692 



HlSTOr.y 01' BUCKS COUNTY. 



and settled down to the life of an agricul- 

 turist. Shortly afterwarc. the Car Asso- 

 ciation was formed for the purpose of trac- 

 ing the cars of the diffeient lines, and Mr. 

 Gray was offered a position with them, but 

 this he declined for the reason that his 

 acceptance would have required him to 

 move to New York. He served one term 

 as a member of the city council gf Lambcrt- 

 ville, but has never sought or desired office. 

 In politics he is an Independent. He and 

 his wife are members of the Thompson 

 Memorial Presbyterian church, in which 

 he is one of the officers. Mr. Gray mar- 

 ried, in 1869, Louisa, daughter of Francis 

 Vanartsdalen, and granddaughter of Adrian 

 Cornell, senior, and two children have been 

 to them, Mary Frances and William Walter 

 (twins), of whom the latter survives and 

 is at home with his parents. 



JAMES L. BRANSON, of Langhorne, 

 Bucks county, was born in Belmont county, 

 Ohio, April "3, 1831, but is a descendant of 

 early English settlers in Burlington county. 

 New Jersey, where Thomas Branson was 

 a landholder in 1700. He married Eliza- 

 beth Day, daughter of John Day, of New 

 Hanover township, Burlington county, and 

 settled in Springfield township in the same 

 county, and reared a family of children 

 who have left numerous descendants. 



WilHam Branson, the great-grandfather 

 of the subject of this sketch, was born in 

 Burlington county and married there on 

 4 mo. II, 1753, Elizabeth Osborne, daughter 

 of John and Martha. (Antrim) Osborne. 

 Soon after their marriage they removed to 

 Stafford county, Virginia, where twelve 

 children were born to them. 



Jacob Branson, ninth child of James and 

 Elizabeth, and grandfather of .the subject 

 of this sketch, was born' in Stafford county, 

 Virginia, 51110, 8, 1771, and married there, 

 "according to the good order of the So- 

 ciety of Friends," Rebecca HoUoway, 

 daughter of Asa and Abigail Holloway. 



Isaiah Branson, father of James L., was 

 born in Stafford county, Virginia, February 

 25, 1799. In 1805 he removed witn his par- 

 ents to Belmont county, Ohio. Isaiah Bran- 

 son was one of nine children, if whom the 

 youngest, Ann Branson, born in 1809, was 

 an esteemed minister of the Society of 

 Friends and traveled extensively in that ser- 

 vice for a period of over fifty years. The 

 journal kept by her of her travels and min- 

 istrations was published by the Ohio Yearly 

 Meeting of Friends after her death in 1892. 

 In her eightieth year she visited the New 

 England Yearly Meeting at Westerly. Rhode 

 Island, the sessions of which covered a pe- 

 riod of nine days, and took a prominent part 

 in the proceedings. At this tiine she also 

 visited and attended a number of meetings 

 in and around Philadelphia, speaking with 

 much force and fervor. The last entry was 

 made by her in her journal five days before 

 her death, at the age of eighty-three years. 



Isaiah Branson married in 1828 Sarah 

 Gould Lawton, who was born at Marietta, 

 Ohio, November 14, 1802, and was a daugh- 

 ter of James and Susanna (Gould) Lawton, 

 who were married at Portsmouth. Rhode 

 Island, 1 1110. I, 1789, and removed to Ohio 

 in 1795. The Goulds and Lawtons were 

 among the earliest settlers at Newport, 

 Rhode Island, Jeremiah and Pricilla Law- 

 ton coming from England and settling there 

 in 1637. Their son Daniel became an ear- 

 nest and eloquent minister of the Society 

 of Friends, and in the year 1659, as re- 

 corded in his diary, along with two other 

 men and three women, received "thirty 

 stripes on the bare back for no other reason 

 than being Quakers." James and Susanna 

 Lawton settled in 1795 at Barlow, Washing- 

 ton county, Ohio, near Marietta, where 

 members of the. family still reside on the 

 old homestead.- James lived to the age of 

 ninety-two years and Susanna, his wife, to 

 the age of ninety-four years. Isaiah Bran- 

 son, father of the subject of this sketch, 

 lived to the age of eighty-six years and ten 

 months, and -Sarah, his wife, to the age of 

 ninety-eight years and nine months, a most 

 remarkable record of longevity in one 

 family. 



James Lawton Branson, the subject 

 of this sketch,, was born and rearea 

 in Belmont county, Ohio, and received his 

 education in the Friends' schools of that 

 county. At the age of nineteen years he 

 accepted the position of district school 

 teacher, in which position he served for 

 seven years in his native county, and in 

 Richmond, Indiana, where the family re- 

 moved in 1852. Having inherited a me- 

 chanical turn of mind from his ancestors, 

 several of whom were more or less skilled 

 in mechanical work, he turned his atten- 

 tion to the improvement of mechanical ap- 

 pliances, and in 1858 was granted a patent 

 for an improvement in knitting machines. 

 In i860 he obtained a patent on improved 

 hand looms, which were manufactured at 

 Cincinnati, Ohio, and were used extensively 

 ■ during the civil war. in the weaving of cloth 

 out of which clothing was manufactured 

 for the use of the Union soldier .,. The sales 

 of these machines, during a period of three 

 months amounted to over $60,000, James 

 L. Branson entered the army in tlie spring 

 of 1864 in Company G, One Hundred and 

 Twenty-fourth Regiment, Indiana Volun- 

 teers, and in General Schofield's corps of 

 General Sherman's army went to Atlanta. 

 He was with the army of Sherman from 

 the time it entered Smoke Creek Gap, near 

 Chattanooga, until Schofield's corps re- 

 turned north and fought the battle of 

 Franklin, Tennessee. He was then invalided 

 and returned home. He is a member of the 

 Ohio Society of Philadelphia. 



Mr. Branson, though always a busy, in- 

 dustrious and energetic man, has in the 

 midst of his duties always found time to 

 keep himself w^ell informed on all tTie main 

 topics of the times, and has always mani- 

 fested a deep interest in all that pertained 



