Jim Nelson
Jim is a native of Beeville, TX and a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin. He is a Certified Public Accountant and worked for Arthur Young & Co. for five years Boise Cascade Corporation for thirty two years. He retired in 1999 and moved to Lakeway with his wife Alice. They have two children and four grandchildren.
Jim is a member of The Lakeway Church where he has served as Elder and Treasurer. He is past president of the Patrick Henry Chapter of the Sons of American Revolution. He is involved in a number of prison ministry activities including serving as a building pastor at the Travis State Jail and Prison Fellowship Ministries. He acts as a mentors to persons leaving prison.
Cornelius Roberts (Virginia 1749-1788) served in the militia during Lord Dunmore’s War on the Shawnee Indians in 1774. He was a member of Capt. David Looney’s Company,
Relations with the Indians had become so tense, and there was so much violence along the frontier that Governor Dunmore ordered Col. Andrew Lewis in 1774 to raise a thousand men from the Valley and southwest and marched to the Ohio River for a confrontation with the Indians. Dunmore said that he would raise an equal number from the colony’s northern counties and join Lewis. “Dunmore’s War” had begun.
Over 800 of these rugged frontiersmen who had staked out their claims in the wilderness and were ready to fight to protect them, met at Camp Union, on the site of today’s Lewisburg, West Virginia, under the command of Col. Andrew Lewis and on call of Gov. Dunmore. Known to the Shawnees as “the Long Knives,” they marched 160 miles in 19 days over mountains, through forests and across rivers to Point Pleasant at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. At Point Pleasant the hardy backwoodsmen with the deadly rifles met the Shawnee warriors under the great Chief Cornstalk. In an “all day” battle on Oct. 10, 1774, the “Long Knives,” led by the intrepid and resourceful Col. Andrew Lewis, defeated the Shawnees. Both sides sustained heavy losses, but the Indians were driven across the Ohio.
In 1789, Cornelius was killed by Indians while digging ginseng on Black Mountain in southwest Virginia.