Simms, Ignatius R.

Born: 1783-11-05 Maryland

Died: 1852-10-28 Jacksonville, Illinois

Flourished: Jacksonville, Illinois

Ignatius R. Simms was an early settler in Morgan County, Illinois. Simms lived in Charles County, Maryland, where he married Sally Hanson Fowke, in 1805, with whom he had one child. Sally died in 1808, and in 1809, Simms married Harriett Middleton, with whom he had eight children. About 1811, Simms and his family moved to Madison County, Kentucky. By 1828, Simms and his family had relocated to Morgan County, where he purchased approximately 400 acres of public land near Jacksonville. In the 1840s, he owned and operated the Western House, a hotel in Jacksonville. Hearing loss forced Ignatius to offer this establishment for sale in June 1848. In 1850, he was living with Harriett in Jacksonville and owned real estate valued at $6,000.

Gravestone, Diamond Grove Cemetery, Jacksonville, IL; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Morgan County, 68:47, 52, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Third Census of the United States (1810), Charles County, MD, 332; Harry Wright Newman, The Maryland Semmes and Kindred Families (Baltimore, MD: Maryland Historical Society, 1956), 28-29, 37; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Jacksonville, Morgan County, IL, 187; Sangamo Journal (Springfield, IL), 29 June 1848, 3:6; Ignatius Robert Simms to Chatham Hooe Simms, 10 April 1846, Martin Van Buren Culver Letters, Spared and Shared 4: Saving History One Letter at a Time, https://sparedshared4.wordpress.com/letters/1846-ignatius-robert-simms-to-chatham-hooe-simms/, accessed 3 December 2019.