Next: Mary Eliza Jameson Up: Jameson and Craig Ancestors Previous: The Jameson Ancestry Contents Index
b. ca. 1828
bp. Milford, Co. Donegal, Ireland
m. 1854, Samuel Jameson, Sr.
d. July 3, 1883
When the elderly widower Samuel Jameson married Miss Matilda Craig in 1854, his family had been in America for one hundred years. They had migrated from Londonderry, Ireland to Londonderry, New Hampshire, in 1746. Then they moved to Dunbarton, N.H., in 1752, where part of an old home still stands (1989). Descendents went on to Canandaigua, N.Y., and Hanover, Illinois. He had three children in his first marriage and then in his later years by his marriage to Matilda Craig three other children (1855-62). Samuel had been a pioneer in Northern Illinois, turning virgin sod to establish his farm there.
Matilda Craig represents a later wave of immigrants, arriving in 1849 as a young lady, with her brothers John and William, her step-mother, and two sisters. Her family had lived in County Donegal, in the extreme northwest of Ireland and not far from Londonderry, the ancestral home of the Jamesons. Four other brothers migrated also, and they all settled in or near Hanover, Illinois. Five years later she was claimed as a bride by the older Samuel and lived with him on his well-established farm until his death May 10, 1868, (1867 on tombstome) giving him two sons and a daughter:
Much has been written about the Jameson family and Samuel Jameson (1789-1868) is remembered and honored in Jo Daviess County history. But the story of Matilda Craig and her Irish family has not been as well recorded, and I will attempt to pull together the story as best I can one hundred and forty years later.
The parents of Matilda Craig were William Craig and Mary Wilson, and she was born into a family of ten children in Milford, County Donegal, North Ireland, in 1828. The family was caught in the potato famine of Ireland in the 1840's, and four older sons migrated to Northern Illinois where they found occupation as farmers which gave them the possibility of reuniting their family in the new land. According to the family oral tradition, one of the brothers, John, returned to Ireland and brought the mother and other children back with him on the good ship S.S. Chenango, sailing from Belfast, Northern Ireland, to New York City, arriving the 3rd of July 1847. Those aboard were:
John, 22, M, Farmer
Nancy, 40, F, Mother
Matilda, 18, F, Sister
Sarah, 14, F, Sister
William, 10, M, Brother
Nancy, 7, F, Sister
The father is not in the group, and the mother named Nancy is probably a second wife, and mother of two or three younger children. According to the family oral tradition, the father did not qualify to immigrate to the U.S.A. according to the laws of that time because he was a cripple. His back had been broken some years before and though not an invalid he could not pass the physical test for ``healthy''. He went to live with nieces and nephews in Ireland to free up all his family to emigrate.
Let us look to this Irish family that was part of the teeming millions of immigrants of the 19th Century. For us West Tenn. Watlington-Hammond descendents, Matilda Craig, mother of Mary Eliza Jameson who married in 1883 Orson Ward Hammond, is our most recent immigrant of the thirty-two family lines represented on our five generation ancestor chart.
Although there were probably two wives/mothers represented in the Craig family this was also true in the pioneer Jameson family. Careful documentation has not been fully done for these Craig immigrants, but Paul Jameson has left us this list:
Seth and brother Samuel served in the 27th Iowa Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. His unit was sent to Arkansas, Mississippi and into Louisiana, where his brother Samuel was killed in a skirmish at Pleasant Hill, Louisiana. Then as the war was drawing to a close his unit marched across Mississippi and all the way to Mobile, Alabama, where no ground troops had been sent but Federal ships controlled the harbor. Their forces received the surrender of Mobile and surrounding areas. After the war was over the troops traveled back to the Mississippi River for transport back to the North.
![[*]](crossref.png)
). He was
reported missing in action and presumed dead. However he had only
been wounded and sickly. He was discharged from the 45th on Jan.
1st, 1864 as disabled. He was a farmer and there is no record of
him marrying so he may have died soon after the Civil War because of
his wounds.
Thus we see the Irish immigrant family settled, married and farming during their first years in America. At least four of them joined the Union forces and served in the War Between the States. Three Hammond brothers also served in that conflict, though none died in service. Of the four Craig brothers who served Samuel was killed in service and both Edwin Hammond and David were seriously injured. Royal C. Hammond was also injured in the battles for Atlanta, Ga. Alexander and Seth later migrated to new lands in Iowa and then into ``Indian Territory'' across the wide Missouri River in the eastern part of Nebraska and Kansas. Evidently the family had a hardy strain in it for Seth Craig lived to be ninety. Alex to be ninety-three.
Matilda Craig Jameson continued to live on the farm and her daughter Mary Eliza Jameson (b. Nov. 2, 1858, d. 1918) stayed at home with her until her death, July 3, 1883. At that time Orson Ward Hammond, who grew up around Hanover and was at one time her teacher in a neighborhood school, returned from Texas to claim Mary Eliza as his bride. He was a master carpenter and cabinet-maker and had been working to build railroad stations and equipment in Texas.