My Genealogy Hound

HARVEY SIMMONS, who has been a resident of Jamestown for over forty years, is a son of Philander and Mary Ann (Waid) Simmons, and was born in the town of Portland, Chautauqua county. New York, July 11, 1827. The Simmons, for three generations back, are to be traced as residents of Washington county, of which Zuriel Simmons, the paternal grandfather of Harvey Simmons, was a native and life-long resident. He owned a large farm, and being of good education and well versed in legal matters, was constantly employed in conducting civil cases before the magistrates. He was a whig in politics and married Sallie Hunt, by whom he had five sons and four daughters, who grew to manhood and womanhood. One of the sons, Philander Simmons (father), was born in 1797, and died in Jamestown in 1862. At an early age he came to the town of Portland, in which he purchased and cleared out a large farm in a section that then was in the woods. In 1855 he removed to Jamestown where he lived a retired life. He was a whig and republican in politics, and a member and deacon of the Free Will Baptist church. Mr. Simmons died December 13, 1882. He married Mary Ann Waid, and they reared a family of ten children: Eliza, wife of Frank Colt, of Jamestown; Leander, who died at Ashville, N. Y., in 1888, aged sixty-five years; Franklin, a lumber dealer; Harvey; Clarissa, widow of Hugh Mosier, of Brocton; Martha, widow of J. W. Clements, and wife of William Cobb, of Jamestown; Ira, who married Sarah E. Wilson, and served in Co. F, 112th N. Y. Vols., from August 25, 1862, to June 13, 1865; William H., a Union soldier in the late war and now a farmer ; Adelbert P. , who also served in the Union army, and Adaline, wife of Stephen Whitcher, of Mt. Vernon, Illinois. Mrs. Simmons was a daughter of Pember Waid who was born at Lyme, in Litchfield county, Connecticut, January 21, 1774, married Anna, daughter of Samuel Lord, and died February 15, 1852, in Crawford county, Pennsylvania, where he had owned and cultivated a farm for many years.

Harvey Simmons received the meagre education of his boyhood days in western New York, and commenced life for himself in the business of manufacturing scythe snaths and other tool handles. In five years he sold out and worked for some time with the manufacturing firm of Chase & Son. He then purchased seven acres of land in Jamestown, which he has continued to cultivate and improve until the present time. Mr. Simmons is a republican in politics, but has never aspired for any office within the gift of his fellow-citizens.

On March 15, 1851, he married Mary Ann Southwick, who was born in 1829, and is a daughter of Herman Southwick, a native of Cayuga county (who married Achesa Wellman), reared a family of ten children, came to Busti in 1856, and afterwards died at Oil Creek, Pa. To Mr. and Mrs. Simmons have been born five children: Mary, wife of Allen R. Manbert, a shoemaker and dealer in boots and shoes on Brooklyn avenue; H. Adelbert ; and Cora, who married G. D. Andruss, a photographer, of Jamestown, and has one child, Pearl I. Two others died in childhood.