I think you've come to the best place to do just that, Ellen
I've had good luck breaking some walls here, but there are still others though that remain stubborn. G2G is full of friendly, helpful and knowledgeable people. The best way to get the great responses would be to create a profile for James and fill the biography with everything that you know, also the things that you don't know and where you've looked for records and found none. Add things like theories and family stories, these can all be tremendously helpful (preferably under a heading called "Research Notes"). When you post the question here in G2G paste the full URL of your ancestors profile into the extra box provided so that your message will have his profile attached, this way other researchers will be able to click straight to his profile and will see everything that you have written in his biography. When posting your question you will find another box for tags, these are great in that they will notify others who are following those tags. Great tags would be things like the surname, location or historical event such as "Anglo_Boer_War" or "Great_Pilgram_Migration" etc.
Good luck, and happy New Year!