Dickey, James H.

Born: 1780-10-24 Halifax County, Virginia

Died: 1856-12-24 Delavan, Illinois

Flourished: Springfield, Illinois

James H. Dickey, Presbyterian minister, lived briefly with his family in South Carolina as a small child before the family settled in Kentucky in 1785. He was educated at home until 1801, when he commenced more formal study under an older brother before attending grammar school. Dickey worked as an assistant teacher as he continued his own studies and became a candidate for the ministry in 1806. After several years of traveling missionary work in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Ohio, he was ordained as a minister in southern Ohio in 1811, and served there until 1837 when he moved to Illinois. The following year, he was installed as the minister of Union Grove Church in Putnam County. Dickey retired from the ministry due to ill health in 1854 and moved to Springfield. He married first, Mary (Polly) Depew in 1810 and second, Jane (Jean) Wardlaw in 1817; between his two marriages he had nine children. With his first wife he was the father of Theophilus L. Dickey. Dickey was an abolitionist and he and his first wife emancipated five enslaved persons she had inherited on their marriage.

Joseph M. Wilson, The Presbyterian Historical Almanac, and Annual Remembrancer of the Church for 1864 (Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson, 1864), 6:118–32; Alfred A. Thomas, ed., Correspondence of Thomas Ebenezer Thomas (n.p.: n.p., 1909), 78; Kentucky, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1783-1965, 24 October 1810, Bourbon County; 6 November 1817, Warren County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Putnam County, IL, 338; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 29 December 1856, 2:4; Gravestone, Indian Point Cemetery, Athens, IL.