Person:James Weston (13)

James became first a school teacher and then "a Methodist minister of Repute," according to old records. He traveled to New York state where in 1794 he married Eunice Rodgers.

About 1800, James traveled on foot to Waterford, Erie County, Pennsylvania, where he paid $100 for 400 acres of land in LeBouf township. He and Eunice set up a new home there and spent the remainder of their lives on this land.

Their large family of 14 children grew up with the state of Pennsylvania. James contributed greatly to the orderly settlement of the area, serving as county commissioner, sheriff, justice of the peace and also as a member of the State Assembly for several years. James died in 1846 at the age of 78; Eunice died in 1839. They are buried in Mitchell cemetery near Cambridge Springs.

James Weston (1768) of Le Boeuf Township Erie Pennsylvania 1800 , LeBoeuf Township Eire County Pennsylvania

By Bruce Langley

A Tale of Two Westons: There is some unfortunate confusion regarding our ancestor James Weston (1768-1846) who married Eunice Rodgers and settled along French Creek in Le Boeuf Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania, and another James Weston (1755-1840), from Middleboro, Massachusetts, who fought in the Revolutionary War, was the fourth child of James Weston (b. 1723) and Abigail Dunham (b. 1720), married Sarah "Sally" Witherell, moved to Vermont, then settled in New York, and died in Au Sable (Clinton) N. Y., the father of eleven children. The family background of this second James Weston can be traced back to early-day pilgrims Edmund Weston and George Soule, and a complete geneology of this family is available at http://allgeneology.blogspot.com/2008/11/four-generations-of-james-weston-and.html See also the "Daniel McMillen Family Tree" (Ancestry), (owner <<dingwall>>), which has reliable information, including military and census records. See also "Mayflower Families Through Five Generations", pub. 1980, Vol. 3, pages 1, 6, 7, 13, 40, and 132. On many Weston profiles on Ancestry, these two Weston lines have gotten confused, often resulting in a proliferation of errors.

The roots of this confusion go back to the year 1909, when a great grandson of James and Eunice (Dr. Robert Finney Miller of St Louis) published an impressive volume of family history called "A Family of Millers and Stuarts" containing a great deal of valuable information about hundreds of Weston/Rodgers descendants, with occasional details and anecdotes about their interaction with historical events. A significant error was made, however, when Miller assigned the Revolutionary War records that belong to James Weston (1755) to James' father (1723) and put the son's birth year as 1768, and therefore claimed him as an ancestor. The reality is that our Weston ancestor (James, b. 1768) was born 13 years after that man (James, b. 1755) and had no military record. Dr. Miller's book enjoyed a wide distribution among a great many Weston/Rodgers descendants. It was self-published in Saint Louis and could be purchased for $ 5.15 "carriage free...if personal checks, please add ten cents...Dr. R. F. Miller, Suite 318-319 Frisco Bldg. St Louis, Mo." The book was the result of an astonishing amount of correspondence, as well as personal travel to see various relatives. By way of example, around 1908, he traveled to Seattle to meet some of his distant cousins, including Judge James Weston Langley. His visit was clearly recalled in 1981 by a granddaughter of the Judge, Jeanette Slauson Turner.

At present (2011) there are ongoing efforts by some descendants of James and Eunice to try to identify their parents, including attempts to find DNA matches. James Weston (1768) had fourteen children and seems to have been a prominent citizen of Le Boeuf Township, Erie County, being elected to various offices in Mill Village, including a stint in the state legislature, yet little is known of his background. His first child (Elizabeth) was born in New York in 1795. About 1797 he settled along French Creek in southern Erie County, about two miles north of the boundary with Crawford County, where he remained until his death in 1846. Six of his children appear in the 1880 census and give the following indications of where their parents were born: for James, five say Massachusetts and one says Connecticut; for Eunice, two say Connecticut, two say Massachusetts, one says New York, and one says Rhode Island. Another of their children (Jane Weston Langley), who died in 1878, indicated that the Weston family was "of German background". It remains to be seen if any new clues will emerge.