James Ford, born James N. Ford, also known as James N. Ford, Sr., the "N" possibly for Neal (October 22, 1775 – July 7, 1833), was an American civic leader and business owner in western Kentucky and southern Illinois, from the late 1790s to mid-1830s. Despite his clean public image as a "Pillar of the Community", Ford was secretly a river pirate and the leader of a gang that was later known as the "Ford's Ferry Gang". His men were the river equivalent of highway robbers. They hijacked flatboats and Ford's "own river ferry" for tradable goods from local farms that were coming down the Ohio River. Ford was an Illinois associate of Isaiah L. Potts and the Potts Hill Gang, highway robbers, of the infamous Potts Inn. James Ford also was an associate of John Hart Crenshaw, an illegal slave trader and a kidnapper of free African Americans, and may have taken part in the Illinois version of the Reverse Underground Railroad. At one point, the outlaws used "Cave-in-Rock" as their headquarters on the Illinois side of the lower Ohio River, approximately around 85 miles below Evansville, Indiana. Early life and family history James Ford was born in the Ninety-Six District, Province of South Carolina of the Thirteen Colonies, now present-day Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, South Carolina a son of Philip and Elizabeth Ford and a grandson of John Ford. He had two brothers, Philip Jr. and Richard. His father died while Ford was still young, and his mother then married William Prince, who brought the family to what would become Princeton in Caldwell County, Kentucky. This marriage provided James with a number of step- and half-siblings, who provided important contacts for his future political, business, and criminal careers. Marriages and children In the late 1790s, James Ford married Susan Miles, a daughter of William Miles, who was a brother of the ferry keeper at Miles Ferry, between the Kentucky and Illinois banks of the Ohio below Cave-in-Rock, near the location of present-day Rosiclare, Illinois. Susan Ford provided her husband with two sons, Philip (November 25, 1800 - November 23, 1831) and William M. (1804 – November 2, 1832), as well as a daughter, Cassandra (1805/1806–1863). Susan died in the 1820s, and in 1829, Ford married Elizabeth "Betsy" W. Armstead Frazier (1790–1800 – 1834–1835), a widow whose husband had died suddenly while staying at Ford's plantation, in then Livingston County,