James Shields

As printed in 1905

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 Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio (1905). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.