Several Sims families, believed to be related to Pariss Sims and his brothers, came to America from North Ireland about the same time. Some came earlier. Some came direct from England and Scotland. As stated in Chapter One, there were more than a hundred Sims families in Virginia, North and South Carolina when the first census of the United States was taken in 1790 -- Tennessee was a part of North Carolina at the time.

Knowing that Pariss Sims and his brothers were of Scotch-Irish ancestry, we have made every effort to confine this history to their family lines and those of Sims families believed to be related to them, as stated in the Foreword.

In our search, we found a number of Sims families which appeared to be related to Pariss Sims and his brothers, prior to their settlement in America. They followed the same general pattern in their movements and settlements and there are many threads of evidence of kinship, as will be noted in the family sketches that follow.

James Sims (I), born in North Ireland about 1750, died in Blount County, Tenn., in 1849 in his 99th year. He was a sergeant in the Battle of King's Mountain during the American Revolution and it is said that a cannon ball passed so close under his chin, searing the skin to the extent that no hair would grow on it thereafter.

It is believed that his father was a brother or an uncle of the father of Pariss Sims and his brothers. The James Sims (I) family lived in the Nail's Creek area of Blount County and had a son, James (II), who was 12 years old when the family came to America. Other children of whom we have a record were John, Joseph Vance, William G., Margaret and Sarah.

James Sims (II) had a large family, including four sons, James (III), William J., Samuel and Alexander.

James Sims (III) married Dolly Mitchell, May 18, 1857, and it is said the family lived for a time in the old log school house where Sam Houston taught school as a young man; before becoming Governor of Tennessee and his departure for Texas. The old school house is now an historical shrine, maintained by Blount County and the State of Tennessee. James Sims (III) had a son, Joseph Frank Sims, who went to Arkansas and was a member of the State Legislature. Another son was Houston Sims.

William J. Sims, son of James (II) and brother of James (III) was a Baptist minister. He married a Mitchell, sister of the wife of James (III), and went to Missouri where they had a son, Frank Mitchell Sims.

William G. Sims, son of James (I) was born in Blount County, Feb. 10, 1795. He married May Cusick Sept. 21, 1819 and had 12 children. He was a calvaryman in the War of 1812; was married twice, his second wife being Elizabeth Dailey Gaddis. He died about 1876 in Indiana, where some of his children had settled.

John Sims, another son of James (I), married Sally McMurry, Feb. 25, 1816, and his father lived with them in his last days. Margaret, a sister of John, married Thomas Hooper, Sept. 4, 1827. Sarah, another sister, married a Hood and lived at Rockford in Blount County.

Sarah Sims, a daughter of James (II), married James H. Kennedy, Feb. 7, 1856, and one of her sisters, Hattie Sims, married Philander Clemens. Another sister, Sallie, married Anthony Davis.

Descendants of this branch of the family now live in several East Tennessee counties.

Littlepage Sims (I), Indian fighter with John Sevier, his brother-in-law and the first Governor of Tennessee, helped to organize Blount County and was the first sheriff of the county. He was also tax collector, an office he had previously held in Hawkins County. There is some indication that he was a relative, perhaps a son or grandson of one of the brothers of Pariss Sims. He and John Hackett arranged with Talootiske, of the Cherokee, for the lines of the Indian Reservation and the boundaries of Rockwood, Tenn., in the early 1800s, as shown on a State historical marker (on old Highway 70) in Rockwood, at the site of an ancient oak tree which was destroyed in a storm in 1925.

He married Mary Sherrill, daughter of Samuel Sherrill, Dec. 24, 1809. She was a sister of Bonny Kate, the second wife of Gov. John Sevier. It is said John Sevier, his wife and daughter, Betsy, visited the Littlepage Sims family in Rhea County, Tenn., July 11, 1812.

Littlepage later moved to Perry County, Ala., where he was living in 1822. He had a daughter, Margaret Rebecca Sims, who married Nathan Horn in 1822. They had a son, Littlepage Calloway Horn who was the great grandfather of Mrs. Jessie Horn Rau of Arlington, Texas, with whom I had correspondence in regard to Sims history in 1958. Littlepage Sims (II), a son, lived in Madison County, Miss., and he and his wife, Polly, had a large family that married into the Bradley and Greene families of that area.

Alma Sims, a County Extension Home Demonstration Agent, Decatur, Texas, advised me in 1927 that her grandfather, John L. Sims, had said there had been a Page (Littlepage) Sims in their family as far back as he knew. His father was James (Jim) Sims who was born in Tennessee; believed to be a son of Littlepage Sims (I). His uncles were Page, Richard and John Sims and his brothers were Page and Lewis Sims. His son was Marion J. Sims, the father of Alma Sims, who said it was a tradition in their family that their ancestors came from North Ireland.

Dr. James Marion Sims, famous American surgeon, born in Lancester County, S. C., Jan. 25, 1813, is believed to have been a descendant of an uncle of Pariss Sims and his brothers. Sherrod Sims (I), the great grandfather of Dr. Sims, was born in Virginia in 1730; was a soldier in the colonial army, at the defeat of Braddock's army in 1755; also a soldier in the Revolutionary War. After the war Sherrod moved his family from Virginia to Beaver Creek in the Southern part of Lancester County, South Carolina, where he died in 1825 at the age of 95. He had a son Sherrod (II), father of John Sims, the father of Dr. James Marion Sims.

John Sims, the father of Dr. Sims, born in South Carolina, Dec. 27, 1790, was left an orphan early in life, and was raised by his grandfather. He married Mahala Mackey, April 19, 1812. He was a soldier in the War of 1812 and was sheriff of Lancester County, 1830 to 1834. He was a noted marksman, a great fox hunter, land surveyor, a Methodist and a Mason; master of his lodge. In 1838 he moved his family to Mississippi where he was unsuccessful at farming. In 1853 he moved to Walker County, Texas, where he died at the home of a daughter, Mrs. John C. Abercrombie, in July 1867. The John Sims Masonic Lodge at Waverly, Texas, is named for him.

Dr. Sims graduated at South Carolina College in 1832, and, at the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa., with top honors, in 1835. He began practice in Lancester County, moved to Alabama and established a hospital in Montgomery in 1848. He gained international fame by his discovery of ways to make child birth easier. In 1853 he moved to New York City where he was instrumental in establishing a Woman's Hospital, the first of its kind in this country. He also operated a medical college which was attended by Dr. James It. Sims, a great grandson of Pariss Sims. Dr. James, according to a son, George, now 90, visited in the home of Dr. James Marion and discussed their kinship; decided they were distant cousins. See Chapter Fifteen.

Dr. Philander Davis Sims, a leading physician in Chattanooga, Tenn., 1856-1903, and a great grandson of Abraham Sims, one of the seven brothers from Ireland, said in a letter in 1903-Chapter Eighteen, The Abraham Sims Family.

"As to Dr. James Marion Sims, I was once at his home in New York City and we tried to name our lines to a common origin. The nearest we could come was that two or three generations back his family moved from Virginia to South Carolina and mine from Virginia to Tennessee."

Other records indicate that they were distant cousins. Dr. James Marion Sims lived in Europe most of the time from 1861 to 1868. While on a visit to Paris in 1870 he organized an Anglo-American Ambulance Corps and accompanied it to the Sedan for service in the Franco-Prussian war. His renown had spread all over Europe and while living there, the Empress Eugenie fell ill and Napoleon III sent for him to treat her.

In 1876 he was elected president of the American Medical Association. In 1883, just before he was to board a ship for another trip to Europe, he was called to perform an operation on the wife of one of America's leading citizens. Returning from her bedside on a rainy night he was taken ill with a chill and died the following day.

Besides his revolutionary discoveries in gynecology, he made many other contributions to the science of medicine and surgery. In 1894 a life size statue of him, made possible by public subscription, was unveiled in Bryant Park in New York City; the first American physician to be thus honored.

He wrote a book, "The Story of My Life," edited by his son, Harry Marion Sims, published in 1884, from which comes most of the above information.

Dr. Swepson Sims, born in Virginia, May 16, 1775; died in Rutherford County, Tenn., Sept. 22, 1850. He emigrated from Virginia to Tennessee and was one of the first doctors in Rutherford County. He was a son of Leonard Henley Sims who was born in Virginia in the 1740s; married Sarah Swepson, March 12, 1770. Leonard Henley is believed to have been a son of John Sims, an uncle of Pariss Sims and his brothers.

Richard Swepson Sims, born in Virginia in 1820, was a great grandson of Abraham Sims, one of the brothers of Pariss Sims. His father was George Washington Sims, born in Virginia in 1797; lived in Warren County, Tenn., for a time; died in Arkansas in 1889. His grandfather was Robert Sims, son of Abraham, who died in Bedford County, Tenn., about 1830. See Chapter Eighteen. Dr. Robert Swepson Sims of Arkansas, born in 1837, son of Richard, had sons, Dr. Robert Swepson Sims, Jr., and Leonard Sims.

Zachariah Sims, born in Virginia in 1775, had a daughter, Amanda Swenson Sims, born March 11, 1819. Zachariah was a son of Elisha Sims, a brother of Leonard Henley Sims, the father of Dr. Swepson Sims of Rutherford County. Thus, we have a connecting link through the Swepson name in four branches of the family.

Dr. Swepson Sims and his wife, Jane M. Sims, had three sons, Robert L. Sims, Dr. Thomas Sims, and Leonard Swepson Sims - probably other children of whom we have no record.

Robert L. Sims, born Aug. 26, 1810, died Feb. 28, 1856; buried in the Swepson Sims cemetery in Rutherford County--have no record of his family.

Dr. Thomas Sims, born Feb. 22, 1813, died Jan. 3, 1867. He and his wife, May, had the following children: Leonard Sims, born Jan. 15, 1838, died Oct. 20, 1856; Sarah Jane Sims; Molly Sims (Reid), born April 29, 1844, died June 25, 1886; Jennie Sims (Bass), born March 25, 1851, died April 28, 1914; and Thomas Hilery Sims, born Jan. 8, 1856, died Oct. 9, 1939; married Lucy Snell, Nov. 8, 1888 and had a son:

Clinton B. Sims, Nashville, Tenn.; married Sadie Polk Ballard and had daughter:

Evelyn Sims, born Feb. 24, 1918. She married Thomas O'Lee, Aug. 31, 1940. She is manager and buyer for a Woman's Shop in Nashville.

Leonard Swepson Sims (I), third son of Dr. Swepson Sims, was born in 1817; died in 1905. He married Martha Harrison and was a farmer in Cheatham County, Tenn. They had a son:

Leonard Swepson Sims (II), born in 1860; died in 1909. He married Tommie Ella Bowman. He was a coal dealer in Nashville. Children: Nellie Hyde Sims (Morris); Frank Goodman Sims, William Austin Sims; Louise Sims (Langham) deceased; and Leonard Swepson Sims (III), manager of the Bennie Dillon Building, Nashville. He married Annie Cheatham, June 20, 1917. Children:

Leonard Swepson Sims (IV), horn March 2, 1918, died Aug. 25, 1961. He was married and was connected with the Guaranty Mortgage Company, Nashville, at the time of his death.

William Flardin Sims, horn Aug. 24, 1922.

Dorothy Sims (Blount), born Dec. 7, 1925.

Betsy Sims (Hendrick), born Aug. 1, 1938. She is an English teacher in the East Nashville High School.

William Gilmore Simms (II), noted journalist, fiction writer, historian and poet. 1806-1870, was born in Charleston, S. C., April 17, 1806. His father, William Gilmore Simms (I), came to America from North Ireland with three brothers, Matthew, Eli and James, shortly after the American Revolution. William (I) is believed to have been a cousin of Pariss Sims and his brothers; his grandfather being a brother of their father.

Matthew and Eli Simms, brothers of William (I), settled in Tennessee, in Maury and White counties. James, the other brother settled in Lancaster County, S. C., where the family of Dr. James Marion Sims, previously mentioned, lived.

An early history of White County, Tenn., says Eli Sims married a Townsend, daughter of Bob Townsend who lived with them, and built the first brick house in the county, fastening the shingles on the roof with hickory pegs. This two-story home still stands as a landmark on the South side of Federal Highway 70, a few miles Southwest of Sparta.

Andrew Jefferson (A. J.) Sims, County Court Clerk of White County and a great grandson of Eli Sims, told me in 1929 that his great grandfather came from Ireland to America with three brothers, landing at Wilmington, N. C. He said Eli Sims and a brother, Matthew, came to Tennessee, Eli settling in White County where he married a Townsend and built the old homeplace, mentioned above. Matthew settled in Mauty County.

Andrew Jefferson Sims had brothers, John and Mark. John was a member of the Board of Commissioners of White County in the 1920s and Mark was an auditor for the State. I once discussed family history with him and we were both of the opinion that we were distantly related.

Bennett T. Simms, chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, 1938-1957, and his brother, John A. Simms, superintendent of the Dairy Experiment Station at Lewisburg, Tenn., are members of this branch of the family. I discussed kinship with John on various occasions and in 1939 he wrote me that his father, John Thomas Simms and William Gilmore Simms (II), had traced their lines to a common ancestor about three generations back.

John Thomas Simms, born in Sumter County, Ala., in 1856, was a son of William Thomas Simms who was born at Tarboro, Edgecombe County, N. C. in 1806, moving to Alabama in 1829. The father of William Thomas Simms was William Simms, believed to have been a brother of the father of William Gilmore Simms (I), both born in North Ireland.

John A. Simms told me that it was a tradition in his family that they were related to a family of six or seven brothers who had come to America before the Revolutionary War, settling in Virginia and North Carolina. He said his father, John Thomas Simms, knew of the Sims families in the Tombigbee River area of North Alabama and Mississippi and said he believed them to be third or fourth cousins. Those Sims families were descendants of Pariss Sims of Giles County, Tenn., and Parish Sims who made Sims Settlement in Limestone County, Ala., in 1807. See Chapters 3, 16, 17 and 18.

Thetus W. Sims, U. S. Congressman, - Eighth Tennessee District, 1897-1921; great grandson of Pariss Sims--see Chapter Eleven.

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