James Herrington 1812 - 1893

HERRINGTON, CAVIN, MARSHEL, EMMONS, BAKER, WALLACE, ROSS, DAY, BERRY, STEVENS, CLEAVES

Posted By: Charles E. Hales
Date: 8/21/2003 at 17:22:50

James Herrington 1812 – 1893
And The Herrington Bible
This is the Ohio emigrant and his wife, Melvina Mann Cavin, who lived in Southeast Iowa long enough to have all ten children born there between the years of 1842 and 1861. He was born in the rolling tree-covered hills of Eastern Ohio in what was then Jefferson County later to be divided into Carroll County. Today a quaint country way continues past the old stone house and nearby Herrington Church named for his Revolutionary War grandfather, John Herrington who died in 1862 at the age 103.
James was the youngest of eleven children, apparently a wanderer, who did not chose to put down any roots in Ohio. It was said that he was a favorite of his mother, Hannah Marshel Herrington, who died in 1836, and that she gave him the Herrington Bible, which was printed in 1787.
He eventually arrived in Iowa locating near his sister Sarah Herrington Hales’ son Moses Hales and wife, Mary Jane Emmons, who, in 1840, began a successful merchandise and milling business at Keosauqua on the Des Moines River. James with a family of six was residing in Harrisburg Township, Van Buren County in the census of 1849 and 1850.
James had an older brother Nathan (1808 – 1887) residing in Keosauqua who with his wife, Julia Ann Baker, is buried in the Oak Lawn Cemetery at the north edge of town.
Between 1858 and 1864 James farmed some five miles from Bloomfield, Iowa. During one of the severe Iowa rainstorms the family bible was badly damaged, however the record of births and deaths was recovered. James and Melvina’s ten children are:
Martha Herrington Wallace 1842 – 1923
Mary Herrington Ross 1846 – 1905
William Herrington 1848 – 1928
John Herrington 1850 – 1927
Nathaniel Herrington 1851 –
James Herrington 1853 – 1916
Sarah Herrington Day 1857 – 1912
Elizabeth Herrington Berry 1857 – 1932
George Herrington 1859 – 1937
Walter Lee Herrington 1861 – 1915

Their oldest daughter Martha married M. T. Wallace in Bloomfield in the fall of 1863 and left immediately with an oxen team for California in a caravan with thirty-seven other families. The following year James and the rest of the family also headed west to Sonoma County, California taking the family bible with them. Later they moved to San Benito County where James continued to farm, passing away at age 81. Both he and Melvina are buried at Hollister, California.
The bible was passed on to their daughter Elizabeth Herrington Berry Stevens in 1912, when Melvina died. The last known person in possession was a grand-daughter of James Herrington named Mary Melvina Cleaves (wife of Rev. Charles Hamilton Cleaves) the date was 1933 apparently in the San Francisco Bay area. Where it is today remains a mystery, but the search continues.

These two ggg-uncles (Nathan and James) of this writer created many descendants in VBC and California during the last half of the 1800's. Perhaps someone has knowledge of the Herrington Bible.

Also see this Bio
 

Van Buren Biographies maintained by Rich Lowe.
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