Talk:James Finley (minister)

rationality for an article
He is one of the paradigmatic Presbyterian Ministers who illustrate the old saw that the American Revolution sprang from the pulpits of the Protestant Ministers. Lots of his info is "out there" in the public domain, though much of it is in the manuscripts beyond which most Thesis (perhaps the best one at the MA level is at Westminster College Library) never evolve, and are only really findable in a few College Libraries in Ohio and Western PA.

Several published sources exist for his friendship with Franklin who was head of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety during most or maybe even all of the American Revolution (viz Stout's Clan Finley[supra], and several multivolume sets of compiled regional genealogies with titles something like: Jordan's Western PA and McKenzie's Colonial Families). Clearly he was somehow part of what we would now call "the revolutionary clique", and it may not have just been that he had a rich wife who was a member of the wealthy Evans family one of which may have been (but was probably not) one of the early Lt Govs of PA.

His relationship with Jefferson was perhaps not good, there are at least 3 websites (the last time that I looked c 2006) which try to make something from what I think is undocumentable perhaps because they did not have a friendship, and their relationship may actually have been something from the other direction though how far in the other direction is now long gone to discretion and other than that Jefferson's VP was the son of the predecessor of Rev James Finley's brother as Pres of the college of NJ now aka Princeton, I am left with the idea that Rev James Finley being short and stout and easily flustered and Thomas Jefferson being tall and glib and maybe a bit of a free thinker in the religious area that maybe both being from Irish stock and both owning slaves there may have been a few too many arguments for them to remain in the same house while writing anything of any serious presumptuousness.

This is how most of the musers on this seem to wind up, and the question is mostly do we raise his involvment with our documents to the status of a footnote, or is it just a matter of that he was a pioneer minister and early settler of Western PA who was on good terms with Benjamin Franklin. He clearly was some sort of "officially designated explorer" during the prepresidential period of American History with the same status if not the same fame as Lewis and Clark. Before the end of the 1770s he had crossed into the area now called the state of Ohio, and his estate (in 1795) included land he bought there.John5Russell3Finley 19:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't have an issue with the addition of this article. I think it's definatly somewhat notable. The addition of information noting him as a pioneer minister and expounding on his relationship to the revolution wouldn't be bad at all. I will say, in future, efforts should be made to prosify the information you include. Also, a listing of sources for your information in this article would be much appreciated. --Lendorien 19:30, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Title for article
I would suggest the article be renamed "Rev James Finley". If you do a Google search, you'll find that people are more likely to be looking for James Finley, the famous engineer, or James I. Finley, the politican. I intend to create an article on the engineer at some point, so will change the title then if it isn't already done. You should put in disambiguation links for the politician though. -- Kvetner 08:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
I have attempted to clean up this article. I have rewritten much of the text, created an intro and tried to cite with info provided. Still could use someone looking it over and more sources. --Lendorien 19:30, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I am struggling here to avoid adding a cleanup tag, the present categories seem a bit silly to me, and some of stuff has been put in or removed for reasons not clear to me at all. I have left most of this alone, have readded some stuff that seemed unreasonable to delete (I have no ability to navigate the prose and have avoided what I could not even read). I have clarified the statement about the house. There is no reason for it not to exist: the Evans's were wealthy, and clearly if they didn't just have a city house they would have had investment property too, (rental property in Philadelphia was a common investment in those days). The sources talk about Hannah Evans Finley having inherited quite a bit of property, so my guess is that she inherited a house or more than one and that this house was perhaps vacant in at least one of its rooms when Jefferson was in Philadelphia. The only linkage between them is that the Finleys owned the house, so other than maybe finding the letter in Jefferson's papers in which he complains about how bad a place it was I doubt there is much in the way of further documentation available. John5Russell3Finley (talk) 02:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Moved
Discussion now moved here from Talk:James Finley to allow creation of disambiguation page for 3 James Finley articles. -- Kvetner 12:03, 11 April 2007 (UTC)