Maternal Sims Line
I have 2 Sims (maternal as well as paternal) lines that I’m researching in Alabama. My maternal line begins with Waller Sims who married Mary Bradley in the mid 1810's and settled as a farmer in the Abbeville District, an area in the hill country of northwestern South Carolina just south of Greenville. Mary Bradley had been born in 1800 or 1801 in South Carolina and Waller Sims was born about 1793 in Virginia. By 1812 he was living in South Carolina. In the War of 1812 he enlisted in Captain Cunningham's Company of South Carolina militia. In 1833, Waller Sims, at about the age of forty, caught the Alabama Fever and decided to take his family of wife and five or six children to a brighter future in Alabama. As was the custom, the Sims family probably covered the hundreds of miles requiring weeks of arduous travel in a group, probably with some of Mary's kin, the Bradley’s. They would likely have crossed into Georgia at Augusta, taken the Federal Road across Georgia to Columbus, crossed over the Chattahoochee River into Alabama and taken the Road to Montgomery County. They stopped when they arrived at Montgomery. I do not know exactly when they went to Pike County, Alabama but that is where Mary died Bet. 1874 – 1880.

By 1820, Waller and Mary had two children, both boys. The names of these sons were not revealed in the census. The next census in which Waller Sims appeared, 1840 Lowndes County, showed the two sons to be in their twenties and still living with their father. The next census, 1850, was the first one to list children's first names. By this time the two oldest sons were no longer in Waller Sims' household. Therefore, the names of the two oldest sons were never given in the census and remain unknown. Waller and Mary Sims had ten children, eight of whose names are known from the census.

On December 3, 1833, Waller Sims went to the Cahaba Land Office in Cahaba to purchase a plot of the public land in the Cahaba district. That day he bought 120 acres and, at $1.25 an acre, paid $150 for it. About a year later, on January 23, 1835, he returned to purchase an adjacent forty acres making his total holding a square plot of 160 acres. His property was two miles northeast of Letohatchee, in Lowndes County.

The plot that Waller Sims acquired was good land on the fringe of the Black Belt. Presumably the Sims family settled on the land and made a productive farm. If they did, however, they did not stay long. On January 12, 1839, only a few years after buying the land, Waller Sims sold his entire holding to James C. Rivers for the sum of $1,700, more than five times as much as he had paid for it.

What the Sims family did after this sale is unclear. Apparently they remained as farmers in southeastern Lowndes County until 1851. Waller Sims was a charter member and trustee of Bethel Methodist Church. Bethel Church is in extreme northeastern Butler County, a few miles east of Fort Deposit, off Highway 31 near the corners of present-day Butler, Lowndes, and Crenshaw counties. Methodist families in the area formed the church in 1841.

The Census of 1850 showed Waller Sims at age sixty to be a respectable farmer in Lowndes County with wife and eight children at home: "Martha, Mary, Caroline, Francis, Waller, Wesley, Weston, and Olden," ranging in age from twenty-three to seven.

On October 21, 1851, Waller Sims acquired another plot of land, this one in Butler County (in present-day Crenshaw County). Under Military Warrant 2670, Military Act of 1850, he was deeded 206 acres. This property is one mile north-northwest of Honoraville. The Hopewell Cemetery is adjacent to the property on the west side. The Sims then moved onto their new holding in Butler County. Waller Sims was listed as a real estate taxpayer in Butler County in 1856. The census of 1860 shows him to be, at age sixty-seven, a typical yeoman farmer owning $1,180 in land and $680 in personal property. He did not own a slave (apparently he never owned one).

Waller Sims died between 1866 and 1870. It is not known exactly when he died or where he was buried. By 1870, the widow Mary Sims had moved herself and her household of four unmarried daughters (Martha, Caroline, Francis, and Weston), ages forty-three to twenty-eight, to Pike County to rent property. She took up residence next to Henry M. Bradley, either her younger brother or nephew, in southwestern Pike County near Henderson.

To support herself and her daughters, Mary Sims sold 120 acres of her property near Honoraville for the sum of $180 to P. W. Roper and A. L. Sims on January 12, 1871. No doubt struggling to support her family, Mary Sims sold the other eighty acres in 1874. After 1871 she did receive a small pension as the widow of a War of 1812 veteran. Mary Sims died, apparently between 1874 and 1880 while living in Pike County. The exact date of her death and place of burial are unknown. The four Sims spinsters went to live with their brother John W. Sims. The above information on my maternal Sims family has been researched and compiled by Joyce Sims Severt and Ronald James Caldwell, among others who have contributed.

Paternal Sims Line
The earliest known Sims’ on my father’s side of the family are the siblings of Sims parents whose names are not known at the time of this writing. It is presumed that this family originated in Columbus County, North Carolina, as there is a deed registered there signed by Susanna (mark), Benjamin Sims, James Sims, Jesse Williams (mark), John Simmons (mark), Moses Williams, and Elizabeth (mark). This deed sold the first Moses land grant to his son John. It is witnessed by William Sims. Several deeds have been found where William Sims witnessed or was part of a deed to members of the family. On the original 1792 land grant it is signed by Moses Williams (mark). From records located, it appears that some of the Sims siblings made their way to Pike County, Alabama while others seemed to have moved to Jasper County, Mississippi.

Peruse these pages and go back in time with me to the early days these Sims families and the extended families created through marriage migrated to Alabama. Should any branch of these families appearing below look familiar, please contact me. I feel strongly that both of my Sims lines tie in at some point and I hope that with YOUR help, I can find it.