About the year 1765, three brothers, Pariss (Parish), Robert and Abraham Sims, emigrated from Belfast, Ulster in North Ireland, to Pennsylvania. It is believed, based on research of early Sims families of Virginia and North Carolina, that four older brothers, William, Thomas, John and James, came to America and settled in those states, before 1765.

The brothers were of Scotch-Irish ancestry, their ancestors having moved from Scotland into North Ireland during the Ulster Settlement by King James I of England, 1607-1611. They were Scottish Lowlanders, of Cymric-Celtic stock, as distinguished from Scottish Highlanders, known as Gaelic Celts-they were remotely kin, so you might call them cousins. The Lowlanders faced toward England while the Highlanders held closer ties with Ireland, yet they were both blood-brothers to the Irish. Most of the Scottish Lowlanders who went to North Ireland sided with the Protestant cause while most of those in Southern Ireland were Catholic.

When the first census of the United States was taken in 1790 there were over 100 Sims families in Virginia, North and South Carolina, some dating back as early as 1635. Some came direct from England and Scotland, others from North Ireland, claiming Scotch-Irish ancestry.

Sims families of Scotch-Irish ancestry are believed to trace back to the Ancient Sym Clan of Yetholm, Roxburg County Scotland. The earliest record I have been able to find of the Sym Clan out of which our family developed, is 1066, when Bueth Sym, head of the Clan, was killed in Cumberland County, England during the invasion by William the Conqueror of Normandy, a province of France.

In 1956 I visited the ancient site of the Sym Clan at Yetholm, in the Cheviot Hills, near the English border. There, I inspected the ruins of the old Tower which, in its day was surrounded by a moat, fed by a stream. Today, the stream forms a small lake where the Tower stood. Much stone from the Tower, which was some three stories high, was used in building a two-story home, barns and other buildings, some 400 years ago. For the past 50 vears the place has belonged to a horse breeder who lives in the ancient home which overlooks the beautiful little lake where the Tower, the strong place of Sym Clan, once stood. It is said that the Tower was destroyed by the English in the fifteenth century.

Today, Yetholm, situated in a beautiful but narrow valley, overlooked by the high ridges of the Cheviot Hills, is noted as the headquarters village of Gypsy bands that roam over Europe. We saw the place where the Gypsy Queen of the World was crowned, a few years before our visit. The way the Sym Clan has scattered over England, Scotland and Ireland, and, in the last 200 years over America, it would seem that we might have a bit of Gypsy blood in our veins.

It has been said that the Sym-Sims name is Saxon, derived from Simeon, the second son of Jacob. The name is also attributed to Old Saxon, meaning a Shelf; designating perhaps, a clan or tribe of people living in a high place such as the Cheviot Hills that border Scotland and England. Another meaning, in Celtic Gaelic, is Peacemaker. In Norman, the meaning is Sixth. Some families of England no doubt got the name from Simon, a name that was introduced into England during the Norman conquest.

Be that as it may-whether we be sons of Jacob, sons of the hills, sons of the Peacemaker or sons of the sixth son of some tribal chieftain, I have found those of the name to be, on the whole, honorable, industrious, upright citizens of the communities in which they reside; none very rich, few very poor.

Our name, now commonly spelled Sims or Simms, once had many variations, some of which still exist-Sym, Syms, Symes, Symmes, Simes, Simmes, Sim, Simm. In Scotland today, the name is commonly spelled Simm. In England it is Sims or Simms.

The Motto on the Coat of Arms granted to the family of John Sims in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth the First of England reads:

The Arms - Ermine, the emblem of purity of judges and magistrates. Three crescents, pointing to the dexter side, when worn on armor-meaning increasing or waxing strong; red lines on crescents, denoting bravery.

The Crest - A Demi Griffin, half eagle, half lion-denoting swiftness, strength and bravery.

A print of this Coat of arms appears in the front of this history.

Clifford Stanley Sims, Jr., of New York City published "The Sims Family" history, a record of 27 generations of the Bueth Sym family of Scotland, in 1926, beginning as follows:

1. Sym, head of Yetholm Tower, Roxburgh County, Scotland, married Ada, granddaughter of Oswulfe, Earl of Northumberland and Thane of Gillis Land, Cumberland County, England.
2. Bueth Sym, son of Sym and Thane of Gillis Land, was killed in the Battle of Hastings during the Conquest of England by William the Conqueror, 1066.
3. Bueth Sym, 2nd., fled back to Yetholm Tower in Scotland.
4. Bueth Sym, 3rd, lived at Yetholm, 1100 to 1135.
5. John Sym received a grant of land in Dumfries County Scotland, from Malcolm, the 4th, in 1165.

Thus, the Bueth Sym family was traced through 27 generations, covering over 800 years, down to the present generation of the Clifford Sims family and that of William Snowden Sims, Admiral of the U. S. Navy during World War One.

While I have been unable to establish any connection of our branch of the family with this line in America, I am of the opinion that our branch goes back to the same stock, the ancient Sym Clan of Yetholm, Scotland.

Yetholm, name of the Tower or Castle, ancient home of the Sym Clan, means the beginning or opening-a hill or high place; a place name in common use in the old country, indicating perhaps, the beginning or home place of the clan or family. The use of the word Tower or Castle with the name indicates the Sym Clan had a fortified place for protection from other clans or tribes of people who were their enemies.

History says that the ancestors of the Scottish Clans emigrated from Ireland into Scotland some 200 years before Christ. They were of Celtic origin and trace back through the centuries to a strong race that once dominated what is known as Central Europe. They were fierce in war and greatly feared by other peoples. Their early enemy was the German-Saxons who finally drove them out of Central Europe into England, Ireland and Scotland.

Historians say the Celts were a branch of the ancient Ayran race, an offshoot of the Cimmerians or Scythians of antiquity who inherited the land North of the Black Sea. This is the land that Bible history says the tribes of Gomer, son of Japeth who was a son of Noah, inhabited after the Flood. In our flight over this area in 1960 we could not help but speculate over what our ancestors were like in those ancient days.

In Baker's history of Northhamptonshire, England, it is mentioned that the Church of Daventry contains, upon a blue stone, statues of a man and his wife, with the following inscription on a brass plate:

"For the solle (soul) of William Symmes and his wife, which William departed this life, June A. D. 1547." Below, are smaller statues of five sons and five daughters.

In the 1540s there was a John Sims in England who married a Mary Clark and had three daughters, Ann, Mary and Jane. In 1917 I married Sammie Clark and we have three daughters, Ann, Mary and Jane, named before we knew of the above family.

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, our branch of the Sims family emigrated from Scotland to North Ireland in the Ulster Settlement, 1607-1611; thence to America in the middle 1700s. Ulster was the name of an ancient Kingdom ruled by the warlike O'Neill Clan.

In 1602, Con O'Neill, an Irish Chief, had trouble with soldiers of the first Queen Elizabeth of England and was thrown in prison. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, O'Neill escaped from prison and won a pardon from King James I, who had succeeded to the throne. In return for the pardon, O'Neill gave half of his lands to the Crown and it was settled by Scottish and English colonists; the beginning of the Ulster Settlement in 1607, 200 years before Pariss Sims and others made their settlement on Lynn Creek in Giles, County, Tenn., in 1807, on the heels of the American Indians.

The Ulster Settlement took place just as England was planting colonies in Virginia. The Scotch-Irish were mostly Presbyterians in Ireland, and for various reasons-religious, political and financial-they soon became discontented and turned their eyes toward America where they played an important role in shaping the history of the United States, before, during and since the American Revolution. Theodore Roosevelt said of them:

"Immigrant Ulstermen wrote many a page in American History. They formed the kernel of the American stock who were the pioneers of our people in the march westward."

Some historians estimate that by 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, one-sixth of the population of the American colonies was of Ulster origin. At least eight Ulstermen signed the Declaration of Independence and it is said that nearly one-third the presidents of the United States have been of Ulster stock; of the Scottish and English families that settled there before coming to America.

Many of the Sims name have distinguished themselves, not only as pioneers in the settlement of our country but as leaders in the professions-lawyers, doctors, ministers, teachers, soldiersand in public service, both in government and in the armed forces. Among these are:

• Lieut.-Col. Charles Sims of the 106th Virginia Regiment, officer on the staff of Gen. Washington and one of his pallbearers, as shown by an inscription at the door of Christ Church, Alexandria, Va., a city of which he was once mayor.
• John Cleves Symmes, 1742-1814, Vice-Governor of New Jersey, member of the State Supreme Court and member of the U. S. Congress, 1786-1788.
• William Snowden Sims, Admiral of the U. S. Navy in World War One.
• Alexander Dromgoole Sims, U. S. Congressman from South Carolina, 1840-1848.
• Winfred Scott Sims, 1844-1918, noted inventor.
• Leonard H. Sims, U. S. Congressman from Missouri, 1845-1848.
• John Sims, U. S. Congressman from Kentucky.
• Thetus W. Sims, U. S. Congressman from Tennessee, 18971921; great grandson of Pariss Sims.
• William Gilmore Sims, 1806-1870, noted South Carolina writer-See Chapter Nineteen.
• Dr. James Marion Sims, 1813-1883, internationally famous surgeon and president of the American Medical Association. See Chapter Nineteen.
• Henry Upson Sims, Birmingham, Ala., leading attorney and one time president of the American Bar Association.
• Littlepage Sims, Indian fighter with John Sevier; soldier in the Revolution; tax collector and first sheriff of Blount County, Tenn.
• Rev. Matthew Sims, a Baptist minister who was a member of the first county court of Claiborne County; commissioned to lay out the town of Tazewell, Tenn. He had a son, Paris Sims, who was a scout and wagon-train guide on the old Santa Fe Trail to Mexico.
• John Sims who helped organize Grainger County, Tenn., and the ancestor of several present-day Sims families in East Tennessee.
• Parish Sims who with three of his brothers made Sims settlement on Elk River in Limestone County, Ala., in 1807-the first white settlement in the county.
• Pariss Sims, a Revolutionary War soldier and ancestor of our branch of the family, who was among the first settlers on Lynn Creek in Giles County, Tenn., in 1807, on the heels of the Indians.
• Louis Browniow, a great, great grandson of Pariss Sims; Washington Newspaper Correspondent, member of the governing body of the District of Columbia, by appointment of President Wilson, and noted expert on government administration.
• Robert H. White, great, great grandson of Pariss Sims; Tennessee State Historian and author of a history used in the public schools, "Tennessee, Its Growth and Progress."

More information about most of those listed above will be found in the following chapters, especially in the last chapter.

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