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| JAMES NEEDDHAM, COTTON SPINNER 1834 SWANSEA JUG. |
£1250 |
Possibly the most important piece of historical pottery we have had, From the most humble beginning's in Lancashire to land owner and Methodist preacher in Virginia.
John Needham was born in Oldham, Lancashire on the 26.5.1812, the son of John Needham (b.1779) add followed his father probably in 1834 as a cotton spinner in the Lancashire mills. They were very poor and although he had little early education , attended night school and Sunday school he had a thrust for education becoming a pupil teacher by the time he was 18. taking his arithmetic exam in 1856 with his own son. He soon became a class leader and was licensed to preach to the Independent Methodists .
He married Martha Ogden (b.1811) on 31.8.1835, although preaching he was still working in the Cotton mills and still very poor and with little prospects, so in 1840 himself wife and there two children followed his sister Mary and emigrated to the United States and the town of Sangamon and onto Springfield and then Jacksonville Illinois.
He first worked as a Hog driver before working at the Haskell carding Mills in Virginia. As a Independent Methodist in England he soon adapted to the doctrines of the Protestant Methodists in the US. he became an active and zealous member of the Virginia Church. By the early 1850s he had brought a number of properties including a large farm. One The Direen Cabin was used as a church and school house until the Needham School house was built in 1857. The following year in October a great storm hit the town, the children were sent home, after nothing was left except the sills and floor and a very startled but unharmed teacher. And he had the present school buildings at Anderson Station built. In 1859 he became a deacon and admitted as a preacher on the Chandlerville circuit.
His wife died 19.8.1851 and he remarried a widow Mrs Cecilia Cooper. From his first marriage there were born eight children, from the second four.
He died at the age of 90 12.Jan 1903. and is buried at Walnut Ridge Cemetery |
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