Is James Beall a False Ancestor?

Question

One of the giants of early Maryland history is Ninian Beall.  He was in fact a giant -- well over 6 feet tall and with red hair.  And he was a giant of history, famous immigrant, founding member of Maryland Presbyterianism, colonial leader.  The kind of person you want to be descended from.  (Regrettably, I'm not).  There are enough legendary connections to Ninian himself that need to be pruned, and the pruning will cause disappointment.

The fact is, Ninian's parents are not known.  But all sorts of genealogies show his father to be a Dr. James Beall, and these often show his mother to be an Anne Marie Calvert, making Ninian at once the child of Scottish and English gentry.  

I have marked James Beall's existence as uncertain, and everything in his biographical narrative reminds us that there is no documentation for any of it.  In addition to uncertain existence, we now have a "disproven existence" template. .  Once it is applied, he should be severed from any connection to parents, spouses or children, because people who never existed don't have relatives.   The procedures called for with "disproven existence" is that there should be a G2G discussion before it is applied.  I think that's a good thing because there are undoubtedly those on WikiTree who have cherished having James and Anne Marie Beall in their ancestry, and adding this designation could be controversial.  So I propose it here:  what do you see as arguments for  moving James' designation from "uncertain" to "disproven" and what are the arguments against it?.   

Comments

 

Name	James Beall
Arrival Year	1634-1789
Arrival Place	Maryland
Source Publication Code	6157.35
Primary Immigrant	Beall, James
Annotation	Date and port of arrival or date and place of first mention of residence in the New World; some are birth and death dates with place of death; some are date and place of naturalization. Place of residence in Maryland, date and place of birth, names of rel
Source Bibliography	NEWMAN, HARRY WRIGHT. To Maryland From Overseas: A Complete Digest of the Jocobite Loyalists Sold into White Slavery in Maryland, and the British and Continental Background of Approximately 1400 Maryland Settlers from 1634 to the Early Federal Period with Source Documentation. Annapolis, MD: Newman, 1982. Reprint. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1985, 1986, 1991. 190p.
Page	21

 

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James Beall

 in the Maryland, Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1777

VIEW

Name:	James Beall
Probate Place:	Maryland, USA
Inferred Death Place:	Maryland, USA
Item Description:	Wills, vol 17-18, 1721-1726

Source Citation

Will books; Author: Maryland. Prerogative Court; Probate Place: Maryland

Source Information

Ancestry.com. Maryland, Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1777 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

 

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But the James of the profile would be well over a hundred years old before that will was apparently written. He was also supposed to have died in Scotland

I tried to check his supposed qualifications

The Glasgow alumni search does not find him as a Doctor or Master of Divinity  or any other degree (it does go back that far)

As for MD,(medical) I'm on uncertain ground but wonder if the qualification and suffix  would have been used at the time of the craft guilds  for the barber surgeons and pre the foundation of the Edinburgh Royal Society of Surgeons   Physicians in 1681. There was not a medical faculty at Edinburgh until 1726, and their data base for medical students only goes back that far.

The St Andrews Alumni database only goes back to 1747

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Eddie, you just opened a can of worms between me and Ancestry.  I buy the expensive ancestry membership every year so I have access to what they have -- and it turns out the link you gave is to the "Library Edition" which can ONLY be accessed at public library subscribers, not for home use.  ARRRGH!

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1. I said it before. I LIKE tormenting peeps in g2g  LOL

2. I pack my lunch every day, go to work, go to library, torment my co-workers and the library ladies, come home and torment peeps in g2g

3. Serious now, if you can't locate the will on your ancestry, send me your regular email and I can forward it through ancestry send home ap tomorrow.

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No offense intended but when I'm working on US PRESIDENTS Project peeps and the sources are just links to the pay ancestry version, ggggrrrrrrrr

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This is an important question to resolve.  I don't want anyone to be confused by an "untruth." My y-DNA marker is now appearing on the profiles for this (Dr.) James Beall-74, and also (Col.) Ninian Beall-75 [1625] and ALL of his descendants.  I am a y-DNA match with Alexander Beall-97 [1649] but do not believe I am a match with Ninian Beall or his alleged father James Beall.  If his existence has truly been disproven, I would prefer NOT to be shown as DNA match.

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I know this is an old post but, if you are proven related to Alex., then you're related to Ninian, too.

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Well, there were multiple Alexanders and multiple Ninians.  Some are clearly related to each other, others are not -- or at least not yet.  My own Alexander Beall ancestor has, I believe, been demonstrated by DNA to be a completely different family.,  So it comes down to documenting, documenting, documenting!

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Well I believe it was understood that if you are descended from Alexander, purported to be born 1649 (no citation on that), then you are related to  Col. Ninian, as well.

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If you are related to Alexander (1649) your are PROBABLY related to Ninian because they came from the same area of Scotland and did stuff together in Maryland, but to my knowledge, the exact relationship is unknown.  I've studied the Bealls in Maryland and done some work on the early Beall profiles in Maryland, but a lot yet remains to be done to get reliable sourcing for the various profiles and to wrestle with the various myths which have been created for this family.  Because Ninian was famous, everyone wants to be related to him, and many genealogies jump to conclusions which are not supported by facts.

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If your DNA proves you to be descended from the Alexander Beall ( ? - 1744) then you ARE a descended relative of Col. Ninian Beall (1625-1717). We have proven descendants of all 5 Bealls from colonial MD and their DNA shows them all to be related.

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I can't argue with DNA!  But the actual names of the ancestors linking Alexander and Ninian Beall are still the object of research.  

I have heard that my own Bealls, however, -- who showed up in up-county Montgomery County -- have a different DNA than the down-county Bealls who originated in Prince George's County.  Our family used the pronunciation "beel" while the down-county families used the pronunciation "bell".

I have no documentation whatsoever of this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that my Bealls started out as German immigrants with the name Bihl.

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That (the German origin) is an intriguing thought, one which you and I may have discussed in earlier correspondence, based in part on a few entries in German church records in Frederick involving Alexander Beall.  To avoid confusion on the part of anyone else reading this reply, Jack and I are not referring to any of the Scots named Alexander Beall in Prince Georges, Frederick and Montgomery Counties, Maryland, but rather to Alexander Beall the son and heir of William Beall who secured a warrant for a survey of "Long Lookt For" in the Benett's Creek area of southeastern Frederick County (as I recall) about 1754.  Alexander and his apparent brother John Beall also lived at times just over the county line in or near Browningsville in the adjacent northern section of Montgomery County.

The DNA information that someone sent me (unfortunately I don't remember who) indicated that the Browningsville Bealls' descendants Y-DNA data matched that most commonly found in Northumberland and Cumbria.  Historically that area was overrun from time to time by Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons and Vikings, so the ultimate source of this brand of Beall DNA could easily be Germanic.  In terms of 17th century sources, I don't find anything very promising in the Philadelphia passenger lists / oaths of allegiance.  Two men with the Biehl surname and one named "Bielle" arrived in Philadelphia Oct. 1 1754 on the "Phoenix," but their given names were Peter, Daniel and Johans; not Wilhelm.  Six years earlier, Michel Bihl had come on the "Patience & Margaret."  On the Anglicized list of names, his appears as "Michael Bayle," age 28.  Again, no Wilhelm / William.  A Peter "Bale"  is on the 1790 census of Ralph Crabb's first district of Frederick County (apparently the area between Woodsboro and Urbana).  A William "Bail" is found at page 264, in a heavily German area of the County.  I have some other random notes on Peter Biell / Bayle / Beal; not so much on William Bail.  However, I have found nothing to convince me that they were related to William Beall of "Long Lookt For."

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Thanks for this awesome update!

Answer 1

Jack I know that FaGrave is not always right but I thought you might find this of interest and it might give some clues if nothing else...

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=83129354

This source seems to play upon the Fife story  http://www.krystalrose.com/kim/BEALL/ninian1.html

http://www.collections.library.appstate.edu/findingaids/ac392  I agree with one line here that genealogies disagree... this gives more than one possible set of parents for him

http://www.multiwords.de/genealogy/Be11NinianBeale.html  this shows a number of genealogies... there are some sources scattered among data with no sources.  

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jacmac/bell-beall.pdf   you may also find this of interest