James married Laura Ingersoll, who is considered a Canadian heroine after she warned the British of a planned American attack in 1813.

James was a descendant of Ambroise Sicard, a Hugenout who had come to British America in 1688 to escape religious persecution in France.

[1] While James was still an infant, his family moved west and settled on the Susquehanna River in an area that was claimed by both Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

In 1777, during the American Revolutionary War, his father and three older brothers travelled to Fort Niagara and joined the British Indian Department leaving Madelaine and the younger children behind.

[5]By August 1780, James's father had left the Indian Department and had begun clearing land along Four Mile Creek west of the Niagara River.

"[1] When the United States declared war against Britain in June 1812, James joined the militia as an sergeant in the 1st Lincoln Regiment but was later attached to Isaac Swayze's troop of Provincial Royal Artillery Drivers, also known as the "Car Brigade."

When the guns fell silent, Laura cautiously returned to the village to discover that American soldiers had ransacked her house.

[1] An early biographer of Laura Secord, Emma A. Currie, claimed that James helped carry Major General Isaac Brock's body off the battlefield, however, this unlikely story does not appear in later biographies.

An American officer, Captain John E. Wool intervened, sent the three back across the river under guard, and ordered his men to carry James to his house in Queenston.

[3] Two days later a large contingent of American soldiers commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles G. Boerstler were ambushed and defeated at the Battle of Beaver Dams by a force of Mohawk from Kahnawake and the Grand River, along with FitzGibbon's detachment of the 49th Regiment.

James and Laura turned over their Queenston home to their son Charles, and moved to the Customs House in Chippewa.

Two more children had been born after the war, Laura Ann in 1815 and Hannah in 1817, but his daughter Appolonia had died in Queenston from typhus at the age of 18.