James Ridings

• General Notes
  • 
    He married Ann NEWMAN and Elizabeth COMPTON, with a total of 15 children.
    
    James (Jimmy) Ridings wanted to come to America so badly, and couldn't book passage, for reasons unknown, that he stowed away in a water barrel on board a ship, with a vase full of water to keep him alive. When his water and/or rations ran out and he made his presence known, the ship's crew wanted to throw him overboard. He managed to convince them that his work as a deck-hand would be worth more to them than the rations he would eat. They decided to let him stay, and he landed in Virginia in the early 1800's. The vase that held the water which kept him alive is still in the family. He and his father, Dr. Peter Ridings, founded a town called Middletown, VA. Jimmy had a gristmill there on a stream which ran through the village. According to a relative who visited there, the remains of the mill are still there, as is a General Store.
    
    This information given by Rex Valentine, Descendent of James Ridings.
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    The old town is entitled to recognition as a manufacturing point. Clocks made at Middletown as far back as f786, were noted timekeepers, and were in demand far and near. Quite a lucrative business resulted from this single trade. The old wooden wheels were first used; then brass was introduced, and the artisans were able to produce the eight-day clock in attractive pattern. Some are in use to-day. The same enterprising clock makers also controlled the watch trade for many years; and strange to say, manufactured outfits for surveyors, producing a compass that gained enviable reputation. Doubtless the reader will be astonished to learn that the present County Surveyor, A. J. Tavenner, Esq., uses a compass manufactured by Jacob Danner at Middletown. Mr. T. purchased this old compass at a public sale several years since as a curiosity; and when he needed a new compass, sent this old instrument to an expert in a distant city, to have him determine its value. He was informed that the compass was of the type that had become rare, and was valuable, and the reputation of the maker was well established, and that the Surveyor could secure none better. This evidence of what the little town did in other years, is deemed worthy of preservation.
    
    The first successful effort to produce a machine to supplant the flail and threshing floor, to thresh wheat from the straw in this county, had its start in the same town. Some old men of today remember the one manufactured by James Ridings, about 1817; and then the McKeever. These inventions were wonders in their day. When it was discovered that if was possible to beat out one hundred bushels of grain in one day, farmers grew suspicious. Such threshing instruments served their day well. The writer remembers their marvellous work; and has watched this line of progress up to the time when the steam thresher has made it possible to separate wheat from straw—the former ready for the mill, and the latter perfectly ricked by an automatic ricking attachment. We might enquire what may not happen in this branch of industry 'ere the first half of the 20th Century is passed.
    Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and Their Descendants
    By Thomas Kemp Cartmell, 1909.