James Wylie
James Wylie was born in 1826 at Elderslie, in Renfrewshire, Scotland, a village between Paisley and Johnstone. The History of the Town of Perry, printed in 1915, gives that birthplace under his portrait. When his son applied for a passport in 1923, he gave it as "Johnston, Scotland", the next town along the same road. The same application says James sailed for America from Liverpool about 1852 and was naturalized at Athens, Pennsylvania, on a date the family did not know.
In 1859 he married Mary Thompson of Athens, Bradford County, Pennsylvania. The census of 1860 found them at Athens: James, 34, born in Scotland, Mary, 30, born in Pennsylvania, and their first child Agnes, a baby of six months. A son, James Thompson Wylie, was born at Athens on 6 December 1861. Their daughter Stella was born on 26 December 1863 at Milltown, Pennsylvania.
About 1865 the family moved north to Perry, in Wyoming County, New York. Perry had a woolen mill on the creek behind The Tavern, a short way north of the Andrus planing mill. John Post had turned an old clothiery into a woolen mill there about 1856, and it passed through several hands before it came to Wylie and Morton and then to James Wylie alone. As the Perry Woolen Factory it had a capital of $20,000, 216 spindles and five looms, and made about 16,000 yards of cloth a year. Later it ran as James Wylie and Son.
On 7 August 1880 the mill burned, with a loss of $20,000. It was never rebuilt. A daughter's obituary, written in 1947, remembered the fire as 1878. His eldest daughter Agnes later married Charles Andrus.
The Wylies stayed at Perry. The New York census of 1875 and the federal census of 1880 list James and Mary there with their children: Agnes, James, Stella, Mary, Elizabeth and Jessie. Mary died in 1899. Their daughter Jessie had died in 1896.
James Wylie died on 29 June 1906 at the Perry home of his daughter Stella, the wife of Charles H. Toan. He was about eighty. He was buried at Hope Cemetery in Perry, beside his wife.
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Cite: Heirology, "James Wylie (1826-1906)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/james-wylie-1826-1906-93df27.