John Downie and Mary Niblock

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Husband John Downie ¹

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died:  - Kansas
         Buried:  - near Winchester, Jefferson Co, KS

       Marriage: 1824 1

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Wife Mary Niblock ¹

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried:  - near Winchester, Jefferson Co, KS

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         Father: [Father] Niblock (      -      )
         Mother: 

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Children

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1 M James Niblock Downie ²

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           Born: 25 Mar 1825 - County Down, Ireland 1
     Christened: 
           Died: Abt 1903
         Buried:  - Mars Cemetery, Butler Co, PA

         Spouse: Jane Boyle Magee (      -Abt 1917) 2
           Marr: 13 Oct 1852 2

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General Notes: Husband - John Downie

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He married and settled on a farm in County Down, Ireland, and lived there for fifteen years, during which time they had six sons and two daughters born to them. In 1842 he and his wife and children left Ireland and came to America, landing in Washington after a nine weeks' voyage, and then, in a six-horse wagon, they and all their belongings came across the Allegheny Mountains to Brownsville, Pennsylvania, along the Old National Turnpike. From Brownsville they descended the Monongahela River to Pittsburgh, and after a short stay there, moved to Butler County, Pennsylvania, where the family lived until about 1856. This was the period of pre-Civil War excitement, and John Downie, being like most Covenanters, a man of strong convictions, was quick to identify himself with the anti-slavery cause. When the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, or as it was popularly known, the Squatter Sovereignty Bill, was passed, throwing Kansas and other western territory open to slavery, John Downie, with others, hastened to move into Kansas for the purpose of outvoting the slavery sympathizers. He and his family left Pennsylvania, traveled down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers by boat to St. Louis and up the Missouri River, but about fifty miles from St. Louis, the boat was attacked by border ruffians, and the Free State men were compelled to leave. John Downie and his family, however, continued their journey by land, and finally crossed into Kansas near Fort Leavenworth, and settled at a spot near where the town of Winchester was later located. In the struggles of "bloody Kansas" during this period, Mr. Downie was active on the side of the Free State men, both from religious convictions and from natural sympathies, and two of his sons later enlisted in the Union Army when the Civil War broke out. For ten years the Downies were the only Covenanter family in the territory of Kansas, but later they and a few other families who had moved in organized the Winchester Reformed Presbyterian, or Covenanter, congregation, on September 7, 1867. Afterwards John Downie moved to Wayne County, Nebraska, where he lived for some years, but he returned to Kansas and died there at the age of ninety-one. He and his wife are both buried near Winchester. They were the parents of twelve children, eight born in Ireland, four in America.

1 George P. Donehoo, Pennsylvania - A History (SW) (New York, NY; Chicago, IL: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1926), Pg 205.

2 George P. Donehoo, Pennsylvania - A History (SW) (New York, NY; Chicago, IL: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1926), Pg 206.