John and Jessie Black Sinclair

John Sinclair was born in 1814 in Barglass, Scotland. He moved to Dalnanen, near Oban, with his family before coming to North America in 1831. He married Jessie Black in Canada in 1849, after having known her for only a week. He met her at a church meeting of Baptists or Disciples. According to Annie Sinclair Munro, he was a big man, but not six feet, brown hair, blue eyes, fair skin. He was sick a long time with an incurable disease of the speen and died in Blenheim, Ontario, Canada in 1864 at the age of 50. This photo was taken before his death but his face seems to reflect his illness. Notice the hand-painted gold on Jessie’s earrings, necklace and ring. The photograph was a tintype.

In 1927, Annabel Sinclair Ramsey wrote a brief family history. She said, “My father John Sinclair and my mother Jessie Black Sinclair were married at Owen Sound, Ontario [Canada] about 1850. My father came from [four miles from Oban] and mother was reared on or near the Isle of Mull on the SW Coast of Scotland. I think I have an uncle buried in the church yard of Ionia “

Jessie Black came to Canada and married John Sinclair who died in 1864. Jessie was a widow with six children, and, desiring to escape the cold winters of Canada, she sent her oldest son to a World’s Fair to choose a place to live. He had trouble deciding between the Georgia and Texas exhibits, but chose Texas. The two sons came first and bought land near Bertram in eastern Burnet County. They were followed by the rest of the family in 1881. The only World’s Fair in the US in the correct time period would have been the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.

In a letter from Flora M. Sinclair to Sinclair Wilson in 1944, she quoted from Pioneer Reminiscences by Alex Sinclair, saying his brother John married  "Miss Jessie Black of Eramosa." In 1845 Eramosa was described as a township in the Wellington District. It was “thickly settled principally by Scotch and Irish, many of whom have fine farms.” Eramosa is in Wellington County in midwestern Ontario, Canada, SW of Toronto.

According to Flora M. Sinclair, who asked her Aunt Annie Munro about the Blacks, said they came from around Glencoe, Canada and were related to the Chatham Lamonts. Euphemia Black married Duncan Lamont. The Lamonts were prominent in Chatham. James Lamont started the Chatham Natural Gas Co, but was also the one who went into business with Duncan Sinclair and cheated him out of all his money, causing him to go bankrupt as well as the Marshalls who had backed Duncan’s debts. Flora also said that Jessie came from the Isle of Mull and that when John got annoyed with her, he would call her a ‘Mull woman.’ That was supposed to set her feet on the ground.

The 1871 Federal Census of Ontario, Canada listed a Jessie Sinclair as 47, born in Scotland, member of Disciples of Christ, occupation - fameress, in the district of Kent, sub-district Harwich, division 4, page 17, microfilm reel C-9891.

According to an article on Flora Jane Sinclair (Mrs. Martin Burr) Moreland in the 1917 book, The Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, by Sinclair Moreland, her mother, Jessie Black was a near relative of David Livingston (1813-1873), missionary and explorer who discovered the Victoria Falls in Africa, but she really wasn’t. Her husband, John Sinclair was 1C2R of Annie Sinclair Munro. John Sinclair and Ann McKillop were his grandparents and her great great grandparents. Annie Sinclair Munro’s mother, Catherine Livingstone was supposedly a cousin of David Livingstone, but the connection was through her mother not her Sinclair father.

Also in the article, Sinclair said, when John Sinclair died [in 1864], Flora was just 4 years old. "Her mother, realizing the necessity of greater education for her children, moved with them to Ann Arbor, Michigan about the year 1877, where the University is located. From Ann Arbor, Mrs. Moreland went to Mannistee where she taught school for a time. In 1881, Mrs. Moreland came to Texas .. Her two brothers preceded her about a year."

The 1880 US census has a Jessie St. Clair, 56, widowed, keeping house at 251 First Street, in the 2nd ward, Manistee, Manistee County, MI. Her daugter, Belle, 22 was teaching school, son Malcolm, 20, was a clerk in a store, but on the day the census was taken, June 12th, he was suffering from rheumatism and unable to work. Daughter, Euphie, 18 was also a store clerk. Sinclair Moreland said the family moved to Ann Arbor around 1877, but in 1880, they were living in Manistee, 250 miles from Ann Arbor.

Jessie Black Sinclair died on 2 Nov 1894 in Bertram, Texas and is buried in the Bear Creek Cemetery in Burnet County, Texas, between Bertram and Mahomet.

A photo of Jessie Black Sinclair's grave stone