| Notes |
- Greene Co, Missouri, History book, pages 1927-29:
Born in Ireland, where he spent his boyhood and attended school. When eighteen years of age he ran away from home and sailed on broad Atlantic toward the United States to seek his fortune. He first settled in Knox County, Tennessee, at the foot of the Cumberland Mountains, regarding whose picturesque inhabitants so much has been written, and in that locality he was married and made his home until the year 1832, when he made the tedious and somewhat hazardous overland trip to Greene county, Missouri, bringing his family in a primitive wagon, and thus the Masseys were among the earliest pioneers of this locality.
He secured a tract of land just east of what is now the thriving city of Springfield, but which was at that time an encampment of the Kickapoo Indians. He set to work with a will, cleared, broke and fenced his land, erected a log cabin and by perseverance and hard work became very comfortably fixed in due course and time, and was a man of influence among the early frontiersmen, his neighbours being, however, very few and most of them some miles distant, untill more Tennesseeans followed him, the Fulbrights, the Freemans and others.
Although he devoted the major portion of his life to farming, he was a mechanic by trade and a skilled workman. He made the first separator, or "ground-hog" tresher, ever seen in this part of the country. During the war of 1812, he enlisted in defense of his adopted country, gladly fighting against the flag under which he was born, and for meritoruius conduct on the field of battle he was promoted from a private to a captain, and served with distinction throughout the war. Politically he was first a Whig, then a Republican after that party was organized in the fifties. His death occured on his farm here in 1863.
His first wife was Faithful Strickland, she bore him 13 children. Among them Nathaniel J., William, Mrs. Mc Adams, Mrs. Rountree. William was a quarter master in the Union Army during the Civil War. His second wife, Martha Ellen Anderson, was a native of Tennessee, where she grew up and recieved a limited education. She lived to an advanced age, dying in Stone County, Missouri, in February 1899?. To these parents nine children were born."
1810 Living next door to Moses Strickland, Pendleton district, South Carolina.
1820, Pendleton district, SC.
1830, Giles, TN, family of ten, seven slaves.
1840, Greene, Missouri
1844, Sep 10th, James H. Massey bought 79 acres of land in Springfield, MO (twp 29).
1845, May 5th, James Massey bought 80 acres of land in Springfield, MO (twp 29).
1850, Campell, Greene, Missouri
1859, June 1st, James H. Massey, bought 40 acres of at Springfield, MO.
He may have had a brother Ephraim M. Massey, who is mentioned in connection with the Treaty from the Cherokee in 1820:
TREASURY OFFICE - Columbia, May 9, 1820
Notice is hereby given to Noble Anderson, Thomas Smith, E.M. Massey, Jane Poteat, Ira Nicholson, Wm. Beavort, David Kitchen, William Deadman, Philemon Crane, and Ralph Cobb respectively, and all other persons who have not yet paid the second instalment upon their Bonds, given for the purchase money of each Tract or Tracts of Land as may have been bought by them, at the sale of Public Lands lying in that part of Pendleton District, lately known as Teritory purchased by Treaty from the Cherokee Indians which was sold in March, 1818, at the house of Ephraim Massey, on the old Cherokee Boundary Line; that they and each of them, by delaying to pay the said second installment now due, have made default, and that unless the said second installment shall be paid within sixty days from the date hereof, together with the costs of this publication, the payments heretofore made will be forefeited and the lands purchased by them revert to the State.
Benjamin T. Elmore
Treasurer Upper Division
Note on Ancestry: The same above ad ran into mid July 1820. The E.M. Massey shown on the above notice was Ephraim Massey, brother of James Massey who will move to Greene Co., Missouri.
The above ad was found on GenealogyBank.com Newspaper Archives subscription service.
(Half)siblings may have been: Ephraim Miller Massey, Jane Brown (born Massey), Sarah Dunlap (born Massey), Martha Smith (born Massey), Robert Massey, Mary Margaret Knox Patrick (born Massey).
Uncertain how all these siblings in the US coincides with the history James running away from home in Ireland. Both Limerick and Northern Ireland have been mentioned as a birthplace. Sarah Jane "Sally" Massey Taylor, James' daughter, states on 1930 census that her father was born in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was not a country untill 1921.
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