Thomas Beals (1719 - 1801)

Born 14 Mar 1719 in Nottingham, Chester, Pennsylvania

Ancestors

Husband of Sarah Esther (Antrim) Beals — married 12 Nov 1741 in Hopewell, Virginia [uncertain]

Descendants

Died 29 Aug 1801 at age 82 in Richmond Dale, Ross, Ohio, United States

Problems/Questions Profile managers: John Bales [send private message] and Glenn York [send private message]

This profile is Genealogically Defined.

Biography

Birth

Thomas was a Friend (Quaker)

14 1st Month 1719 (o.s. Quaker calendar based on Julian Calendar 1st month was March)

Calculated birth date:14 Mar 1719

Converted birth date: 14 Jan 1719

Nottingham, Guilford County, NC ^{[1] [2] [3][4]}

Marriage

Sarah was married to Thomas Beals on 12 November 1741^[5] as reported in the New Garden Monthly Meeting minutes:

1741, 9, 12. Thomas (Beales), Prince George Co., Md., m Sarah Antram. [m. in Md. or Va.]

Children

All children born in Guilford, North Carolina and listed in the New Garden Monthly Meeting minutes.^[6]

i. Mary Beals, b. 15 August 1742; died as a baby

ii. Mary Beals, b. 30 October 1743 (twin with Sarah), named after her older sister who had died, m. Thomas Jessop III

iii. Sarah Beals, b. 30 October 1743 (twin with Mary)

iv. Thomas Beals, b. 29 December 1745

v. Patience Beals, b. 9 February 1747/1748, m. Benjamin Carr

vi. William Beals, b. 13 August 1750

vii. Daniel Beals, b. 15 February, 1753

viii. Elizabeth Beals, b. 25 April 1755, m. Samuel Bond

ix. Margaret Beals, b. 12 October 1757, m. James Horton, m. 2nd Daniel Huff

x. Hannah Beals, b. 13 December 1759

xi. Rachel Beals, b. 9 March 1763 (twin with John), m. Thomas Braun or Brown

xii. John Bowater Beals, b. 9 March 1763 (twin with Rachel), m. Mary Johnson

xiii. Jacob Beals, b. 28 October 1768, m. Rebecca Adamson

Note: It appears that the children born before Daniel used the old Quaker calendar that started the year in March. Starting with Daniel, the children were annotated with the modern calendar.

The text from New Garden Monthly Meeting minutes^[6]:

Mary Beals Daughter of Thos Beals & Sarah his his [sic] Wife was born on ye 15 of ye 6 mo 1742: old stile [style – ie: old date system] -

Mary & Sarah Beales (Twins) Daughters of ye Same born ye 30 of ye 8 month 1749 -

Thos: Beals Son of the Same was born ye 29 of ye 10 month 1745 -

Patience Beals Daughter of the Same was borne ye 9 of ye 12 month 1747 -

William Beals Son of the Same was born ye 13 of ye 6th month 1750 -

Daniel Beals Son of the Same was born ye 15 of ye 2 month 1753 – N: S: [new style] -^[7]

Elizabeth Beals Daughter of the Same was born ye 25 of ye 4 month 1755 -

Margaret Beals Daughter of the Same was born ye 12 of ye 10 month 1757 -

Hanna Beals Daughter of the Same was born ye 13 of ye 12 month 1759 -

Rachel & John Beals (Twins) Daugher & Son of the Same were born ye 9 of ye 3 month 1763 -

Jacob Beals Son of the Same was born ye 28 of ye 10 month 1768 -

Ministry

Entered: 1753

New Garden, Guilford, NC

• See Time Line Here

Death and legacy

Thomas died 29 Aug 1801 in Richmond Dale, Ross County, OH ^{[1] [2] [8]} He was buried 1 Sept 1801 at the Beal Cemetery on the farm of Presley Caldwell in Richmond Dale, Ross, Ohio^[2][9]

Rev Thomas Beals Grave Marker

His tombstone inscription reads:

Revolutionary Minister

Thomas Beals

1719 - 1801

Presented by

Ruth Carey Kysor

Mildred H London

G Lucille Johnson

Kansas DAR^[2][9]

Cenotaph

Fairfield Quaker Cemetery

Leesburg, Highland County, Ohio, USA

His wife Sarah is buried here^[1]

Disputed Revolutionary War service

Several online sources show photos and/or documentation for Thomas Beals as a Daughters of the Revolution (DAR) veteran ancestor.^[1][2][9] While in the past this was true (he was recognized by DAR as a veteran ancestor), based on the more stringent criteria used at DAR today, Thomas' war service has been disallowed. While it may be possible to prove Revolutionary War service for him in the future, as the historic record is written now, Thomas Beals is not recognized as a Revolutionary War service veteran.^[10]

Biographies (need to be merged into profile)

Biographical & Genealogical Sketch by: Harlow Lindley

Thomas Beals was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, on 14 Mar 1719. He was the son ofJohn Beals & Sarah Bowater.

From Chester County, as it then was, John Beals moved with his family to Monocacy Carols Manor, Maryland. There, his son Thomas, the subject of this sketch, married Sarah Esther Antrim. From there they moved to Hopewell, near Winchester, Virginia, where John Beals died in 1745, three years before the family moved on to North Carolina.

Thomas Beals moved with his family to North Carolina in 1748, being then twenty-nine years old. He stopped first at Cane Creek, then he went to New Garden, North Carolina, which was at that time frontier territory. In a very short time he was joined by some other families. In the year 1753, Thomas Beals, then about thirty-four years of age, came forth in the ministry. The next move he made was to Westfield, Surry County, North Carolina. Here he was instrumental in the development of a large meeting. He must have lived at New Garden and Westfield about thirty years, during which time he paid lengthy visits to the Indians. In the year 1775, twenty years before Wayne's Treaty with the Indians at Greenville, Thomas Beals, accompanied by nephew Bowater Sumner, William Hiatt and David Ballard, started to pay a visit to the Delaware Indians and some other tribes. After passing a fort not far from Clinch Mountain in Virginia, they were arrested and carried back to the fort to be tried for their lives on the charge of being confederates of the hostile Indians. The officers, understanding that one of them was a preacher, required a sermon before they went in for trail. Thomas Beals thought it was the right time to hold a meeting with the soldiers. This proved to be a very good idea for a young man from the fort was converted and, some time after, joined the Friends, became a member of the group and at a very advanced age, bore public testimony to the truth of the principles of which he was convinced at the fort. After the meeting, the Friends were kindly entertained and told that they were at liberty to go on their journey. They crossed the Ohio into what is now the State of Ohio held many satisfactory meetings with the Indians and returned home safely.

Discussing the trip, Thomas Beals told his friends that he saw with his spiritual eye the seed of Friends scattered all over that good land and that one day there would be a greater gathering of Friends there than any other place in the world, and that his faith was strong in the belief that he would live to see Friends settle north of the Ohio River.

In the year 1777, Thomas Beals, accompanied by William Robinson and an interpreter, Isaac Ottoman, started to pay a religious visit to the Six Nations and some other tribes of Indians and proceeded as far as Sewickley, a small meeting of Friends in the western part of Pennsylvania, where they were captured and carried to Hannelstown, not far from Fort Pitt, now Pittsburgh. There they were detained some time and then sent home. Still having a concern in his mind for the Indians, he made another attempt to visit them, but was again arrested and imprisoned, under guard, in a cold, open barn. When he was let out of confinement, he was permitted to hold a meeting with the soldiers, but was not allowed to go any farther, and had to return home. In 1781, Thomas Beals moved from Westfield, North Carolina, to Blue Stone, Giles County, Virginia, where he lived but a few years. This move does not appear to have had the approval of his friends, for Nathan Hunt states that they sent a committee to induce him to return to Westfield, North Carolina. The little meeting of twenty or thirty families was entirely broken up at Blue Stone. Beals and his family stayed, however, and suffered not only for the necessities of life, but their son-in-law, James Horton, was taken prisoner by the Indians and, from the most reliable information that can be obtained, was carried to Old Chillicothe, near Frankfort, Ohio, and there put to death.

In the year 1785, Beals moved to Lost Creek, in [east] Tennessee, and in the year 1793, he came to Grayson Co., Virginia, where Nathan Hunt states that Thomas Beals established meetings and says that he was very zealous for the support of the testimonies of Friends. In the year 1795, George Harlan and family, members of the Society of Friends, settled on the Little Miami, at Deerfield, four miles from the present town of Morrow.

In 1798, a group of Friends from Hopewell, Virginia, settled at High Bank, and in the same year a group of Friends, all from North Carolina settled at Salt Creek, near Richmondale, Ross County, Ohio. In 1799, Thomas Beals, who had visited this country twenty four years before, now moved to Quaker Bottom, along with other members of his family [including grand children, Abel Thornberry and Tabitha Beals]. They were accompanied by Obediah Overman and his family, all from Grayson Co., Virginia. On their arrival, they opened a meeting for worship in the dwelling of Jessie Baldwin. There they met regularly during their residence at that place.

The nearest Meeting to them was at Westland, Pennsylvania. Sometime during the year 1799, Taylor Webster and family, from Redstone, Pennsylvania, settled at Grassy Prairies, five miles northeast of Chillicothe. In the spring of 1801, Thomas Beals, Jesse Baldwin, John Beals and Daniel Beals moved from Quaker Bottom, and they, with Enoch Cox and their families, settled up Salt Creek near the present town of Adelphia.

August 29, 1801, Thomas Beals died and was buried two days later, near Richmondale, Ross County, Ohio, in a coffin of regular shape, hollowed out of a solid white walnut tree by his ever faithful friend, Jesse Baldwin. He was assisted by Enoch Cox and others, who covered the coffin with part of the same tree, which had previously been selected for this purpose by the deceased.

Buried near him were William Puckett, Hugh Moffett, as well as others, of the small community. A meeting house was later built on the land then owned by the Moffett family and a Meeting was held there for some time. In the spring of 1802, a group of Friends settled at Lees Creek, in and near the present town of Leesburg, which is located in Highland County, Ohio, where no white person had lived before.

In the fall of the same year, Sarah Beals, widow of Thomas Beals, and her sons, John and Daniel, and their families, moved from Adelphia, as did Phineas Hunt, formerly of Raccoon Falls. All settled at Lees Creek and Hardins Creek near each other. This community was augmented in the spring of 1803 by the families of Jessie Baldwin, John Beals, Bowater Beals and John Evans, and, in the fall of the same year, two Lupton families, from Hopewell, Virginia, settled at Lees Creek. On their arrival, Friends became concerned about a meeting for worship. Widow Sarah Beals heartily endorsed the idea.

Thus there began a Friends Meeting at Fairfield (Leesburg), regularly authorized in May, 1804. Sarah Beals died July 7, 1813, at the age of eighty-nine, and was buried at Fairfield. Thomas Beals's daughter, Margaret, whose first husband, James Horton, was captured by the Indians, afterward married Daniel Huff, who lived in the Fairfield, community. When Thomas Beals was captured in 1885, one recalls that a young man then at the fort was converted. That young man was Beverly Milner, who eventually settled near the last residence of Sarah Beals. In his later years, after he became too feeble to attend Meeting, he often alluded to the ministry of that heavenly man by whom he was converted. He died in 1848, when he was almost eighty-seven, and was buried at Fairfield.

This sketch may give some idea of the toil, privations, labor, struggles and sufferings of the pioneers. In the planting Quakerism in the Old Northwest, Thomas Beals and his faithful wife and devoted family are but one of the hundreds who struggled, nor was he the only one buried in a log coffin. Many were buried with nothing but boards to separate them from the lone mountains, never to be seen or marked by loved ones. The author is convinced, however, that to Thomas Beals belongs the credit of having been the first Friends minister to carry the message of Christ into the vast region north and west of the Ohio, that region which, in a few years, was to become the great center of the life of not only the Society of Friends, but the entire Nation. Thomas Beals's prophecy of 1775 began to be realized in his own lifetime and has long been a reality within the limits of the Old Northwest Territory for three quarters of a century. On Sept. 19, 1937, a monument was dedicated at the grave of Thomas Beals near Richmondale, Ohio.

At 2 P.M on Sunday, September 19, 1937, a public ceremony was held in a little walled plot on the Jacob Caldwell farm near Richmond Dale, Ohio marking the grave of a man who played a big part in the history of Ohio and Ross Co. In this two-rod square burial plot is interred the body of Thomas Beals, the first Quaker or Friends missionary to work among the Indians and early settlers of southern Ohio and Kentucky. Thomas Beals died on August 28, 1801 near the spot of burial and was buried there three days later in a coffin hewed out of a white walnut log.

The final resting place of Thomas Beals would be lost forever if it were not for records made by Gershom Perdue. The grave went unpreserved until 1854 when Gershom Perdew, an enthusiastic church organizer among the Friends, prevailed upon the yearly meeting of Friends to take steps to preserve the resting place of their patriarch. On June 20 of the same year the plot was deeded to a special committee of the yearly meeting and the stone wall enclosure built a while later.

Thomas Beals was born in March 1719, in Chester Co., Pennsylvania and later moved with his family to Cane Creek, North Carolina. At the age of 29 he entered the ministry while in New Garden, North Carolina ca 1748. Thomas Beals visited Ohio in 1775 and made several missionary trips among the Indians and few white settlers.

On one of his first attempts to reach Ohio territory in 1775, Beals, along with a party of friends, were arrested by solders at a fort near Clinch Mountain and accused of aiding the hostile Indians, which were considered allies with the British and therefore a treasonable offence. While waiting to be executed Beals was asked to preach a sermon, and the sermon was so eloquent that he was released and a young soldier, Beverly Milner was converted. Twenty-four years after his first visit, Thomas Beals and his family and a company of Friends moved to Quaker Bottoms, from Blue Stone, Virginia. and in the spring of 1801 he and his family and friends settled on Salt Creek, near the present site of the village of Adelphi, Ohio. He died on August 28th of the same year at the age of 82 years. His widow, Sarah, died July 7, 1813, at the age of 89, at Fairfield, Highland Co., Ohio.

Written by: Harlow Lindley. ^[1]

Bio by Bill Putman

Thomas Beals was born on March 14, 1719 at Nottingham in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He married Sarah Antrim on September 12, 1741 at Monocacy in Prince George's County, Maryland. While they were living in Prince George's County, the new Meeting House in Fairfax Virginia was set off from the Hopewell Meeting and the Beals became members of the new Fairfax Monthly Meeting in 1746.

On June 26, 1749, Thomas, Sarah and their four oldest children were granted certificates to move to Carvers Monthly Meeting in Bladen County, North Carolina. In 1751, they were transferred to the new Cane Creek Monthly Meeting, which was established on October 7, 1751. They were charter members of the Cane Creek Meeting. They probably remained on the same farm in what was then Rowan County, North Carolina as it encompassed the entire western part of North Carolina and all of the present state of Tennessee. But, as new and more convenient meeting houses were set up, they were automatically transferred. In 1754, they therefore became charter members of the newly formed New Garden Monthly Meeting.

On June 29, 1776, Thomas was made a minister of the Quaker Church at the New Garden Monthly Meeting. In late September of 1777, he requested to go to visit the Mingo and Delaware Indians. While there he was held prisoner for a short while and then returned in March of 1778.

On February 28, 1779, he requested that he move his family up to the Ohio River area. He was told to go first and make an inspection. He left on March 25, 1780. Thomas returned to North Carolina on September 30, 1780. It seems he decided against moving to Ohio at that time. In 1781 he had moved to Jefferson County, Tennessee and was a member of the Lost Creek Monthly Meeting there in 1785.

In 1798, Thomas decided to again try to move to Ohio. His request of February 17, 1798 was disapproved by the Quarterly Meeting. However in 1799, he did move to Ohio in what was then the old Northwest Territory and this time he took Sarah and others with him. In 1801, he was received by the Fairfield Monthly Meeting in Highland County, Ohio. He settled with his family near Adelphia on Salt Creek.

On August 29, 1801, he was killed when he was knocked off his horse by a low hanging tree limb. He was buried in a hand-hewn coffin on the farm of Presley Caldwell, 3-4 miles west of Richmond in Ross County, Ohio. Richmond was near the Londonderry Meeting Hall in Highland County, Ohio and a stone was placed there in the Friends Burial Grounds. In the fall of 1802, Sarah moved to Less Creek, Ohio. She died on July 7, 1813 at the age of eighty-nine. She is buried at the Fairfield FBG in Highland County, Ohio.^[11]

Thomas and Sarah Beals had thirteen children.^[6][12]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4} There are two web entries at Find A Grave for Thomas Beals; this entry is for a memorial marker and is not his burial site: Find A Grave, database and images (Find A Grave: Memorial #26996971 : last accessed 15 July 2018), memorial page for Thomas Beals (14 Mar 1719–29 Aug 1801), memorial written by Harlow Lindley. Find A Grave Memorial no. 26996971, citing Fairfield Quaker Cemetery, Leesburg, Highland County, Ohio, USA ; Maintained by Find A Grave (contributor 8) .
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4} Find A Grave, database and images (Find A Grave: Memorial #37815236 : last accessed 15 July 2018), memorial page for Thomas Beals (17 Apr 1719–29 Aug 1801), Find A Grave Memorial no. 37815236, citing Beals Cemetery, Richmond Dale, Ross County, Ohio, USA ; Maintained by d v (contributor 47124086).
3. ↑ U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935; Event Type Birth; Monthly Meeting New Garden Monthly Meeting; Yearly Meeting Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
4. ↑ U.S., Hinshaw Index to Selected Quaker Records, 1680-1940
5. ↑ Hinshaw, p. 525. Note: prior to 1752, Quakers started the year in March. 9th month was November.
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1 6.2} New Garden Monthly Meeting: Guilford College; Greensboro, North Carolina; Minutes, 1700-1900; Collection: North Carolina Yearly Meeting Minutes. Accessed 14 July SJ Baty at https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=2189&h=8996866.
   Local file: https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Beals-446.
7. ↑ Before 1752, the Quaker calendar started in March; the 12th month was February. https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2014/05/22/quaker-calendars-dates-in-just-two-days-tomorrow-will-be-yesterday/
8. ↑ Fairfield Monthly Meeting Volume: Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy Vol. V
9. ↑ ^{9.0 9.1 9.2} Waymarking contributors. "http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM4KPX_Minister_Thomas_Beals." Minister Thomas Beals - American Revolution Patriot Graves on Waymarking.com. Accessed 1 Jan 2016.
10. ↑ Daughters of the American Revolution. "http://services.dar.org/Public/DAR_Research/search_descendants/default.cfm. Descendants Search: Thomas Beals, accessed 15 July 2018 SJ Baty.
11. ↑ Putman, pp. 14-15.
12. ↑ Putman, pp. 15-17.

• Hinshaw, William Wade. Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy. Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, Inc. 1936. Volume I. Last accessed 25 August 2018 at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015002304221;view=1up;seq=7.

• Putman, Bill. "http://www.billputman.com/Beals.pdf." The Beals Family History, last accessed 15 July 2018.

See Also:

• http://bransoncook.systemaxonline.com/RevThomasBeals.htm

• http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~genepool/bealthom.htm