The Reverend John H. Simpson was born August 3, 1834, probably at Chester, in Chester County, north central South Carolina. The family included at least two sisters, Sarah and Mary, and four brothers, Elihu, Isaiah, William, and John. Isaiah practiced dentistry and Elihu, after service with the Confederate forces, apparently farmed, as did the father. In October of 1849, John began to “read Latin” with the Reverend L. McDonald. He later studied for the Presbyterian ministry at college and at Due West, Abbeville County, South Carolina, with Dr. Grier, a minister of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
Reverend Simpson served as a chaplain for the Confederacy throughout most of the Civil War, from March 28, 1862 to at least December 1864, when he was at Petersburg, Virginia. Searching the hospitals and battlefields of the South, especially for soldiers of the South Carolina Volunteer Regiments, Reverend Simpson prayed with the sick and wounded, and sat with the dying. He wrote letters for the soldiers or about them, dressed wounds, obtained small food and clothing items for the men and coffins for the dead. He arranged for the bodies of South Carolina soldiers to be transported to their homes and often accompanied them.
On May 8, 1866, Reverend Simpson married Lizzie Moffatt, daughter of South Carolinian D. Moffatt. Two daughters are known to have been born to them, Nannie Law on March 26, 1867, and Sarah B., late in 1869. The first year following his marriage Reverend Simpson preached, for a few weeks or months at a time, around an elongated circuit through Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Early in 1867 he returned to Chester County with his family, where they remained until November of 1867 when he received a call to serve the New Lebanon Church, Greenbrier Synod, near Second Creek, Monroe County, West Virginia. Reverend Simpson spent the next twenty-four years in this Appalachian parish, which was the only Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in West Virginia. The church itself had been established in 1807 and the first building erected in 1819. In 1870, during Reverend Simpson's pastorate, a new building was dedicated.
To supplement his very meager salary, Reverend Simpson taught vocal music and violin in West Virginia as he had in South Carolina, and the family raised vegetables and chickens, and kept bees. His pastorate at New Lebanon ended in 1891. Little is known of Reverend Simpson's life other than for the fourteen-year period covered by his diaries.
