Background
James was born on August 27, 1797, in Weybridge, Vermont, the youngest of the thirteen children of Daniel and Mary (Emmes) James.
(Excerpt from Account of an Expedition From Pittsburgh to ...)
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Botanist geologist medical practitioner
James was born on August 27, 1797, in Weybridge, Vermont, the youngest of the thirteen children of Daniel and Mary (Emmes) James.
James attended the Addison County Grammar School and Middlebury College, from which he was graduated in 1816. The next three years he spent in Albany studying botany and geology with Dr. John Torrey and Prof. Amos Eaton and medicine with his brother, Dr. John James.
In the spring of 1820 James became botanist, geologist, and surgeon of the expedition commanded by Maj. Stephen H. Long, sent to explore the country between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. The expedition took the route along the Platte and South Platte and reached the Rockies in July 1820. On July 14, James and two companions reached the summit of Pike's Peak, the first white men to accomplish the feat. The mountain was christened James' Peak by Major Long, and the name appears on some of the earlier maps, but has since been supplanted by the name of the reputed discoverer. After exploring the Arkansas, Red, and Canadian rivers the expedition disbanded at Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Using the notes of Maj. Long and other members of the party, James wrote an Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains Performed in the Years 1819 and '20. In the absence of any detailed narrative by Major Long, this work became the official report of the expedition. While it is still valuable for its accounts of the native fauna and of the Indian tribes, the report "was not fitted to its purpose; it belonged to the scientific explorations of later times. " In 1823 James became an assistant surgeon in the United States army. He was appointed botanist, geologist, and physician of the second Long expedition (1823), but the news failed to reach him until after its departure. Stationed at Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien) and Mackinac, he became interested in Indian languages and compiled several Indian spelling books, translated the New Testament into the Ojibway tongue (1833), and wrote an article on Indian language for the American Quarterly Review (June 1828) and A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (1830). From these George Bancroft drew freely in preparing the sections on the languages, manners, religious faith, and political institutions of the Indians in his History of the United States. Resigning from the army (1833), James was for a time associated with Edward C. Delavan in editing the Temperance Herald and Journal at Albany. In 1837-1838 he was sub-agent for the Potawatamie Indians at Old Council Bluffs, Nebraska, after which he settled on a farm at Rock Spring, near Burlington, Iowa. Here he spent the remainder of his life, running a station of the Underground Railroad. James died at Rock Spring at the age of sixty-four, on October 28, 1861.
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(Excerpt from Account of an Expedition From Pittsburgh to ...)
On April 5, 1827 James married Clarissa Rogers, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, by whom he had one son.