JAMES MCMILLAN PINKERTON

This respectable family from Sparta, Illinois, is my great-grandfather’s family. He, James McMillan Pinkerton, an expert engine mechanic, sits on the left while his wife, Nancy Boyd Pinkerton is in the center and John Everett Pinkerton, the oldest and my grandfather, sits on the right. In the back are the twins: James Ashton and Samuel Ralph Pinkerton. I think James is on the left, but they were very similar. Sam died on July 19, 1917.

The story I have is that while living in Washington, James McMillan was afflicted by arthritis. At the time the father and brothers had a construction company that built many of the big dairy barns for the dairy industry developed around the marshy and therefore grassy country surrounding Marysville, WA. James McMillan felt that if he could escape to a better climate, he’d feel a lot better, so he went down and sat at the railway depot, interviewing the drummers as they came and went. They all agreed that the driest and most windless place was Roseburg, OR, so the family moved there to grow row fruits, like strawberries. In the front yard on Deer Creek was a huge tree that had been used as a meeting tree for Indians for centuries.

But Sam stayed behind in Washington, caught some kind of fever and died. Nancy, his mother, was devastated and felt guiltily they had abandoned him. Eventually, his ghost met her in the aisle of the Presbyterian Church, glowing in the light from the stained glass windows, and told her, “Don’t worry, Mother. I’m all right.” (Nadine Hatfield said she saw this herself. She was a child.)

This family moved to the Northwest in 1899 by railroad. James had married Nancy in 1871. John Everett was born in 1880. There was an infant daughter who died in 1886 and the twins’ birthdate is also given as 1886. The spacing of these dates seems a little dubious to me. Maybe there were multiple miscarriages or maybe James was simply gone a lot.

The predecessors of James McMillan always make me think about the cosmology that says the world is on the back of an elephant standing on a giant turtle standing on an elephant on a giant turtle etc. -- and when one reaches the point of exhaustion, the storyteller says, “From there on, it’s turtles all the way down.” In this case of Pinkertons, we alternate James and John.

James Pinkerton (1741-1923) was born in or near Camden, South Carolina, York County in 1741. He was of Irish extraction, educated for the sea and served as a sea captain. In the Revolutionary War he served under Captain McColloch and Captain Barnett and was in the Battle of Briar Creek, March 3, 1779. Discharged May 13, 1785, at Charleston, S.C., after many adventures under Supter and Marion. Because he was “finely educated,” he taught after the war in South Carolina and Lincoln County, Tennessee, where he died. He had seven children and was Old School Presbyterian.

His son, John Pinkerton (1783-1847), married in 1804 to Sarah Gilmore (1785-1831). He fought in the War of 1812 and died in Tyler, Texas, at about the beginning of the Rebellion War.

His son, John Pinkerton (1811-1899) married Dovy Hughey (1805-1845). He remarried Mary McMillan McKean (1813-1873, a widow). These three were buried in Sparta, Illinois. The sibs and half-sibs were Jonathan, William, James, Samuel, Pickens, Thomas, John, Frank, Andrew, Rebecca and Sarah. I don’t know the proper order.

His son, James McMillan. is the father in the family photo above.

His oldest son, John Everett (1880-1959) my grandfather, married in 1907 Ethel Grace Cochran (d. 1948) and then in 1949 her cousin, Bertha Lois Sherer, a divorcee. He had four daughters by his first marriage. That was the end of the James/John alternation. (Lois had at least one son by her first marriage.)



This is the Pater Familias as a young man. I have no firm names for the others.



This postcard seems to be from either Jim or John. The chaffing tone is much like my grandfather John. It sounds as though Sam and his dad are between jobs.


I think this might be Sam.