Montgomerys of Pennsylvania, Tennessee,
Missouri, Illinois, and other States

Some time after the Irish Rebellion in 1649, when peace was brought about by the methods and management of Cromwell, the Montgomerys of the branch of the family herein mentioned moved from Scotland into Ireland, where they settled in the northern part of the province of Ulster.  There they lived, and after the manner of the country grew and prospered, except that in their religion and philosophy they were Scotch and that part of Ireland in which they lived became and so remains to this day rather a part of Scotland than of Ireland.  For with these people came and continued to come their neighbors, kinsmen and friends from Scotland, and though they married and inter-married among the Irish people to such an extent that they became known as Scotch-Irish, still, except for a new energy and impulsiveness picked up from the Irish blood, they stamped Ulster with Scottish ideas and religion and customs almost as much as if they had transferred to their new homes their native land.  But the government of Great Britain, as dispensed in Ireland has never been satisfactory to the Irish people, and it was impossible to oppress the Irish in Ireland without oppressing also their Scotch-Irish neighbors and friends so that the feeling among the Irish and the Scotch-Irish became one of general complaint as it was one of general suffering; and the Scotch-Irish, and the Montgomerys among them were not backward in making their complaints and grievances known, and when an opportunity was presented to secure greater liberty under both law and conscience by moving to America they eagerly seized it and made the best of it.

Under the impulse just mentioned, about the year 1768 or 1769, Thomas Montgomery, then a young man about 20 years of age, with four brothers, emigrated from Ireland to America.  He did not have to be Americanized, for that had taken place in him before he came, so that in the contest then on between the colonies and the mother country he was in full sympathy with the colonies; and when the War of the Revolution came on he fought with the Americans for freedom in America, enlisting and serving in the state of Pennsylvania; his first act of war being a personal encounter with a British recruiting officer who was offering special inducements to one of his companions to enlist with the Tories; in which encounter, because of his great strength and activity, he did not come off second best.  He served as a private, and after the close of the war went with his family through Kentucky into that part of North Carolina which afterwards became a part of Tennessee, now known as Blount county, Tennessee, where he settled near the city of Knoxville.

Although a young man, he was married when he came to America, his wife being a woman of rare intellect and character, speaking the Scotch dialect with perfect accent, who became a great Indian interpreter, readily acquiring and conversing in the language of all the Indian tribes living or trading in the section of country in which she lived.  She learned their languages with great ease and spoke them fluently.

Thomas Montgomery was a man over six feet in height, of great strength and courage, of ruddy complexion, with blue eyes and a well-marked Roman nose; a lover of horses and dogs, and rather too much inclined to the race-course to match with the revival spirit that rolled like a wave over the country at the opening of the eighteenth century; and though he fell in with it and gave it his influence finally, he transmitted to all his children a fondness amounting to almost a passion for fine horses, fine cattle and fine dogs.  He and his wife lived and died in Blount county, Tennessee, and were buried in the cemetery of a Presbyterian church on Bakers Creek, he having died in 1830 and she two years later.

To him were born eight children:  David, William, John Patton, George, Samuel, Margaret, Elizabeth and Susan.

Samuel Montgomery was born in the year 1786 in that part of North Carolina which afterwards became the eastern part of Tennessee.  He grew with his brothers to a vigorous and manly manhood tall, active, strong, and for his own good rather too full of physical courage; for his physical recklessness resulted in the breaking of both his arms and one of his legs a very serious matter in a new country where surgery was practically an unknown art.  At the age of twenty-one, on the 20^th day of August, 1807, he was united in marriage with Nancy Jones, a daughter of Col. Richard Jones, who had been a playmate of George III, King of England, when he was Prince of Wales, and who had emigrated to America, through Canada, and settled in Washington county, Tennessee, then a part of North Carolina.  This marriage was performed by the Rev. Samuel Doake, a minister of the Presbyterian church, and the founder of Doake College in East Tennessee.

Nancy Jones Montgomery, whose brother was a lawyer of the firm of Nixon, Burnett, & Jones of Knoxville, Tenn., and at the time of his death a young man of great promise, was no ordinary woman.  Her intelligence, piety and perseverance made her a marked and marvelous woman, one who impressed her personality not only upon the members of her family, but upon every community in which she lived.  She spent her long and useful life in a new, wild country, but she tamed it wherever she went; and no sower ever cast seed into the ground with greater confidence or better results.  Her fields were the lives and consciences of her husband, her children and her neighbors, and she lived to rejoice in a perpetual harvest, and died in the 79^th year of her age, having lived to see the accomplishment of her hearts highest hope the establishment of a well-grounded and well-fruited hope and faith in her Savior and His mission among men.  With her many family cares and the pioneer country in which she spent the whole of her life, she knew not many books, but one Book she constantly studied and earnestly strove to know; and her life became like unto, if short of, her highest conception of that Book.

Samuel Montgomery enlisted as a private with Captain James Gillespie, at Knoxville, Tenn., in the Second War with Great Britain, and after completing the term of his service was honorably discharged at the same place.  In the year 1831 or 1832 he moved to Carroll county, Tenn., where he lived till the year 1851, at which time he moved to Dade county, Missouri, where he continued to live till the day of his death, July 26, 1856, when he was buried in Greenfield, in that county.  His wife survived him 14the day of his death, July 26, 1856, when he was buried in Greenfield, in that county.  His wife survived him 14 years, having died at the home of her son, the Rev. George W. Montgomery, in Coles county, Illinois, in the year 1870, where she was buried in the cemetery of the West Union Presbyterian church, loved and honored of all who knew her.

To Samuel and Nancy Montgomery were born eleven children:  Archibald, Lavinia, Francis Jones, Jane Ann, Mary, Elizabeth, Richard, George Washington, Sophia, Samuel Nelson, and Nancy Isabella Davis.

The children all lived to be grown, and all reared families except Mary, who wsa engaged to be married to a man since that time grown to be widely known as the Rev. J. L. Cooper, D. D., but who died in her 20^th year.

George Washington Montgomery, the eighth child of Samuel and Nancy Montgomery, was born July 7, 1824, in Blount county, Tennessee.  He moved with his parents to Carroll county, Tennessee, in the eighth year of his age, where he grew to manhood with his many brothers and sisters amid the stirring scenes and robust conditions of a new country, where men were planting homes in the virgin forest and contending with conditions almost as new and untried as those that confronted our first parents when they were informed that In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.  They had the forests of fell and the beasts of the fields to conquer.  And the open hand of Samuel Montgomery open, so open to the needs and requests of his friends that two fortunes, for that time, his own and that received from his wifes father, went in the payment of security debts that brought to him and his family no returns made his home in the wilderness one rather of robust and vigorous toil than of effeminate luxury; and to this George W. Montgomery, together with his five brothers, owed much of their princely good health and manly character, and habits of industry.  And about the only luxury he enjoyed, aside from the companionship of a community of young stalwarts of the forest like himself, came to him through the use of the fine horses to which his father, amidst all his reverses, had still clung.  The old out-door camp-meeting was then in its glory, and old Bethel Camp Ground was the annual place of gathering for worship for from twenty-five to fifty miles around.  And there it was, when but fourteen years of age, that he made a public profession of faith and connected himself with the Cumberland Presbyterian church, a profession and an action upon it filled with wide-reaching consequence to himself, to his family, and to the people in whatever section of the country he lived.  Connected with the old Camp Ground was established Old Bethel College.  To this he went as soon as he was prepared, and there he received both his literary and his theological training; and from that place he moved, in 1850, to Dade county, Missouri, where he began his pioneer life as a young preacher, and at intervals a teacher of day schools and of writing schools as the circumstances demanded.  He was strong as a lion and gentle as a lamb; a man of sound judgment, and gifted in oratory.  He had perfect command of himself and of his audience; and when occasion made it necessary he would carry his point by argument, in which he had no superior; by persuasion, of which he was a master; or by eloquence through all of which his sincerity and his deep earnestness ran like the gentle and almost irresistible pleading of a prayer.  He stood five feet and ten inches tall, weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, was never sick and never complained; was of fair complexion, with light brown hair, and skin almost as transparent as alabaster, and a voice as rich as the tones of a great pipe-organ; and with a character against which no imputation was ever cast, and upon which no stain was ever seen or looked for.  His eyes were blue, his nose Roman, his teeth regular, white and strong; and his presence in his family was like the shelter of a great rock, where no child ever felt or feared an enemy; and around and upon him they played without any thought of not being welcome, and climbed upon him for many years without finding a frown upon his face or a cross word in his mouth.

In the month of October, 1851, he was married to Sarah Ann Rankin, then in the 20^th year of her age, by the Rev. William Brown, a minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian church; she having been born July 22, 1832 and moved with her parents from Blount Co., Tennessee, to Dade county, in the year 1840.  She was a very sprightly active and most energetic young woman, who had never learned, and has not yet learned, that any possible thing which has not been done may not be done.  Nothing that had to be done was to her dishonorable of belittling, and she asked no one to do what she would not do herself.  Her hair was dark brown and long and silken and abundant.  Her features were classic, and to her form there was nothing to be added.  She traced her ancestry with much pride through many generations of the most aristocratic Presbyterian ancestors, in an unbroken chain, to the Scotland of three hundred years ago.  Hers was a happy, joyous childhood and young womanhood, where active out-door exercise and especially daring horsemanship in the case of wild deer and the fleet gray fox, in a still wilder country, with a house full of brothers, was not considered indelicate or unwomanly, but simply a part of the free and uncurbed life of a new and romantic country.  She was one of a family of eight children six sons and two daughters all of whom lived to be grown, married, and reared families; six of whom are still living, the youngest being nearly seventy years of age, the two youngest being ministers of the gospel in the Presbyterian church and three of them elders.

At the breaking out of the Civil War, the Rev. George W. Montgomery was living and preaching in south-west Missouri, in the very heart of the border-warfare region; and although born and reared in the South he was bitterly opposed to secession and gave to his opposition the whole strength of his character.  He did not believe that slavery was right, and he knew that secession was wrong.  And without going into the history of a prolonged and exciting and personally dangerous period, it may be stated that after the destruction of most of his property for army and guerilla purposes, he moved with his family to the state of Illinois, where he reared and educated his children, living most of the time at Oakland, in Coles county, but finally in Charleston, in the same county, where, after a long and useful ministry of more than fifty years, loved and venerated by all who knew him, and strong and vigorous in body and mind down to the injury which he received a few months before, and which resulted in his death, he died on Christmas morning, 1898; and his burial was attended by his eleven grown children, gathered from many states.  Sarah Ann Montgomery, his widow, is still in the enjoyment of good health, and spends most of her time visiting her children, though her home is with her son, Dr. J. T. Montgomery, in Charleston, Illinois, he being her oldest child, and superintendent of the Charleston Sanitarium.

To the Rev. George Washington Montgomery were born the following children:

John Theodore, born Oct. 18, 1852, who married Mary Ada Gerard, Oct. 12, 1876.  She was born Feb. 1856.  They live in Charleston, Illinois, where he enjoys an enviable reputation as a physician and surgeon, and is the father of five children:  1. Sarah Emily Montgomery, born July 4, 1877.  2. Mack Garfield Montgomery, born June 4, 1880.  3. Mary M. Montgomery, born May 2, 1882.  4. John Theodore Montgomery, born April, 1887.  5. George Jackson Montgomery, born May 22, 1889.

Mack Allen, born Aug. 24, 1854, who after completing his university course at James Milligan University, and serving for six years as president of Southern Illinois College, moved to the state of Mississippi, where (at Oxford) he entered the State University, took the law course therein, and began the practice of law; and where he has, with the exception of four years, been the United States attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi.  He is unmarried.  He has rendered valuable service in collecting data for this family; has visited the old Montgomery Castle and homestead near Ayr, Scotland, where Burns celebrated his love for his sweet Highland Mary and has been all over the North of Ireland and died with his brave Highlanders.  And if he had had time to hunt up family lines he had abundant opportunity, as he has traveled in forty states of the Union and throughout Canada.  But at all times he has been so occupied with other matters that he really had no time for outside matters.  His first trip abroad was in 1884 as a delegate to the Pan-Presbyterian Alliance at Belfast, Ireland; and he is a delegate to the same Alliance, which meets in England, 1903.

Mary Elizabeth Clementine Montgomery, born June 23, 1856, married to George W. Lippincott, Sept. 4, 1873.  He was born June 8, 1848.  They have seven children:

George W. Lippincott is a business man of fine character and unquestionable integrity, a man of affairs, and lives in Charleston, Ill.  Their oldest son, Rudolph Peck Lippincott, born Dec. 3, 1874, is a graduate of Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, and of Alleghany Theological Seminary at Alleghany, Pa.

2. Charles Allen Lippincott, born Oct. 24, 1876, married Carrie Crawford Heintern, Feb. 25, 1899; one child Elroy Allen Lippincott, born Aug. 18, 1901.

3. Emily L. Lippincott, born Jan. 15, 1879, married Oct. 12, 1897, Dr. R. H. Craig of Charleston, Ill.; one child Clotile Craig, born April 14, 1899.

4. Jessie L. Lippincott, born Dec. 26, 1880, married De. 24, 1899, ----------; one child Gladys, born Dec. 6, 1900.

5. Ruth L. Lippincott, born Dec. 25, 1882.

6. John Theodore Lippincott, born Jan. 24, 1885.

7. Mary L. Lippincott, born Feb. 18, 1887.

George William Montgomery, born Aug. 30, 1858, Greenfield, Mo., married July 2, 1884, to Nellie E. Mason, of Rockport, Ind., who was born at Grandview, Ind., April 22, 1862.  He is a graduate of Waynesburg College, Waynesburg, Pa., and of Alleghany Theological Seminary, and pastor of the Presbyterian church at Oakmont, Pa., the leading residence suburban city of Pittsburg, Pa.  He has two children:  Sarah Elizabeth, born Mary 19, 1995, at West Union, Pennsylvania, and George Mason, born at McKeesport, Pa., Nov. 10, 1890.

Samuel Thomas, born Nov. 6, 1860, educated in Waynesburg College, graduated from Alleghany Theological Seminary; married to Nettie Gowdy, of Enfield, Ill., by who she had four sons the oldest George Millage, the next Lowell, deceased; Walter Bindley and Donnell Gowdy.  They are located at Buffalo, Pa., where he is pastor of the Presbyterian church.

Laura May, born March 24, 1863 at Windsor, Ill.; married to Prof. Bindley Watkins Gowdy, of Enfield, Ill., at Oakland, Ill., but who has been for a number of years in charge of the city schools, first at Batesville and afterwards at Sardis, both places being county seats of Panola county, Miss.  They have five children:  Theodore Allen, born June 9, 1882, at Enfield, Ill.; DeErdra Alga Lena, born July 13, 1889, at Enfield, Ill.; Nettie A., born April 17, 1886, at Enfield, Ill.; Dixie A., born May 22, 1889, at Batesville, Miss.; and Laura Bindley, born Oct. 1, 1894, at Batesville, Miss.  There are few if any better teachers in the state than Prof. Gowdy.

Theodore Allen Gowdy was married at Charleston, Ill., Aug. 1, 1901 to Nellie M. Bishop, who was born at Charleston, Ill., Dec. 10, 1881.  To them was born John Monroe, Aug. 13, 1902.

DeErdra Algalena Gowdy was married Aug. 14, 1902 to William S. Profilet, of Natchez, Miss.

Ulysses Lincoln, born July 22, 1865, at Bethany, Ill., a graduate from Franklin College, Franklin, Ind., and from Alleghany Theological Seminary; married Miss Carrie E. Weise, Nov. 10, 1892, who died March 15, 1900, by whom he has two daughters Emma Devona, born Jan. 10, 1895, and Carrie Weise, born April 3, 1897.  He is pastor of the Presbyterian church at Thorntown, Indiana.

Sarah Lulu, born April 2, 1867, educated in Southern Illinois College; married to Thomas Morgan, editor and author, Colfax, Indiana, by whom she has five children, the oldest being Paul Hunter and Ruth, Lucile and Mary. 

Rose, born April 22, 1869, died Aug. 4, 1869.

Donnel Rankin Montgomery, born April 6, 1870, graduated from Franklin College, Indiana, and from Alleghany Theological Seminary; married Miss Sarah Blanche McGill; was consecrated as a missionary by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church at St. Louis, Mo., and is stationed at Jackson, Alaska, in charge of the Presbyterian Indian Mission.  He has one son about two years old Robert McGill Montgomery.

Carrie M. Montgomery, a twin with Donnel Rankin, born April 6, 1870, educated in the city high school of McKeesport, Pa., and having recently spent more than a year in Alaska, is now living in Charleston, Ill., with her sister Mary.

Finis Ewing, born March 22, 1877, graduated from the city high schools of Charleston, and from Washington and Jefferson College, where for the past two years he has been captain of their foot-ball team, and where he is for the present employed as teacher of English and History in Trinity Hall connected with the college, and is also engaged in the study of law.

From this sketch it will be seen that the Rev. George W. Montgomery was the father of seven sons, all of whom lived to be grown, and each of whom is earnestly engaged in and actively devoting his time to one of the learned professions.

A tradition runs through this family that they are related not in this country, but in Scotland and Ireland to General Richard Montgomery of Revolutionary fame; and that name runs through the entire line of all the descendants of Thomas Montgomery, the first ancestor of this family in America, except that of Rev. George W. Montgomery, father of this last family.

 - Excerpted from The Montgomerys and their Descendants
       Published by D. B. Montgomery in 1903 Pages 334 - 341