James Weir, lawyer, author and banker and pre-eminently one of the first citizens of Owensboro, is a son of James and Anna (Rumsey) Weir, and was born in Greenville, Kentucky, June 16, 1821.
His father, James Weir, was of Scotch-Irish parentage and was born near Charleston, South Carolina. He came to Kentucky about the close of the last century, or one hundred years ago.
He was a man of excellent education, and was employed as a surveyor or civil engineer for some time, but eventually engaged quite extensively in mercantile pursuits, his business extending over a vast territory. He owned stores in Shawneetown and Equality in Illinois, Henderson, Morganfield, Madisonville, Greenville, Lewisburg, Hopkinsville and Russellville in Kentucky, and Gallatin, Tennessee. He had a very large and profitable trade with the Spaniards in New Orleans and in Cuba, and this at a time when all freight between New Orleans and Kentucky was carried on flatboats. Mr. Weir’s business, being scattered over so much territory, required him to travel extensively, as an instance of which he often told his son that he had made the journey from New Orleans to Philadelphia and return on horseback not less than twenty-five times, with no other companion but Titus, his faithful old negro servant. He was eminently successful in his many business ventures and left a valuable estate.
James Weir’s paternal grandfather was a resident of Charleston, South Carolina, and a soldier in the Revolutionary war, serving from the beginning to the end of the war under General Sumter. The only compensation he received for his faithful and patriotic service was a little negro girl who had been confiscated from the estate of a Tory. His son David, also a soldier, was killed at Sumter’s defeat.
Anna Rumsey Weir (mother) was a lineal descendant of Charles Rumsey, who came to the United States from Wales in 1665 and settled in Maryland. Her uncle, James Rumsey, was the inventor of the application of steam to boats and other vessels, whose son, James, upon proof that his father had run the first vessel by steam in the United States, received a gold medal from Congress as an appreciation of his father’s valuable invention. The inventor, James Rumsey, dropped dead while delivering a lecture before the Philosophical Society in London.
James Weir received a collegiate education in Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, from which he graduated in the class of 1840. Very few, if any, of his classmates are now as actively engaged in business as is Mr. Weir. He studied law at the Lexington law school when Judges Robinson, Wooley and Marshall were professors in that grand old institution, and graduated in the winter of 1841. In the following year he began the practice of his profession in Owensboro, where he was a leading member of the bar for over forty years. At the time of his coming Owensboro was a village of two hundred and fifty inhabitants. In 1860 he was made president of the Deposit Bank of Owensboro, which position he has held for thirty-five years. In 1869 he was elected president of the Owensboro & Nashville Railroad Company, and held that position for three years.
When the reporters entered the city of Owensboro to obtain information for the compiling of this volume, they called on a number of the best citizens and asked for a list of the prominent men in the city, and every one of the lists thus given was headed with the name of James Weir. It is hardly necessary to add that among his fellow citizens he stands pre-eminently as the first citizen of Owensboro. A lawyer of the highest rank, a banker whose judgment and ability are recognized in financial and business circles, and a citizen of great purity of character, he is known of all men as a man of generous nature, kindliness of spirit, and of the highest scholarly attainments. Dignified and withal courteous and obliging, unostentatious in his bearing and unconscious of his superiority, he is greatly loved and respected by everyone in the large circle of his acquaintance.
He is, moreover, a man of letters and an author of celebrity, although he has not recently aspired to literary fame. In 1850 he wrote “Lonz Powers,” and in 1852-53 “Simon Kenton” and “Winter Lodge,” which novels were published by Lippincott of Philadelphia, and gave promise of a brilliant future, but since that time he has been too much engrossed in his profession and other business matters to devote much time to literature, and his work in that direction has been limited to an occasional sketch for the newspapers and magazines.
He has never posed as an active politician, having never sought or held any political office. He was a Whig in his younger days, and has voted with the Democratic party since the war.
Mr. Weir was married March 1, 1842, to Susan C. Green, daughter of Judge John Green of Danville, Kentucky. Her maternal great-grandfather was Joshua Fry, who was a commander of the Virginia troops under General Braddock in his unfortunate campaign, and was taken sick and died before the battle. Joshua Fry, her grandfather, the son of General Joshua Fry, married Peachey Walker, a member of a distinguished Virginia family.
Mr. and Mrs. Weir have six children, three sons and three daughters: John E. Weir; Dr. James Weir; Paul Weir; Anna Belle, wife of Clinton Griffith; Susan, wife of James L. Maxwell, now residing in Knoxville, Tennessee; and Nora, wife of R. S. Triplett, Jr., now a resident of Waco,
The stories referred to were written before Mr. Weir was thirty years of age. They were published in book form and supplied to the trade by the Philadelphia house of Lippincott, Gambo & Co. The first of these (1850) was “Lonz Powers, or the Regulators”; ‘a romance of Kentucky, based on actual scenes and incidents of the early days of the “Dark and Bloody Ground.”
The second novel, “Simon Kenton,” was designed to give a sketch of the habits and striking characteristics of the people of Western North Carolina, immediately following the Revolutionary times, and to introduce Simon Kenton, the scout and Indian fighter, and also his opponent and enemy, Simon Girty, the Tory and renegade. In this volume the character which Kenton represented came off victorious.
“Winter Lodge” is a sequel to “Simon Kenton,” in which the author introduces many of the most striking characters who were prominent in the early history of Kentucky, with numerous incidents of the times, descriptions of scenery. Mammoth cave ; the battles in which Kenton and Girty were engaged and the habits and marked characteristics of the pioneers. The name “Winter
Lodge”, is derived from a cabin erected by Kenton, for the hero and heroine, which was ornamented with carpets of buffalo hides and lined with furs. Mr. Weir intended in his younger days to write a third volume of this series, coming down to the War of 1812 and the death of Kenton and Girty, but his increasing business prevented him from accomplishing this, and his literary work of late years has been undertaken as a pastime and recreation rather than a matter of business.
Source: Biographical Cyclopedia of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. John M. Gresham Company, Chicago, Philadelphia, 1896.