The Shields Family of Butler County, Ohio

JAMES SHIELDS was a native of the north of Ireland and was born in the year 1763, the son of parents who were in moderate circumstances.

He received the rudiments of Latin and Greek at a classical school, and completed his education at the University of Glasgow.

He had a quick and retentive memory, a sound, discriminating judgment. He had an extensive acquaintance with every branch of useful knowledge. With natural, civil and ecclesiastical history, and with law, physic and divinity he obtained a very general acquaintance. Few men possessing knowledge so various and extensive made so little display of their attainments or so reluctantly acknowledged the extent of their acquisitions.

Having early imbibed an ardent love of liberty, with an unconquerable aversion to priestly and royal domination, he resolved to leave the land of his birth, and to cast in his lot with the sons of freedom in the United States. He landed in this country in 1791. He spent a short time in the state of Pennsylvania, after which he removed to Virginia. In this state he spent thirteen years in cultivating his own mind, and in the useful and honorable employment of teaching. In 1804 he married Miss Jane Wright, daughter of James Wright, of Berkeley county, Virginia. In 1805 he removed to Morgan township, in Butler county, Ohio, where he had previously purchased land. He began farming in the midst of a dense forest, surrounded by few settlers, and these entire strangers. It must be confessed that from the natural disposition and former habits of Mr. Shields, he was little qualified for this course of life. But while he was reasonably successful in his undertaking, he speedily rose to commanding influence among his fellow citizens, that must have recompensed him for the failure to reap great pecuniary success. His immediate neighbors soon discovered his superior acquirements, and they uniformly looked up to him for counsel, but never in vain. He was successful in political life.

He never took a step, wrote a line, or dropped an expression to obtain preferment, yet the public demonstrated its conviction of his superior worth by sending him to the state legislature for a period of nineteen years. He was chosen a presidential elector, and for the last two years of his life was a member of the national congress. Mr. Shields was a man of the highest moral character. His word was, in all cases, his bond, and his declaration in regard to facts which he had witnessed was never disputed. He was uniformly abstemious in eating and drinking. Wherever he was, in his family, on his farm, in a party of friends, or in public company, his conduct strictly confirmed to the rules of moral rectitude. He was an enlightened and firm believe in revealed religion. Few men have studied the subject more diligently. He was warmly attached to the Bible Society, Sabbath schools, missionary societies, the American Colonization Society, and every other institution which had for its object the illumination, liberty and happiness of men. He attended public worship regularly. James Shields died August 13, 1831, after a lingering sickness. He had returned home from Washington with extreme difficulty and gradually declined. He left a wife and twelve children to lament their loss.

As printed in the source². Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.

SAMUEL DICK SHIELDS, who resides at No. 601 South Sixth Street, Hamilton, was born in Butler County, March 2, 1817. He is a son of Hon. James Shields, a native of the North of Ireland, who received a classical education in a college of Glasgow, Scotland. In 1791, when a young man, lie came to the United States and for a time sojourned in Maryland, where he followed the occupation of school teaching, and afterward clerked in a wholesale store in Alexandria, Ya. As early as 1802 he came to Ohio and settled in Morgan Township, Butler County, where he entered half a section of land. Upon this place, two years later, he established his home, building a log cabin, in which eleven of his twelve children were born.

As time passed by and prosperity rewarded his intelligent efforts, he was enabled to replace the primitive above with an elegant brick residence. While he superintended the management of his farm, he never actively engaged in its cultivation, being mainly occupied in public service. With the exception of one term, he served in the Ohio State Legislature from 1806 until 1827. In 1828 he was elected a Member of Congress, and while serving the people in that honored office, received fatal injuries by the upsetting of a stage coach while returning from Washington. He was then sixty-eight years of age. He was one of the most prominent citizens of Ohio during the opening years of the present century, and did much to promote its settlement and prosperity. Though not eloquent of speech, he was practical, earnest and entertaining. It was, however, as a writer that he excelled, being terse, forcible and thoughtful in the utterance of his sentiments for the public press. He was not identified with any church denomination, but was a man of loftiest principles and unflinching integrity.

As printed in the source¹. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.

SAMUEL D. SHIELDS, Superintendent of the Butler County Infirmary, was born in Morgan Township, this county, on the 26th of February, 1843. He is a member of a family that was identified with the pioneer history of the Buckeye State. His paternal grandfather, James Shields, was a native of Ireland, and was educated in the University of Glasgow, Scotland. Thence he emigrated to the United States and settled in Virginia, where he married Jane Wright, a native of the Old Dominion. In 1804 he came to Ohio, and settled in Morgan Township, Butler County, where he entered from the Government three hundred and twenty acres of heavily timbered land. This he improved so greatly that it was regarded as one of the finest farms for miles around. Politically a Democrat, he represented his district in the State Legislature for thirteen consecutive years, and this service was succeeded by two terms in Congress. His death occurred in 1831, during his second term of office, at the age of sixty-four. His wife survived him until 1847, when she passed away at the age of seventy.

As printed in the source¹. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.