Although born in New York State, James Aiken spent nearly sixty years of his life in the Susquehanna Valley, mostly in Union County. The teacher, poet, and orator was born in 1799 in Otsego County, New York, and was educated locally before boarding with a potter in his teens, with whom he apprenticed. At about the age of eighteen, he relocated to Pennsylvania. Aiken first taught in Northumberland, then moved to Lewisburg, teaching there and in surrounding communities throughout the mid-1860s. He also worked as a tutor for local families.

According to a brief biography found in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Aiken was an advocate of the temperance movement and was a frequent public speaker on behalf of the cause. Aiken helped to found a temperance society in Lewisburg in 1831 and acted as an agent in New Jersey for the State Temperance Society for eighteen months from 1837 to 1839. At the time of the 1850 census, he was living in a temperance hotel in Lewisburg.

One newspaper reported, “Though cloistered within the narrow walls of a school, he was by no means an idle spectator of passing events, either local or national. On the contrary, he often, between the years 1832 and 1850, appeared before public audiences at Lewisburg and elsewhere as the humble but firm, consistent, and untiring advocate of temperance or total abstinence from the use of all intoxicating liquors as a drink. And as a public speaker on this subject, he was logical and sharp, and so quick, witty, humorous, and full of appropriate and spicy anecdotes that he was always listened to with delight and profit by every honest seeker after truth.”

As for his talents as a poet, his poems occasionally appeared in West Branch Valley newspapers. In 1876, a book of prose and poetry, based on Aiken’s manuscripts, was published. It was filled with tidbits of advice and poems, such as this one:

“Don't think too much of money, but learn to work and plan ;

Use honesty in every shape, and hoard up all you can:

'Tis the fool who boasts of riches. His dollars, dimes, or pence,

The best of wealth is youth and health, with good sound common sense.”

Politically, Aiken was first a Whig and later a Republican. His opposition to slavery led him to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act,, and he supported the presidential candidacy of John C. Fremont in 1856 and of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Aiken confined his political activity to public speaking and writing verse and never held office, reportedly expressing disinterest when considered for the position of county school superintendent in 1854 and declining to serve as county auditor when elected in 1864. On the advent of the Civil War, he supported the Union and recruited volunteers for the U.S. Army. Aiken never married.

Aiken died in his sleep on December 30^th, 1879, in Lewisburg. The Lewisburg Chronicle newspaper reported he quietly retired to his room in a home where he was a boarder.

“Aiken remarked to the family of Mr. Jesse M. Cornelius (with whom he boarded) that he rejoiced at feeling unusually well. Several of Mrs. Cornelius’s lady friends had called to spend the evening with her; and one of the most cheerful of those present, was her boarder, Mr. Aiken, who read to and chatted with them until his time for retiring, when he took his lamp, opened the door leading to his room, turned to the company, and with a happy smile beaming in his benevolent countenance, said " Good night, ladies."

The next seen of him was in the morning, when Mrs. C., wondering why he did not answer her call to breakfast, approached the bed as gently as possible, and found him cold in death, the bed-clothing lying over him untossed, as though he had passed from a sound sleep to death entirely unconscious of the change. Mr. Cornelius called a jury of inquest, who, after proper examination by a competent physician, Dr. T. C. Thornton, pronounced it a case of natural death.”

Aiken was laid to rest in the Lewisburg Cemetery in Union County, Pennsylvania.