Pariss (Parish) Henry Sims (Simms) the ancestor and founder of most of the Sims families in Middle Tennessee and several western states, was born in the vicinity of Belfast, Ireland, of Scotch Presbyterian parents, about 1750. His ancestors, according to the best information the writer has been able to secure, migrated from Southern Scotland, in Ulster Settlement of Northern Ireland., sponsored, by James I of England, 1607-11, and were no doubt a branch of the Bueth Sym clan or family of Yetholm Tower, Roxburgh County, Scotland referred to earlier in this history.
     Pariss, with two older brothers, Robcrt and Abraham, came to America shortly before the American Revolution with the wave of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians that poured into this country from around Belfast from 1725 to 1765. The three brothers settled first in Pennsylvania. On the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775 they became soldiers.
     Robert W. Sims of Crockett County, grandson of Pariss, born 1819 says in a lcttcr in 1903; "My grandfather, Parish (Pariss) Sims, served eight years in the Revolutionary War and was one of General Washington's "Life Guards" - (a member of his body guard company). He also related that he was with Washington at Valley Forge and at the Crossing of the Delaware. This same information is also contained in letters from E. C. Simms of Texas, a great-grandson, and others.
     The Robert W. Sims letter, written to Rev. Paris Marion Sims, son of Andrew F. Simms, an older brother of Neal Brown Simms of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., a grandson of Paris Lindsey Simms of Lawrence County (born 1817 - died 1877); a great-grandson of Abraham Simms of Sumner County, and a great, great-grandson of Pariss (Parish) Henry Sims (Simms) of North Carolina and Tennessee, now in the possession of the writer, roads as follows:

Gadsden, Tennessee
October 21, 1903

Rev. P. M. Sims
Lebanon, Tennessee

Dear Relative:

     Your most esteemed letter of the 19th instant received. I will try to give you the history of our family as far back as I have any knowledge of them.
     You are one of the decendants of one of the three brothers who settled North Carolina whose name Parish (Pariss) Sims, who also was my grandfather.
     He served eight years in the Revolutionary War and was one of General Washington's Life Guards. (Note: member of body guard company).
     He, (Parish) had six sons and three daughters. He emigrated from Stokes County, N. C., about the year 1816 or 1817 and settled in Giles County Tennessee on Lim (Lynn) Creek. (Note Giles County History gives the date as 1807).
     His sons were named as follows, my father (Robert) being the oldest: Robert, Martin, John, Matthew, Abraham and William. His daughters were named Sally, Patsy and Judith. Sally married Wm. Rutledge and went to Indiana in an early day. Patsy never married. Judith married Joseph Brownlow, brother of Ex-Governor Brownlow of Tennessee. (Note: Records indicate that this Joseph Brownlow was a son of Isaac Brownlow who was a brother of Joseph A. Brownlow, the father of Gov. W. G. "Parson" Brownlow).
     John and William both emigrated to Mississippi and settled upon the Tombigby River in an early day and raised large families of boys and girls.
     Abraham, who is your ( Paris Marion Simms) great grand-father, settled in Kentucky (This is incorrect - it was in Macon County, Tennessee., near the Kentucky Line) and raised a large family of boys and girls and in 1831 or 1832 (E. C. Simms, his grandson, says 1835) he was at work for the Government on the Muscle Shoals Canal on the Tennessee River in Alabama when lie lost his life by the caving in of dirt upon him.
     His family then moved to Giles County and settled on Big Creek. His oldest son ws named Parish L. Sims, (Simms). Another was Frank. I think one was named Marion (Francis Marion) and one Edwin or Edmond (Edmond is correct). I use to visit them when I was a boy. I knew nothing about where any. of that family now live. (Note: I have a complete record of this branch of the family which was compiled by Rev. Paris Marion Simms). Several years ago I heard my daughter Bell say she had visited some of our kin in Lawrence County and among them was Judge James Sims of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.
     My father Robert left North Carolina November 1, 1819. I was only four months old as I was born in Salem, N. C., July 8, 1819, which now makes me 84 years old. The number of father and mother's children were nine - four boys and five girls. Only three of us are now living - myself, brother Abraham Martin and sister Martha who now lives on Indian Creek in Wayne County, Tennessee. Their address is Sims Post Office, Wayne County, Tenn. Brother has a son Robert M. Sims who is a lawyer.
     My brothers were Matthew, George W., who is the father of T. W. Sims, now a member of Congress for the Eight District of Tennessee and lives at Linden, Perry County, and Abraham Martin Sims who lives where I have before stated.
     I have now given you all I know about our family. I have no family. I only have three children living out of nine, one son and two daughters. Belle is one of them. I have buried three wives and six children. I have once been in good financial circumstances but now I have out-lived my money and have nothing on this earth. But feel like I have well founded hope of a rich inheritance awaiting me on the other World. I have tried to live a Christian for over sixty years. I professed religion in 1842 and joined the M.E. Church and I have tried to live so as not to disgrace the cause ever since.
     Now, my fraternal brother if I neverr meet you on earth I want to meet you in Heaven. Come to see me if you can. If not, write.

Yours very affectionately

Robert W. Sims

     That part of Stokes County., N. C., from which Pariss (Parish) migrated was formed into Forsythe County in 1848. Robert W. says he was born at Salem, which is now Winston Salem.
     Robert W. Sims says his grandfather Parish (Pariss) Sims emigrated to Giles County in 1816 or 1817. James McCullum says in his history of Giles County that Parish Sims, John and Wm. Rutledge, Jacob and Andrew Blythe and Joel Rutledge settled on the middle prong of Lynn (Linn) Crock in 1807 and grew corn in 1808. I am inclined to believe that McCallum is nearer right than Robert W. Sims in this connection for he was making a business of collecting data for history, while Robert W. was writing from memory and from what he had heard.
     It will also be noted that a Wm. Rutledge was one of those who settled with Pariss (Parish) Sims on Lynn Creek and that Sally Sims, one of his daughters married a Wm. Rutledge and went to Indiana.
     Robert W. also stated that Pariss (Parish) brothers, Robert and Abraham, settled with him in North Carolina following the American Revolution. A letter written by Edmond C. Simms to Rev. Paris Marion Sims, his nephew, in 1903, says one of them settled in Maryland and the other in Virginia. The E. C. Simms letter, the original of which is in the possession of the writer is as follows:

Mosheims, Texas
July 27, 1903

Rev. P. M. Simms,
Lebanon., Tenn.

Dear Sir:

     Yours of the 20th just received. I cannot give you much family history as I would like.
     My information is that the Simms' of America or the United States rather, emigrated from Ireland in the early settlement of the country. Three brothers came, one settling in Maryland, one in Virginia., and one in North Carolina. I suppose we are of the North Carolina family as my grandfather Simms (Abraham) emigrated from there in the early settlement of Tennessee.
     Your grandfather Simms (Paris Lindsey) was born in what was then Sumner but now Macon County, Tennessee (Macon was formed out of part of Sumner) on the 24th of January, 1817, not very far from where you live (Lebanon). Your great grandfather (Abraham Simms) was killed accidently at Muscle Shoals, Ala., about 1835.
     I don't know that my father (Paris L.) had but three brothers and 1 never saw but one of them. One died in boyhood. One, Francis Marion Simms, emigrated to Texas before I was born; settled at Clarksville, in Red River County in the north eastern part of the State. He practiced law there and raised afamily of girls, but I do not think he had any male descendants. He served through the war in the Confederate Army and died at Clarksville, Texas, some years ago. This was the man for whom you and your father were named. I do not know whether the name Marion dates back, as a family name or not, it may have or he may have been named for the noted South Carolina soldier of the Revolution (Francis Marion, greatest partisan leader of the Carolinas, called by the British the Swamp Fox); his grandfather Pariss (Parish) having been a soldier in that war.
     Edmond Simms for whom I am named was the other brother of my father, Pariss L. Simms. He was the father of Newt Sims and two older older sons who came to Texas in the Seventies but I think are now both dead. This uncle (Edmond) was killed in West Tennessee during the Civil War on the Federal side.
     The fact that part of the family spell their name with one M and some with two M's seems to just be a matter of choice. There are more Simms' here in Texas than anywhere I have been but have never met any of them that we could make out the relationship, though there is one family living about 15 miles from me that I think are related. I have never met the old man of the family. His father came from Tennessee. I think they are of the Bedford County family from their names. With best wishes for yourself and family, I remain as ever,

Your Uncle

E. C. Simms.

     E. C. (Edmond Clayborne) was an older brother of Neal Brown Simms of Lawrenceburg, and an uncle of N. B. Sims., Jr., now a lawyer at Lawrenceburg. He was a farmer. Ile moved from Lawrence County, Tennessee, to Texas in 1900 Rev. P. M. Simms had correspondence with him as late as 1933.
     It will be noted that E. C. Simms states that three brothers came to America from Ireland, one settling in Virginia, one in Maryland, and the other in North Carolina.
     Robert W. Sims states that one of the three was his grandfather Pariss (Parish) who settled in North Carolina. The other brothers were Robert and Abraham, who were older than Paris.
     Robert Simms first settled in Maryland, later moved to Ohio and finally to Indiana and established the family in those states.
     Abraham Simms settled in Virginia and there is evidence that Dr. James Marion Sims, noted Doctor of South Carolina previously mentioned, was his grandson.
     Pariss Henry Simms of Ireland, North Carolina and Tennessee settled at Salem, now Winston Salem, N. C., in what was then a part of Stokes County from which Forsythe County was formed.
     The first census of the United States which was taken in 1790 lists Pariss Sims (the way the name was spelled in the census records) as the head of a family of three females and two boys under 16, in Salisbury District, Stokes County, North Carolina. His was the only Sims family in Stokes County at that time and was listed as having no slaves. So far I have been unable to determine who he married, but there is some evidence that his wife was a Martin.
     At the same time, 1790, a total of 111 Sims families, about half of them slave owners, were listed as living in various counties in North and South Carolina and Virginia.
     Robert Sims, Pariss' oldest son of a family of nine children - six boys and three girls - was born in Stokes County, N. C., in May 1783. He married Frances Howard Merritt, an English orphan girl, in January 1613.
     In 1806 or 1807 Robert's father, Pariss, with his family migrated from North Carolina to Giles County, Tennessee, making the trip by ox cart from Winston-Salem, N. C. to forks of the Holston River, near Kingsport, Hawkins County, and floating down the Tennessee River on a flat boat.
     "An early history of Giles County" written by James McCullum, a prominent attorney of Pulaski, says on Page 16:
     "James Ford with a number of others, including James Williams, Parish Sims, Thos. Dodd, Simon Foy, and Thos. Kyle, with their families started from Hawkins County in East Tennessee in the Spring of 1807 with four boats. When the boats had ascended Elk River about opposite Simms Settlement, three of the boats with the Simms', Kyle and others went out to view the country, and concluded to stop there and settle what was long known as Simms' Settlement in Limestone County, near the Tennessee State line."
     On Page 32 of this same history of Giles County, McCullum says:
     "John and William Rutledge, Jacob and Andrew Blythe, Joel Rutledge and Parish Simms, settled on the middle prong of Lynn Creek in the fall of 1807 and raised corn in 1808." Evidently Parish (Pariss) decided to change location during the summer.
     McCullum also states that John Fry, John McCabe, John Angus, Jas. Wilsford, Jas. Brownlow and others settled on the Western prong of Lynn Creek in 1808-09. Both of these settlements were in the vicinity of OldLynnville, Waco and Campbellsville.
     Robert W. Sims says that his grand-father Pariss or Parish moved to Giles County and settled on Lynn Creek in 1806 or 1807; that his father, Robert who was born in 1783, married Frances Howard Merritt in North Carolina, January 1813 and left North Carolina for Giles County, November 1, 1819 when he Robert W. was four months old, he having been born at Salem, July 8, 1819, the third child of a family of four boys and five girls. Robert settled with his family in the Lynn Creek section of Giles County, not far from his father Pariss.
     Abraham Martin Sims of Wayne County, youngest son of Robert, brother of Robert W. and grandson of Pariss, says in a statement which I secured from him several years before his death, that both his grandfather and grandmother were buried in Giles County. They died around 1825-30.
     Robert W. Sims, lists his grandfather's (Pariss) children as follows:
     "His sons were as follows: My father (Robert) being the oldest Robert, Martin, John, Matthew, Abraham and William. His daughters were named Sally, Patsy and Judith."
     The 1790 census lists two boys under 16 and three females in the Pariss Sims family at that time. The women were no doubt the mother and two daughters. Therefore, I feel sure that the four children in the family at that time were Robert, Martin, Sally, and Patsy, all born between 1783, the date of Robert's birth and 1790 the date of the first census. Of course it is possible that one of the girls might have been older than Robert for Robert W. merely says his father was the oldest son.

     ROBERT SIMS born near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, May 1783; married Frances Howard Merritt, English orphan January 1813; left North Carolina, November 1, 1819 for Giles County, Tenn., settling in the vicinity of Lynnville; moved from Giles County to Wayne Sounty in 1834, settling on the John Lawson place on Bear Creek; having trouble with a neighbor over a dog getting in the milk in the spring house he sold out and moved to Hardin's Creek where he died in March 1842 and was buried in the Brown Graveyard, on a knoll on the east side of the Hutton Hollow, about a mile from Hardin's Creek and two miles from Philadelphia Baptist Church; after his death his widow, Frances Merritt Sims, moved to the Bud Scott farm on Indian Creek, thence to the J. D. Copeland place on the head of the creek where she died in November 1871, and is buried in the Sims graveyard on a hill on the Shields Sims farm, now John Sims farm on Fall Branch.
     MARTIN SIMS, born in North Carolina about 1784-5 settled in Bedford County, Tennessee at what is known as Sims Spring, 10 miles west of Shelbyville, where he died about 1875. Have record of only one child Martin (Mart) who sold out after his fathers death and moved to Texas. Two of his great-grand children, John and Melissa are now living (1940) at Whitewright, Texas with their grand-mother. Martin is mentioned by Robert W., E. C., N. B., and A. M. Sims in old letters. There is a story related by N. B. Sims, Sr., of Lawrence County and others that Martin rode a mule from Shelbyville to Lawrenceburg, a distance of about 60 miles when he was 88 years old. It is also said that he walked from Bedford County to visit relatives in Wayne County, over 100 miles, in his younger days.
     SALLY SIMS, born in North Carolina between 1784 and 1790, married William Rutledge, one of the settlers with Pariss Sims on the middle prong of Lynn Creek in Giles County, Tennessee, in 1807 - no date as to whether or not they married before coming to Tennnessee. Robert W. Sims simply says: "Sally married William Rutledge and went to Indiana in an early day." Robert, her uncle, first settled in Maryland, later moved to Ohio and thence to Indiana.
     PATSY SIMS, Born in North Carolina between 1784 and 1790, never married.
     ABRAHAM SIMS, born in North Carolina in 1791 or 1792, married Nancy Keene, date unknown; moved to Tennessee and settled near the Tennessee-Kentucky line in what was then a part of Sumner County, now Macon County; (their oldest son, Paris Lindsey, was born in Macon County, January 24, 1817) was killed in a cave-in of dirt while working on a Government Canal at Muscle Shoals, Ala., in 1835 (some say it was 1331-2 but I think the later date date is nearer correct) and his body was returned home for burial in Macon County, money being borrowed for the purpose and his oldest son Paris Lindsey went to Muscle Shoals and worked on the canal to raise the money to pay the debt. Following his death, his widow moved with her children to Giles County, settling on Big Creek. Paris Lindsey, the oldest son, later bought a hill farm on Anderson's Creek, which he sold in 1846 and moved to Missouri to return to Tennessee the same year and settle on Knob Creek, in Lawrence County in what has long been known as Simms Ridge Community.

     Paris Lindsey Simms of Lawrence County
     Francis Marion Simms who moved to Texas in an early day. He has several daughters, but no sons.
     Edmond Simms, father of Newt Sims of Texas and Wayne County, Tennessee, who was killed in West Tennessee during the Civil War. He had two other sons.

     Paris L. was married twice, first to Margaret Turnbo. His second wife was Margaret McGlamery. Most of the children married and raised families in Lawrence County. Some went West.

     Tom Lindsey Simms, Merchant, Lawrence Sounty.
     Herbert Simms, New Orleans, La.
     Neal Brown Simms, Jr. Atty. Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.
     Mamie Brown Simms.
     Dorothy Simms.
     Marjorie Simms.
     The above gives the connection between the Robert Sims of Wayne County and the Paris Lindsey Simms family of Lawrence County.
     As previously stated the writer has a rather complete record of this branch the family which was compiled by Rev. Paris Marion Sims, great grandson of Abraham Simms, brother of Robert of Wayne County and son of Pariss.

     JOHN SIMMS, fourth son of Pariss, and William a younger brother, migrated to Mississippi and settled on the Tombigby River in an early day and raised large families of boys and girls. Further research on their families is under way.
     MATTHEW SIMS - have no date on him, but think. he went to Alabama.
     WILLIAM SIMS, went to Mississippi with his brother John as explained above.
     JUDITH SIMS married Joseph Brownlow, brother of Ex-Governor Parson Brownlow of Tennessee, according to Robert. Sims, but I have not been able to verify this fully. I am of the opinion that the Joseph, Judith married was a son of Isaac Brownlow who was a brother of Joseph A. Brownlow, the father of W. G. "Parson" Brownlow, Governor of Tennessee 1865-1869.
     I find several references in old letters to the Brownlows as relatives. I found graves of Joseph Brownlow and Judith S. Brownlow -in an old cemetery with a stone wall in the east edge of Campbellsville, Giles County in 1938. The graves have sandstone markers with the following dates:
     Judith S. Brownlow, wife of Joseph Brownlow, born 1803, died 1855.
     Joseph Brownlow, born 1803, died 185__ - the last figure is broken off the stone.
     I have no doubt but what this is Judith Sims, daughter of Pariss Sims.

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