I-Pariss Sims, 1750 1833.
II-1. Robert Sims, 1783-1842.
III-11. Matthew J. Sims, 1816-1890.
IV-19. Shields Sims, 1838-1927.

V-31. M. J. (Matthew Josiah) Sims, oldest son and fifth child of Shields and Melinda Youngblood Sims, was born in Wayne County, July 22, 1868; died Dec. 2, 1951 at Knoxville, Tenn. He married Camilla Ellender Davis, daughter of Joseph Noah (J. N.) and Nancy Jane Copeland Davis, Oct. 7, 1891. She was born in Wayne County Aug. 23, 1873; died at the home of her oldest son, Almon J. Sims, Knoxville, August 10, 1958. Both are buried in the family plot in Lynnhurst Cemetery, Knoxville.

They celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1941 at my home in Knoxville in the presence of a large gathering of friends, relatives from several states, all of their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. In 1948, they were the oldest married couple-57 years-in attendance at a Sims reunion at Three Churches (the old Sims community) on Indian Creek in Wayne County-he was 80 and she was 75 at the time.

The Davis family, originally of Virginia and South Carolina, of Welch ancestry, came to Tennessee from Kentucky in the 1830s. David Harrison Davis, the father of J. N. Davis, was a Missionary Baptist preacher, born in Kentucky, Jan. 16, 1800; died in Wayne County, Tenn., April 18, 1883. He is believed to have been a son of David Davis, a lieutenant in the Army of South Carolina during the American Revolution, and, a relative of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, during the Civil War.

Rev. Davis established Baptist churches in Lawrence, Wayne and Hardin counties, one of which was Providence, the old Indian Creek church which was destroyed by a cyclone in or about 1903. His wife was Matilda Wakefield of Indiana, born in November 1805; died Sept. 12, 1888. Both are buried in the Davis graveyard at Memorial Church on Indian Creek.

They had a large family of sons and daughters. Their oldest son, Jackson Davis, was the father of James B. Davis who married Sarah Elizabeth Sims (32), a sister of my father. James B. Davis was a U. 5. Marshal in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma in the 1890s. His brothers were Sam and Gus Davis and a sister, Emily, was the wife o Dr. E. R. Yeiser, family doctor of the Indian Creek valley and the father of a large family that has had a leading part in the development of Wayne County-See Sims-Nowlin-Veiser-Davis Families, Chapter Six. He delivered me into this world and saved my life when I split my foot open with an axe, when I was a kid.

Another son of Rev. David H. Davis was George Davis of Hardin's Creek who had four sons, John, Jim, Tom and Boone, and several daughters. Bronson Davis, a third son of Rev. Davis, was killed in Mississippi during the Civil War. Jane, a daughter, married a Patterson of Hardin County; Elizabeth married a Lay and Molly married John Parker, a merchant and prosperous farmer at Houston Post Office in the Western part of the Indian Creek valley.

Joseph Noah (J. N.) Davis, my grandfather, was born March 6, 1844; died Feb. 6, 1920. He married Nancy Jane Copeland, Jan. 27, 1867, and had a family of six sons and four daughters: Elihu, Joe, T. Riley, a Baptist minister; Frank who married Frances Harriett (Fanny) Sims (34), the youngest sister of my father; Harvey and Walter Davis; Camilla, my mother; Alice who married Ben Walkington of Illinois, both deceased; Elizabeth (Lizzie) still living in Clifton, unmarried; and Belle who married Sam Stooksberry. She died at her home in Collinwood, Dec. 31, 1965.

J. N. Davis, a large land owner in the Indian Creek valley, was a progressive and prosperous farmer and breeder of fine cattle, horses and mules. He was a Federal soldier in the Civil War, a Republican and a deacon and leader in the Baptist Church for more than 50 years. He gave the land, part of his farm, on which Memorial Baptist Church was built. The Davis graveyard, where he and most of his family are buried is nearby. He had 13 grandsons of which 10 are living but only two, Frank Davis, Jr. (Chapter Six) and Joe Davis, son of Walter Davis, deceased, bear the Davis name. Frank is a RFD mail carrier at Lawrenceburg and Joe is with the Delta Airlines at Dallas, Tex.

Dalton Davis White, a daughter of Rev. T. Riley Davis, prepared a history of the Davis family before her death in 1964.

The Copeland-Cypert families, both of English descent, were among the early ettlers in Wayne County. Joseph M. Copeland was the father of Nancy Jane Copeland, my maternal grandmother, born Feb. 28, 1845; died Oct. 31, 1906. He was born in Alabama, May 27, 1825; died June 14, 1899; married Sarah Wade Cypert, born in Wayne County, March 23, 1826; died Aug. 20, 1893. She was a daughter of Jesse Cypert and Sally Thompson. He was born about 1790 in North Carolina, a son of Francis Cypert, a Revolutionary War soldier. Jesse was in the War of 1812.

Francis Cypert was an early settler in Maury County, Tenn. He moved from there to Wayne County in 1817, where he had a Land Grant for service in the Revolution. The land was in the Indian Creek valley, then known as Rain's Creek. Francis was accompanied by three sons, Jesse, Baker and John, and a son-inlaw, Zachariah Thompson who settled at what was long known as the Copeland place. His son, Charley M. Thompson, wrote a brief history of the Cypert-Thompson family and the early settlement on Indian Creek, which appeared in the Clifton Mirror, a weekly paper, Oct. 20, 1905.

Jesse Cypert was one of the Commissioners, appointed by the Governor of the State, to organize Wayne County in 1819; also a member of the first county court. The Cypert lands included not only the Thompson-Copeland home place but the farm later owned by my grandfather, J. N. Davis, as well as two or three other present day farms in the community.

The Thompson-Copeiand home place, originally a part of the Cypert Grant, was owned by my father from 1900 to 1909. An interesting incident of Civil War days took place there.

My grandmother, Nancy Jane Copeland, had a very fine horse her father had given her. Confederate soldiers, forraging in the valley, came by the farm and took the horse away with them. My grandmother followed them, keeping out of sight in the woods. When the soldiers went into a pasture on another farm to round up some horses, she rescued her horse, jumped on it and dashed away into the hills.

Her father, Joseph M. Copeland, was a very prosperous farmer and trader. At one time he owned over 1,000 acres of land, much of the Francis Cypert Grant. As each of his children married, he gave them a good farm from his holdings. One son, Elihu, was a graduate of Valpariso University in Indiana. He majored in horticulture and landscaping and was the developer of the early park system in Los Angles, Calif. Tom, another son, was a merchant at Clifton for a number of years; later he moved to Oklahoma. Catherine, one of his daughters, married Clay Sims (22). See Chapter Five. Virginia, another daughter, married John King. They were the parents of Ora King who married Judge Joe Sims, a son of Abraham Martin Sims (17). See Chapter Twelve. Another daughter, Alice, married Bart Lay, head of the Lay family of Indian Creek.

The Copeland home place was the last farm my father owned in Wayne County. When he sold it in 1909, it had been in the family for nearly 100 years. In 1903, Papa built a new home and tore down the old log house, built by the Thompsons in 1818. In 1907, he rented out the place and leased a farm near Clifton, where we moved, so, he said, "you children will have an opportunity to get an education." Up to that time we had been attending a one teacher school, where only six grades were taught and I had finished that.

In 1909 he sold the Copeland farm and we moved to Lawrence County where he bought a very fine farm on the Pulaski road, near Lawrenceburg. The first standard high school to be established in that area of the State had been opened in Lawrenceburg and Papa wanted his children to have advantage of it. Farming in summer, doing farm chores the year-around, I graduated in 1913, a few months before my twenty-first birthday. It was not that T was so dumb--I completed the four year high school requirement in three years, starting in the Fall of 1910. Due to Papa's health, I was out of school for two years, 1908-1909, helping him with his farming operations.

Lawrenceburg has now spread to the edge of our old farm, still known by many as the Sims farm. Farms that were between us and town in those days are now covered with houses, streets and side-walks on both sides of the old dirt road, now a wide highway, along which we kids trudged through the mud, cold and snow on many a wintery day, more than 50 years ago, on our way to school.

There was an old water-powered mill on the farm which we operated three days a week, grinding corn meal and feed for livestock, for the neighborhood. Running the mill was one job that I looked forward to as it gave me opportunity to read and study while the great mill stones slowly round out the grist.

Papa had started out in life as a farmer-school teacher. Both he and my mother had attended a Normal School in another county, some distance from home, and had received teacher's certificates. Soon after they were married in 1891, he formed a partnership with his brother-in-law, Jim Nowlin, who had married his sister, Mary (29), in the operation of a country store and a saw-mill in the Sims Post Office community on Indian Creek. A year later, in 1892, the year I was born, the store and the mill, with hundred of thousands of feet of lumber, burned; a total loss, leaving him deeply in debt.

For a couple of years after that he and mother operated a boarding house for a school that had been started at Martin's Mill, a thriving community on lower Indian Creek. He also operated a rented farm and traded in livestock which enabled him, with borrowed money, to buy a good but run-down farm, the old Turman place, back up Indian Creek near the Sims community, in 1894. He built a new home and improved the farm and in 1896 was able to sell it at a good profit. Then he bought another run-down farm, the Morgan place in Memorial Church Community, which he was able to sell at a good profit in 1899.

Then it was that he caught the fever to go West, to Oklahoma. The Indian Territory was then opening up to white settlers and he wanted a share in the new land. So, with some $5,000 he had accumulated from trading in farms and livestock he moved his family to Tecumseh, near the border of the Indian Territory, and set out to make his fortune.

First, he leased a ranch, stocked it with 600 head of cattle, bought farming equipment and broke land for cotton and corn crops. Heavy spring rains delayed getting the crops planted. Then the rains ceased and a great drought settled over the land. The crops were a complete failure, the range dried up and he had to let the cattle go, selling them at a heavy loss. In the meantime he had bought a tract of 160 acres of un-improved land from an Indian on the edge of the Indian Territory, between Tecumseh and Shawnee, on the North Canadian River, for $1,000. Some 60 acres of the place was river bottom land and very, fertile. By now, that was about all he had left of the $5,000 he had brought with him from Tennessee. Yet, he still had hope. We moved to Tecumseh from the log house we had been living in on the ranch and he started making plans to build a house on the Indian land he had purchased.

Then it was that I came down with typhoid fever that almost took my life. For weeks I lingered and pleaded with my parents to take me back to Tennessee, a promise my mother made me, if I lived. My maternal great grandfather, Joseph M. Copeland, had died in June of that year and my grandfather, J. N. Davis, administrator for his estate, had purchased the old Copeland home place. He wrote my father and mother that he would turn the place over to them if they would come back to Tennessee. That settled it. Papa sold the Indian farm and as soon as I was able to travel we were on our way back to Tennessee to start all over again.

In a few years the Indian land, my father had owned, sold for several times what he paid for it. Today part of the place is a subdivision of Shawnee. On a hill where he planned to build a home, an oil-well rig is busy, 24 hours of the day, pumping black gold from the good earth-so close had he been to his fortune.

Papa was a small man in stature, full of energy and a born optimist, but his health was not good and he suffered all his life from a back injury, caused by a mule falling on him in his youth. He was a Sunday School teacher and a leader and deacon in the Baptist Church for many year.s. He was a Republican and his faith, convictions and interest in progressive ideas were strong.

When we returned to the Copeland place in Tennessee in 1900, mother and we children helped him in the fields with the crops. Soon, as the oldest child and son, I was making a regular hand, and, from the time T was 10 years old, I never missed helping him make a crop until I was 21. He was a good livestock producer and trader which put us back on our feet financially, in a few years. He was always keenly interested in improved farm and livestock producing methods, being one of the first "demonstrators" in corn production in Lawrence County, under the first County Agricultural Agent of the Federal Government and the University of Tennessee.

When I finished high school he wanted me to go into partnership with him in the operation of the farm. It was well stocked with cattle, hogs, work animals and equipment; the land was fertile. From every standpoint, it was a great opportunity for me; a real temptation. I will never forget the look of disappointment that came over him when I told him I had made up my mind to go into newspaper work. If I had struck him in the face, I don't think he would have been any more hurt.

That Fall, 1914, I went away to the University of Missouri to study journalism. When I returned home the next spring he had traded our big farm for a smaller one. After that he traded farms many times and at one time had an interest in two or three good farms. Then came the farm depression of the 1920s, following World War One, and again he was almost wiped out financially. By that time he had retired from active farming, except with tenants, and was living in a home in Lawrenceburg which he had been able to salvage from his farm losses. In 1925, he and mother moved to Knoxville, where he operated a small poultry farm for several years, until he retired in 1942, at 74 years of age.

He never lost interest in farming and the affairs of the world; keeping informed by reading, listening to the radio and talking with his family and friends until his death at 84, from a heart attack. While he often did not feel well, he rarely spent a day in bed.

Thus, did the end come for a man who was always optimistic and working, planning, striving for the welfare of his family and improvements in the community in which he lived--a friend of all and a man his children were proud to call father.

VI-37. Almon James Sims, born in Wayne County, Tenn., Aug. 12, 1892. See Chapter Eight for a record of his family.
VI-38. Mergie Eleanor Sims, born in Wayne County, Nov. 11, 1893. See record of the Sims-Carson Family at the end of this Chapter.
VI-39. Raymond Sims, born at the Turman place on Indian Creek in Wayne County, Nov. 25, 1895. See record of his family below.
VI-40. Wilbur Shields Sims, born at the Copeland place on Indian Creek, March 7, 1901; died at the family home in Lawrence County during the flu epidemic, Oct. 31, 1918.
VI-41. Vernon Wakefield Sims, born at the family home near Clifton, Wayne County. April 2, 1908. He graduated from the University of Tennessee in Agriculture in 1934 and was appointed a teacher of Vocational Agriculture in the high school at Fall Branch, Tenn. In 1935 he was appointed assistant County Agricultural Agent in Washington County. Later he was County Agricultural Agent in Johnson County; is now County Agent in Unicoi County where he has been located for several years. He is a Sunday School teacher and deacon in the First Baptist of Erwin, Tenn., and a recognized leader in the county, being widely known for his activities in 4-H Club and rural community development. On June 23, 1936, he married Mary Cochran of Fall Branch and they have one son:

VII- 42. William Joseph (Billy Joe) Sims, born at Jonesboro, Tenn, March 25, 1940. He married Diane Kern, a graduate nurse, June 1, 1963, shortly after graduation from East Tennessee State University at Johnson City. He enlisted in the Armed Services for three years and was sent to Berlin, Germany, immediately following his marriage. He and his wife returned from there in July 1965. They did considerable traveling in Europe while over there, and are now living in Kingsport where Bill is an engineer with Tennessee Eastman Co. Diane is a nurse at a local hospital.

 

Raymond Sims (39), married Lena Foster of Nashville, Tenn., June 1, 1921. He served in the Motor Corps of the U. S. Army in World War One and for a time was a chauffeur for high ranking officers of the Army in Washington, D. C. He operated a store in Lawrenceburg for a few years; now lives in Mt. Pleasant where he has managed a large department store, which he now owns, since 1932. His sons, Ray and Bob, joined him in the store, after graduation from college. The business, which has been highly successful, is now operated as Sims Department Store, largely by the sons.
For several years Raymond has been vice-president of the Maury County Home Federal Savings and Loan Association and manager of the Mt. Pleasant branch. He is a Rotarian, a Mason, member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Baptist Church, and, for a time was a member of the City Council. Children.

VII-43. Marvin Raymond (Ray) Sims, born at Lawrenceburg, March 8, 1924; now associated with his father in the Sims Department Store. He served in the Armed Services in World Two as a sharpshooter and lost his left arm and most of the fingers of his right hand to a hand grenade, thrown into a "foxhole" during the invasion of Okinawa. He was awarded the Purple Heart for his service. Ray married Faye Parsons of Pennington Gap, Virginia, March 15, 19117 and they have a son:

VIII-44. Gary Robert Sims, born August 12, 1950

VII-45. Robert Dudley (Bob) Sims, born Oct. 13, 1931; associated with his father and brother in the Department store, following a hitch as a lieutenant in the army at Fort Bragg, N. C. He married Wilma Nicks, April 4, 1955. She was born Dec. 15, 1933. Children:

VIII-46. Sharon Kay Sims, born Oct. 1, 1956.
VIII-47. Raymond Alan Sims, born Jan. 17, 1961.
VIII-48. Lee Ann Sims, born Aug. 22, 1964.

 

Mergie Eleanor Sims (38), married Sam M. Carson of Manchester, Tenn., June 25, 1920 in Knoxville, Tenn. He is a veteran of World War One service in Europe and a former newspaper man and author of numerous short stories and articles in National magazines. For a number of years he was assistant editor, in charge of news and radio, with the Information Department of the Agricultural Extension Service, University of Tennessee, from which he retired in 1961. Children:

VII- Jean Camilla Carson, born Sept. 4, 1921. She married William F. (Bill) Appleton, May 2, 1944. Both were in the armed services in World War Two. He saw service in the Navy in the Far East where he rose to the rank of Captain; now holds the rank of Lieutenant-Commander in the reserves. He is an engineer with the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville where the family lives. Children:

VIII- David Carson Appleton, born Nov. 22, 1948.
VIII- Daniel Roy Appleton, born Aug. 21, 1958.

VII- Sam Joseph Carson, born Nov. 21, 1927, was in the armed services in World War Two. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University in engineering and is now an engineer with Rohm-Haas Chemical Company in Knoxville. He married Faye Marlowe, June 15, 1957. Children:

VIII- Michael Joseph Carson, born May 19, 1958.
VIII- Randall Scott Carson, born May 23, 1964.

She had twin daughters, Jackie and Judy Burge, by a previous marriage. They were born May 11, 1952, and have been adopted by Sam J.
VII-Mary Catherine Carson, born July 10, 1932; married Henry Derthick June 7, 1954.

Footnote: Roman Numerals indicate generations; Figures are 5ims identification numbers.

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