Mr. James Edward Nix

James Edward Nix was born in Greene County, Illinois in December of 1821. He is the son of Jane Kennedy and Ambrose Nix, who had met and married in Grayson County Kentucky in 1819. The Nix family, originating in the Carolinas, moved to Kentucky and then on to Greene County Illinois, settling there on a government land grant. James is the second oldest of the children in the family, and the only boy among the four. When his mother's death in 1827 was followed by his father's death a short three years later in 1830 the surviving children were divided up among the households of Ambrose Nix's siblings. James Edward was sent to be raised by his father's younger brother, John Nix and his wife Sarah Miller Nix. Sisters Suzanna and Deborah Nix returned to family members in North Carolina, while the youngest, Margaret, remain with another of the Illinois uncles.

James attended Beaucatcher's Academy in Lexington, Kentucky from 1837 until 1842 when he returned to Greenfield, Illinois and married his childhood sweetheart Caroline Hardcastle. In 1845 John Nix and his son David Harrison Nix decided to immigrate to Texas on a grants from the Peter's Colony Land Company and settle north of the town of Dallas near the Peter's Colony offices at Farmer's Branch. James and his wife Caroline decided to join the rest of the Nix family in the venture. The group arrived in Dallas County just before Christmas in 1845. In 1 846 James was issued a land certificate by the Peter's Colony Company and patented 640 acres near his Uncle John's new farm northeast of Farmer's Branch. Caroline Nix health was ill suited for life on the frontier, and after several unsuccessful pregnancies she succumbed to Typhoid fever in February of 1850. There were no surviving children from the marriage.

His own ill health led James Nix abandon full-time farming in the spring of 1858 and join Wade Hampton Witt and Alexander Perry as a partner in the Witt's mill and store located at Trinity Mills near the Denton County border. James, who has not remarried, is a frequent guest in the homes of both his Nix and Kennedy relatives in the area. With the coming of 1861 and the beginning of the Civil War his time is divided between business interests at Witt's mill, helping care for his cousin William Kennedy's property at Grapevine, and ardently trying to convince his sister Deborah to come to Texas from North Carolina. Although not an abolitionist nor a Lincolnite the condition of James health prohibits him from enlisting to fight for the cause.

The song you are hearing is "Aura Lee" Words by W.W. Fosdick, Music by George R. Poulton

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