James Whitehill

1753-1835 · Inchinnan, Scotland

Born 1753, Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, Scotland

Died 1835

James Whitehill was born at Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, Scotland. The History of Ryegate gives the year as 1753; a county gazetteer of 1887 gives 1750. His family farmed at Rashielee in Inchinnan parish, on the Clyde west of Glasgow. The name appears in the parish annals across four centuries.

He married first Mary Mitchell. The Ryegate history dates the marriage to 1772, the gazetteer to 1769. They had four daughters, Elizabeth, Agnes, Mary and Christian, and one son, John, born in April 1786. Mary Mitchell died in Scotland. In 1792 James married Mary Caldwell. Their children James, Jean and Janet were born in Scotland in 1793, 1795 and 1797.

In 1795 John Holmes of Ryegate visited Scotland and recommended a tract in the northwest corner of the town to James and his brother Abraham. It was six hundred acres where Major James Witherspoon had begun a settlement in 1774. He was the son of John Witherspoon, the president of the college at Princeton who signed the Declaration of Independence. The Ryegate history says the major joined the army, became an aide with the rank of major, and fell at the battle of Germantown in 1777. Twenty years later the wilderness had taken back most of his clearing.

The brothers bought the tract through their attorney for four hundred pounds sterling. The deposition was sworn before James McDougall, Lord Provost of Glasgow, on 12 March 1798. That year the families crossed the Atlantic. Janet, the youngest, is recorded as having died of smallpox on the ocean. James took the three south lots and Abraham the three north ones. One building of Witherspoon's, or part of one, still stood hidden in the underwood when James arrived.

He built a log house, then about 1808 a stone house, which was still part of the Whitehill home on the tract in 1913. Two more sons were born in Ryegate: William in 1801 and Abram in 1805, and a daughter, Margaret.

James founded the Reformed Presbyterian church in Ryegate, the Covenanter church, and was its first elder until he died. He was a church member about sixty four years. A sketch by the Rev. James Milligan says he was well educated, with a wide knowledge of church history. "He was charitable to the poor, and liberal in the support of the gospel. His habits were those of serenity, industry and piety." The gazetteer adds that he was "modest and diffident even to a fault."

Mary Caldwell died on 14 November 1834. James died in August 1835, aged about eighty five, and is buried in the Walter Harvey Cemetery. By 1913 the Ryegate history counted 632 of his descendants.

Sources

Edward Miller and Frederic P. Wells, History of Ryegate, Vermont (1913), Whitehill genealogy, pp. 557-560.

History of Ryegate, Vermont (1913), Whitehill genealogy, pp. 557-558 (HathiTrust hvd.32044025031204); Hamilton Child, Gazetteer of Caledonia and Essex Counties, Vt., 1764-1887, quoted on Find a Grave memorial 26599854.

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Cite: Heirology, "James Whitehill (1753-1835)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/james-whitehill-1753-1835-098ddb.