In September 1883 Orson Ward Hammond was united in marriage to Mary Eliza Jameson, daughter of Samuel Jameson and his third wife, Matilda Craig. Orson Ward Hammond had for ten years been doing carpentry work in Texas. He had become attached to the southwest, and planned to settle with his bride in Texas.
Mary Eliza Jameson (b. Nov. 2, 1858) was the third child of Matilda and Samuel. The children, in order of their birth were: Jennie (may have been a child of Matilda by a former union, if so she was adopted by Samuel and bore his name), Samuel C., Mary Eliza, and William A.
Matilda and Samuel were married in 1854; and at the time were living on neighboring farms in the Hanover township of Jo Daviess County, Illinois. Matilda Craig was born in county Donegal, Ireland, in 1826, and accompanied her brothers to America and to the farm in Jo Daviess County, Illinois. Their family farm was listed in the name of J. Craig in 1873, and she was the third child of her parents. She, her mother and siblings arrived in the Port of New York July 3, 1849, on the S.S. Chenango, from Belfast, Ireland. Older brothers were already settled in the U.S., and their father is said to have been refused a visa to come to the U.S. because of a severe back injury. Nancy, the mother, who came in 1849 is thought to be the mother of only the younger children. The mother of Seth, born 1836, is known to have been Mary Wilson, who had died previous to 1849.
The William Craig children were:
Samuel Jameson had three children by his earlier marriages, Julia, John and Ann. Ann married a man by name of Dunn; in 1889 both John and Ann Dunn were living in California.
Samuel Jameson, son of Hugh, was born May 22, 1789 in Canandaigua, N. Y. He is from an old New England family, and came to Northern Illinois prior to the Black Hawk War (1830-33). He served as a Federal officer during the conflict with the famous Indian chief and his warriors. He had located his land before its outbreak but returned to it after laying aside his musket. He secured it from the government, and there had not been turned a furrow upon it when he settled thereon. This land remained in the family until the 1970's when Paul Jameson, son of Samuel C. Jameson died. Samuel C. Jameson, son of Samuel and Matilda and known by our family as ``Uncle Sam'' farmed the land as long as he lived. The family farm lay to the west of Hanover about one and a half miles, and the railroad passed very near it. On the Platte Map of the township in 1873 Mrs. Jameson's land is shown as 126 1/4 acres, laying to the east of W. Dean and J. Craig, southwest of Hanover, between the Mississippi River bottoms and the Apple River.
With the migration of Mary Eliza Jameson Hammond to
Tennessee, rather than Texas as O. W. Hammond proposed, the
Jamesons continued their long itinerary of travels across the world.
According to information from a book published about the
Jamesons[23]
the itinerary seems to be the following:
The Jamesons were of Scottish parentage migrating to Ireland in 1619, but the first of our line to come to America was: Hugh who sailed from Londonderry, county Ulster, Ireland, on August 4, 1746 for Boston, Mass. He married Jane Barr (ca. 1753) and settled in Dunbarton, (then called Starkstown) New Hampshire. Their son Hugh was born in N.H. in 1764, and married Janet Brocklebank (b. N.H.) and reared their family there and in Canandaigua, New York, where their son Samuel was born.
Samuel, b. 1789, as a grown man migrated from New York to Jo Daviess County, Illinois in time to get free land and participate in the Black Hawk War (1832) with the Indians. In 1854 he married (for the third time) to Matilda Craig. Their daughter, Mary Eliza Jameson (b. Nov. 2, 1858) married on Sept. 20, 1883, Orson Ward Hammond. He promptly took her with him to Texas, and later (1886) to Madison Co., Tennessee. There she bore three daughters:
It is Clara Matilda and James Leven Harton, who in later years followed their son James to California, who kept the traveling Jameson reputation. They moved about 1942 to Los Angeles, Calif., where James Lev and Clara M. died and some of their children live yet: but some are still on the move and have doubled back to Wichita, Kansas!