonidas, through McKendree College and
into the beginning of a distinguished career as a Methodist minister in southern
Illinois. (22)
It is possible that Simon and Elizabeth had additional children. But from the
above list it is clear that the Jameses were not an insular family, as three of their
daughters chose non-Welsh spouses.
Simon's name does not appear on the county tax rolls in 1826, nor can he be
found in the index to the census of 1830. Hence he probably died between 1820
and 1826, but there is no known gravestone or other definite evidence.
*
Where and how his widow Elizabeth and young daughter Hannah lived after his
death has not been found, but they did attend Sunday School at Granville's
Methodist Church between 1831 and 1833, where Hannah met her future husband.
(23) Rosalie Thrall Carmichael, a great-grandchild of Hannah and Worthy whose
Thrall genealogy was an indispensable starting point for this research, says, "It is
written that Hannah taught her mother to read and write English," but doesn't say
where.
Some time after Hannah's marriage Elizabeth apparently remarried, to a man
named Eaton or Eton, possibly Joseph, and lived to bury him as well. In 1850 she
was living with her son Daniel's family in McKean Township, Licking County. (24)
In 1860 we suspect that she was living at daughter Phebe's house, but have yet to
confirm this.
Caroline Thrall Campbell recalled, "After she was 90 years old she was living
with one of her daughters and one Sunday morning announced that she was going to
the old country church [omitted words -- where she had attended?] during her first
husband's life. Her son-in-law said he would take her in the carriage but no she just
wanted to walk the old country road to church again a distance of about or near 2
miles, I think, and would take dinner with a relative who lived near there and come
home in the evening. So she went but the family was not there that she expected to
visit so she staid for church and walked back to town making the four mile walk
before dinner. Shows how well she held her strength at 90.
"Also about the same year she pieced a block of patchwork and sent one to each
of her granddaughters as a starter for a quilt -- pieced it without glasses as she had
received her second eyesight several years before." Some of this story is
consistent with Elizabeth's living at the Owens residence and walking to Chester
Baptist Church, but not all of it. Did any of the granddaughters use, or otherwise
preserve, their quilt starters? (25)
Elizabeth Eton -- as her gravestone reads -- died 23 December 1861, aged 89
years, 11 months, and 3 days. She is buried alongside her children Phebe and
Daniel and grandson Origen (?, Daniel and Mary's son) in the graveyard behind the
Chester Baptist Church. (26) The quiet rural site is two miles south of
Chesterville, in Morrow County, Ohio, north of Columbus. Their stones are at the
north (church) end of a row toward the west side of the cemetery, at a rise in the
ground near a sugar maple tree. (27)
Elizabeth's stone is moss-covered and barely legible. It leans slightly to the
east. Unlike most of the stones in the cemetery, it faces east. Just above ground
level is a fast-fading inscription. It reads, "Heaven is my home."
Notes
1. I have not seen the original of this letter. It's quoted in an April 1996 article
by Jill Carter Knuth entitled "Theophilus Thomas Rees and the Rev. Theophilus
Rees," available on line at http://www.westwales.co.uk/dfhs/members/trees.htm. So
far we have no other records of Simon James from Wales.
2. http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/PEM/Gazetteer.html#B
3. http://www.brawdybooks.com/dyfedplaces3.htm
4. Clippings from "The Cambrian" magazine in the scrapbook of William
Harvey Jones, Denison University archives, Granville, Ohio, include an account of
Phebe James Owens' 90th birthday, and a brief obituary after her death on her 93rd
birthday.
5. Many sources give 1795 as the date of this emigration, but since Phebe
James was on board and since her birth date is established as 16 August 1795, I
favor the 1796 date. No one has yet located a passenger list or other contemporary
data about the Amphion.
6. Most of our knowledge of this migration comes from two sources: Isaac
Smucker's 1869 essay "History of the Welsh Settlements in Licking County, Ohio .
. . read at the Licking County Pioneer Meeting, April 7th, 1869," a pamphlet
published in Newark, Ohio, and available at the Newberry Library in Chicago (F
8925.5) and at the public library in Granville. Equally valuable is William Harvey
Jones's booklet "The Welsh Hills: The Story of a Pioneer Community." I think
we'll learn a good deal more from Gwyn Williams' 1980 book *The Search for
Beulah Land: The Welsh and the Atlantic Revolution,* also at the Newberry
Library and which I have ordered. For general Welsh history, *A History of
Wales* by John Davies.
7. W.H. Egle, *History of Pennsylvania,* p. 470, cited by Jones in his
appendix, p. 3.
8. Secondary sources give Mary's birthplace as Philadelphia, but this seems
implausible.
9. William L. Iscrupe, "Naturalization Records 1802-1854, Somerset Co.,
PA," p. 7. Published 1979, SW PA Genealogical Services, Laughlintown, PA.
10. Smucker, p. 4. Jones, pp. 4, 10.
11. Smucker, pp. 4, 5. Jones, p. 10.
12. Jones, pp. 27-28.
13. Rosalie Thrall Carmichael, "Thrall Genealogy" typescript, pp. 4-6. This
text is on line at http://people.netscape.com/rickh/.
14. Smucker, p. 14. Jones, pp. 31-32.
15. Smucker, p. 14.
16. 1809 -- OH Early Census Index ID# OHS1a1763908 and OHS1a1763912.
1810 -- OH 1810 Washington Co. Census Index ID# OHS1a1763909 and
OHS1a1763911. 1814 -- p. 19.
17. Licking County Recorder's Office, Volume E, Deeds, p. 17.
18. Thrall, p. 5.
19. 1820 U.S. Census Index, p. 8, OHS2a658269.
20. Licking County, Ohio Marriages, Transcribed Book, 1808-1875, copied by
Polly Barcus and Mildred Francis, Licking Co. Genealogical Society, Newark
Public Library, Newark, OH. Original list of children from Thrall, p. 5.
21. Detailed information on the descendants of Mary James and Henry Aye is
at http://www.jacksonville.net/~mccumber/. Quote from William Curtis Aye,
"Sidelights on the Family of Henry and Mary Aye."
22. More information on the descendants of Hannah James and Worthy Thrall:
http://people.netscape.com/rickh/,
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~robinsgenealogypage/, and
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/h/e/n/Harold-
Henderson/index.html?Welcome=998169069.
23. Church records viewed in person by Robin and Harold Henderson 12 April
2001, courtesy of Sandy and Ken Nihiser, First Methodist Church, Granville, OH.
The records are fragile originals which have not been copied or transcribed.
24. U.S. 1850 Census.
25. Thrall, pp. 5-6.
26. Cemetery viewed in person 31 July 2001 by Sandy and Harold Henderson,
thanks to the Morrow County Genealogical Society's books of tombstone
inscriptions.