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Reminiscences of JAMES PARKINSON - "I was born in Ohio, near Wheeling W. Va., Dec. 22, 1805. My parents removed from there when I was an infant to Washington county, Pennsylvania, and remained there till I was ten or twelve years old, then moved into Green county and lived there several years, and while there my father made the first printing press that was ever used in that county, he also invented a machine for rifeling gun barrels, and put one up at Harper's Ferry for the United States Government, which proved a great success for the government, and some government officials lied and swindled him out of it. That same machine is used in a manner in rifeling gun barrels to this day. That machine was put up in about from 1815 to 1820. My grandfather (Parkinson) was a British soldier in the Revolutionary War with England, and did not return to England at the close of the war. He married a woman of Irish descent who lived to be nearly ninety years old. What little education I got, I received in the common schools of Pennsylvania. I have worked for five and eight dollars per month. My parents raised twelve children to be men and women. From Green county, Pennsylvania, we moved to what is now Marshal county, West Virginia, and the family remained there until my father died, August 11, 1848. Some time after that my mother removed to this State with one of her daughters, Mrs. Craig, near Oquawka, and died there October 24, 1853. In the fall of 1830, my elder brother and I started from home in Virginia for Illinois, on horseback, with a model of a mill that our father had invented, which would do the work of a four foot stone with a two foot one. We carried that model behind us on our horses to Sangamon county, and stopped at David McCoy's, (who had a mill, and lived about ten miles west of Springfield), and there started one of our mills and stayed there all winter, that was the winter of the deep snow. We went deer hunting before the snow got over two feet deep one day, and caught two deer on our horses, but when the snow got to its greatest depth, there was no such thing as getting about on the prairies.

"We were happily situated to what most of the people were, for we had a mill and plenty to grind and eat, while a great many had to live on hominy. It was about the last of February before people could crop the prairies, for the snow. That winter we sold our interest in the mill business in Illinois, and went back to Virginia in the spring of 1831, and remained there till the next fall, and then returned to Illinois, and stopped at the same place that I did at first. That fall the cold weather set in very early, and had frosts and freezing weather so soon that it spoiled all the corn from seed, so in the spring of 1832 we had to send south for seed corn, and pay $2 per bushel, and that did not grow well, so we had a very poor show for a crop that year, but made a light crop. In January, 1833, I went to Arkansas and stopped near Little Rock, and started a mill there, sold out, and came back to Illinois, making my home at David McCoy's. I then began to think I was old enough to marry. I had formed an acquaintance with a Miss Mahala Earnest previously, and had become somewhat smitten with her, and so on November 7, 1833, Mahala Earnest, who was born December 7, 1811, in Kentucky, and was the daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth (Sims) Earnest, and I, were married. We have raised three girls and two boys, viz: Mary Jane, born November 1, 1834, and married William Baldwin; Grizella Ann, born March 22, 1836, and married W. T. Bradford; Clarinda Adeline, born January 22, 1838, married Thomas B. Petefish; John J., born January 23, 1840, married Augusta Patteson, and William H., born October 31, 1842, married Sarah Jane Bradford. Mr. Petefish and family live in Kansas. William H. and family live in Missouri. My son, John J., served three years in the war and was honorably discharged, and my son, William H., aided the cause by sending a substitute. I had the first scouring plow ever used on Spring Creek, invented and made by William Sprouse, of Rock Creek. I became quite interested in the success of Mr. Sprouse and furnished the money to aid him in procuring the patent. I have served twelve years as justice of the peace, before this county adopted township organization, and was elected first and second supervisor of the town. I reside one mile from where we were married. Own two hundred and fifty acres of land, on the road leading from Springfield to Jacksonville, eight miles from Springfield, under a fair state of cultivation. My wife and I are supporters of the Methodist Church."