Ohio History Journal

THOMAS BEALS, FIRST FRIENDS MINISTER

IN OHIO

 

BY HARLOW LINDLEY

 

Thomas Beals was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in

1719. He was the son of John and Sarah Beals, formerly Sarah

Bowater of an English family of Friends. Thomas Beals had

two brothers, John and Bowater, and four sisters: Prudence, who

married Richard Williams, Sarah, who married John Mills, Mary,

who married Thomas Hunt and after his death, William Baldwin,

and Phebe, who married Robert Sumner. John Beals, Junior, mar-

ried Esther Hunt and Bowater Beals married Ann Cook, sister of

Isaac Cook, who was the husband of Charity Cook, a noted

Friends minister.

From John Beals, the father, there descended a large number

of members of the Society of Friends located in Pennsylvania,

North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon and Cali-

fornia. On many of these descendants, gifts in the ministry have

been conferred. Among those of direct descent were: Thomas

Beals, Bowater Beals, Sarah Mills, Ruth Hockett, Hannah Cloud,

Nathan Hunt, Hannah Baldwin, Elizabeth Bond, Peter Dix,

Benejah Hiatt, John Bond, Jesse Bond, Jesse Williams, Jesse

Hockett, Aseneth Clark, Myseam Mendenhall, Daniel Williams,

Eleazer Beals, Asaph Hiatt, Ruth Haisley, Naomi Coffin, Esther

Carson, Levi Jessup, Jesse B. Williams, Margaret Toms, William

J. Thornberry, Anna M. Votaw, Amos Bond, Elwood Scott, Dr.

Dougan Clark, Elizabeth Beals Bond and Jehial Bond.

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 Ankram.

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.

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56    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

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 West-

field 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 his

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 trial.

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 River

into what is now the State of Ohio; held many satisfactory meet-

ings 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.

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THOMAS BEALS                      57

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 con-

finement, 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 Caro-

lina, 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 com-

mittee 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 Tennessee.

and in the year 1793, he came to Grayson County, 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 1796, James Baldwin and Phineas Hunt, with their fam-

ilies, members of the Society of Friends, from Westfield, North

Carolina, moved to the Virginia shore of the Ohio River. Here

Mary Hunt was born, on October 18, 1796, four miles from

Point Pleasant, on the Virginia shore. In February, 1797, the

Baldwins and Hunts crossed the Ohio River and settled oppo-

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58    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

site Green Bottom near each other. Two families of Friends now

settled together in the Northwest Territory with the one pre-

viously mentioned (the Harlans) quite remote from them.

On May 8, 1797, a group of Friends moved from Westland,

Pennsylvania, and settled at High Bank on the east side of the

Scioto River, four miles below the present Chillicothe. In the

latter part of this same year, Jesse Baldwin moved from his

first location opposite Green Bottom, some eighteen miles down

the Ohio, and settled in what was called Quaker Bottom, in

Lawrence County, opposite the mouth of the Guyandot River, and

the present town of Guyandot. So far as can be ascertained, this

was where Friends in the Northwest Territory first sat down to

hold a Meeting for divine worship.

John Warner, son of Isaac and Mary Warner, who was born

at High Bank, Ross County, Ohio, on July 12, 1798, was, so

far as is known, the first child born as a birthright member of

the Society of Friends northwest of the Ohio River, and, on

November 11 of that year, Rebecca Chandler, daughter of Wil-

liam and Hannah Chandler, was born near the same place. 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. They were accompanied by Obediah

Overman and his family, all from Grayson County, Virginia.

On their arrival, they opened a meeting for worship in the dwell-

ing of Jesse 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.

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THOMAS BEALS                      59

 

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 a 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 on 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 Jesse 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 89, 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 1775, one recalls that a

young man then in 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.

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60    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

This sketch may give some idea of the toil, privations, labor,

struggles and sufferings of the pioneers. In 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 con-

vinced, 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, since one-third of the Friends of America have

resided within the limits of the old Northwest Territory for three-

quarters of a century.1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 On September 19, 1937, a monument was dedicated at the grave of Thomas Beals

near  Richmondale, Ohio.

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