Source: "History of Howard and Chariton Counties, Missouri, written and complied From the Most Official Authentic and Privates Sources, Including a History of it's Townships, Towns and Villages, St. Louis: National Historical Company, 1883, Page 831:

James Heryford was born and reared in Virginia. He, like his father, did gallant services under the stars and stripes. He was a soldier in the War of 1812. He was a man of great energy, enterprise and of far more than ordinary intelligence.

When a young man he went to Tennessee where he resided some years. Here he was married to a Miss Brown, but she died while he was still a resident of that State.

From Tennessee he removed to Kentucky and afterwards came on out West and stopped for one year in Illinois. There he met and was married to Miss Elizabeth Vinson, a lady of great personal worth, but in 1817 he came to Missouri and settled in Chariton County.

Here he was one of the pioneer settlers of the county. He was a man of untiring industry and a good manager in conducting his farm affairs, so that he soon became comfortably situated in life, and he was widely known for his abundant, unstinting hospitality.

As an early settler he was of great value to the county, having been selected captain of a company of minute-men for defense against the Indians. Many came into the county ill prepared to bridge over the period until they could grow a crop, and he invariably assisted all such who applied to him liberally and to the full extent of their needs or his own means.

His house was a general stopping place for those seeking homes in the new country, and his hospitality toward all knew no bounds. He was in every sense a worthy, generous, good man and he died regretted by all who knew him.