Sherrod Sims, born in Virginia in 1730, fought in the French and Indian War and was present at Braddock's defeat in 1755. Twenty-four years later he was back in uniform fighting in the Revolution.

When the war was over, he moved with his family to the southern part of Lancaster County on Beaver Creek near present day Heath Springs. He and his sons were all hardworking farmers. A "tall, raw-boned, splendid old man, six feet high." Sherrod Sims lived to be 95 years old.

Sherrod Sims' grandson, John "Jack" Sims, inherited his grandfather's hearty constitution. Jack Sims' son, the eminent physician J. Marion Sims, described his father also being tall, "over six feet, well proportioned...a very handsome man...one of the best men, and best of husbands."

In his autobiography, "The Story of My Life," Dr. Marion Sims tells how his father became a politician and Lancaster's high sheriff (1830-1834). Jack Sims married Mahala Mackey in 1812.

At that point Sims was illiterate. Six months after Marion was born, Sims, then 23 years old, enrolled himself for schooling by Dr. Galick of Liberty Hill. An apt pupil, he became "an accomplished accountant and bookkeeper, and wrote a beautiful hand."

In the same year Sims married Mahala Mackey, the war with England broke out. Sims volunteered and went with a Lancaster company to Hadrell's Point at Charleston. Before long he was commander of his company.

When Sims returned to Lancaster, he organized a volunteer corps of riflemen. The uniforms were homespun, made by the mothers and wives of the men. Marion Sims wrote, "I was never so proud in all my life as when, a little boy, I marched with Captain Jack Sims, as they called him, at the head of Hunting-Shirt Rifles."

Eventually, Jack Sims became colonel of his regiment, which bore the reputation of being splendidly drilled; the Lancaster people believed it to be the best in the state.

Jack Sims was good with a rifle. His wife approved of his shooting quail and deer. He could drop his deer, running, at a distance of one hundred yards, but she did not like his fox hunting.

One winter Sims was involved in a contest with another man over who could kill the most foxes. Sims won the contest 52-20, and a hat from the other hunter, but he also nearly lost his life from pneumonia.

Dr. Barlett Jones persuaded Sims to quit fox hunting but he continued quail hunting, deer hunting and another favorite pastime, cockfighting. marion Sims pointed out that in his day, Jack Sims' sport was indulged in mainly by wealthy gentlemen of English descent but that it was now (in the 1880s) "in the hands of the uncultured and low and vulgar."

Marion Sims himself considered cockfighting as "inhuman, cruel and brutal." On his father's "great follies of life," Sims observed that as a result, "I have never seen a fox hunt, nor played a game of billiards, nor bet on a cockfight."

Jack Sims, who besides being sheriff of Lancaster District had run a hotel, been a surveyor and was a council member, in 1838 left Lancaster to settle in Mississippi. Less successful than the expected, Sims moved to New Waverly, Walker County, Texas, in 1853 to live with a married daughter. They named a Masonic Lodge in New Waverly, "John Sims Lodge."

Marion Sims said of Jack Sims: "No man ever had warmer friends, and was loved and honored wherever he lived. He had a military bearing, with courtly manners, was generous to a fault and kind to everyone."

Marion Sims said his father should have lived to be 95 as his father had. Instead, at the age of 78 his father imprudently rode a horse 15 miles to town in the hot July Texas sun, turned around and came back. Without stopping to rest, Jack Sims chopped wood for an hour. The result was a stroke that within a year felled him.