Jackson-Herman-Willig Family History
Our Family's Journey Through Time: 1677-2000
John Beals, Jr.: born in 1685 in Aston Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He died in Clear Brook, Virginia in 1745. He was buried in the Friends Burial Ground there in an unmarked grave.
Sarah (Bowater) Beals: born in 1687. She died in 1777 in Warrington, Pennsylvania. She was buried in the Friends Burial Ground there.
Marriage: John Beals, Jr. and Sarah (Bowater) Beals were married in 1711 in Nottingham, Chester County, Pennsylvania. A copy of their 1711 Quaker marriage certificate is on the Quaker Corner Website. After John's untimely death in Virginia in 1745, Sarah married Alexander Underwood and relocated along with her youngest son Bowater to Alexander's home in Warrington, Pennsylvania.
Children: John and Sarah had 7 Children: Sarah in 1713, Mary Ann in 1715, John Beals III in 1717, Thomas in 1719, Phoebe in 1720, Prudence in 1723, and Bowater in 1725. Bowater Beals is the continuation of our Beals-Jackson ancestral line.
John Beals, Jr. was born in 1685 in Aston Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. His parents, John Beals Sr. and Mary (Clayton) Beals, had gotten married near there in 1682. His father served as the constable of Aston Township in 1694 and was active in civic and church affairs. In 1702, John, Sr. received a grant for two parcels of land (nearly 1000 acres) in a new Quaker settlement called Nottingham Lots, lying within the border area disputed between William Penn and Lord Baltimore (Pennsylvania and Maryland). John Jr. was raised in the Quaker communities of southeastern Pennsylvania that his parents were actively involved in.
In 1711, John Beals, Jr. married a Quaker girl named Sarah Bowater. Sarah Bowater’s parents were Thomas Bowater and Sarah Edge, immigrants from England. Her mother, Sarah (Edge) Bowater died at age 28, when young Sarah was only 4 years old. Sarah Bowater’s father Thomas was a friend and business associate of John Beals, Sr., who would eventually become her father-in-law. As early as 1685, three years before Sarah's birth, the two men were involved in mutual land purchases in Chester County. Sarah's marriage to John Beals, Jr. was most likely due to the long-standing friendship between their fathers.
John and Sarah Beals had seven children: three sons and four daughters. The children were all born between 1713 and 1725 in Chester County, in the vicinity of the Nottingham Quaker community. The family relocated together not long after the birth of the youngest son, Bowater, in 1725 to a newly established Quaker community known as Monocacy, which was named after the local river in what is now western Maryland - it was a couple of hundred miles to the west of the Nottingham Lots. At the time, Monocacy was at the edge of the frontier along the “Great Wagon Road”. [This area was also part of the border lands disputed between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Eventually the Mason-Dixon Line was drawn to settle the dispute, but not until 1767.] The oldest five Beals children got married between 1732 and 1741 while the Beals family was living at Monocacy; their actual marriages are recorded as occurring in several different Quaker communities that developed along the Great Wagon Road from WestChester, Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.
[One of the Beals siblings who got married during those years was Thomas Beals, the older brother of Bowater Beals, our family ancestor. Thomas Beals is significant to mention because he became a famous Quaker minister in frontier areas in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio. He had significant influence on his younger sister Ann and her husband Jacob Jackson, who ministered alongside Thomas Beals in several localities. Eventually, many members of their extended families migrated to Ohio together, including Jacob and Ann Jackson.]
In 1743, John Beals, Jr. acquired land in the Shenandoah, across the Potomac River from Monocacy via Harper’s Ferry; there’s not really a great distance between the areas. In fact, the Quaker communities of Hopewell in Virginia and Monocacy in Maryland regularly conducted meetings together. The Beals’ youngest daughter, Prudence, got married in Fairfax, Virginia in 1746. Unfortunately, John Beals, Sr. did not live to see the wedding; he died in December, 1745 about the same time as many others in the area - evidently, judging by the number of excess deaths, a deadly epidemic must have erupted.
The John Beals family had only lived in the Shenandoah Valley region for a couple of years when the untimely death of John occurred. They lived just a short ways north of what is now the community of Clear Brook, Virginia. John Beals, Jr. was buried in an unmarked grave in the Friends Burial Ground there in Clear Brook. [Their homestead property to the north of Clear Brook wound up being in West Virginia after new lines of demarcation were drawn between the states some years later. Today, Interstate 81 going through West Virginia is in the proximity of where their property would have been.]
After the death of John Beals, Jr. his wife Sarah married a widower and family acquaintance in the Quaker faith, Alexander Underwood, in February, 1748 at Warrington in York County, Pennsylvania; it was a late in life marriage and they had no children. Alexander Underwood had moved to the Monocacy region from Warrington in 1745 after the death of his first wife, Jane (Harris) Underwood, with whom he had had 13 children. He returned to Pennsylvania a few years later where he was recommended as a Quaker minister, and shortly afterward married the widow Sarah Beals - presumably they knew each other from the Monocacy Quaker community. Sarah was accompanied to Warrington by her youngest son Bowater, who married Sarah Cook a few years later (in 1752). Sarah (Cook) Beals was the daughter of Thomas and Mary (Underwood) Cook, and she was the granddaughter of Alexander Underwood who had recently married Bowater’s mother. Within a year, Bowater and Sarah (Cook) Beals moved to North Carolina - joining the ongoing Quaker migration southward along the Great Wagon Road. Bowater Beals is the continuation of our family ancestral line.
Historical information about the children of John Beals, Jr. and Sarah (Bowater) Beals:
Sarah was born on May 29, 1713 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. She married John Mills III in Chester County, at the Providence Meeting, on July 14, 1732.
Mary Ann was born about 1715. She was married twice. First to Thomas Hunt in 1740 and then to William Baldwin in 1788.
John Beals III was born in Chester County on February 17, 1717. He married Margaret Esther Hunt in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The marriage is recorded in the minutes of the Nottingham Meeting as having taken place on November 13, 1738.
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. He became a highly honored and widely-travelled Quaker minister throughout the frontier communities, and a missionary to the Indians.
Phoebe was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania in about 1720. She married Charles Canaday in 1740 in Prince George's County, Maryland. It was in the Indian wars of Virginia that Charles Canaday was killed sometime in 1745. He is buried somewhere in what is now Loudon County, Virginia. Phoebe Canaday remarried the following year, September 1746, to Robert Sumner. Robert was not a Quaker at the time, so the marriage was `out of unity.' Phoebe was disowned. In 1749, Robert became a member of the Quaker faith, and the family was received and restored to membership in Fairfax (Loudon County) Virginia Monthly Meeting. Phoebe and Robert Sumner remained in what is now Guilford County (was part of Rowan County at the time) in North Carolina. They had ten more children whose birth dates are recorded in the minutes of the New Garden Monthly Meeting. She died in Guilford County, North Carolina on August 19, 1805.
Prudence was born in 1723 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. She married Richard Williams November 10, 1746 in Frederick County, Virginia at the Fairfax Monthly Meeting.
Bowater was one of the many Beals named after his grandmother's family maiden surname, "Bowater". He was born in 1725. He married Sarah Cook on October 2, 1752 at the Warrington Meeting House in York County, Pennsylvania. He died 2nd month 9, 1781 in Orange County (now Alamance), North Carolina.
Historical notes for Sarah (Bowater) Beals and Alexander Underwood from Quaker Meeting records:
Regarding Alexander Underwood (1688-1767): “Alexander Underwood was a devout Quaker, a Friends Minister for 22 years and named an Elder on Nov. 31, 1735. In 1742 he sold his land to William Boyd. They then moved to Warrington, York Co., PA (Sadsbury Monthly Meeting Territory) in 1743. His wife, Jane, died shortly after this move. On the 3rd month, 28th, 1743, he, Robert Conners, William Underwood and their families requested a Certificate of Removal from the Sadsbury MM (then including York Co. PA). Alexander got a certificate of removal to Monocacy Meeting in Prince Georges Co., Maryland on Sept. 2, 1745. He returned to Sadsbury MM on Aug. 3, 1747 in York Co. where Alexander was recommended as minister. He married Sarah Bowater Beals, widow of John Beals, after Sarah had gotten her children's permission. They married after he received a certificate from Warrington to Fairfax Meeting dated 2mo. 16, 1748. Sarah was probably in her 60's at the time. Sarah died prior to Alexander as she was not mentioned in his will. She is last recorded on Sept. 12, 1761 when she was succeeded as "overseer". He, Samuel and William Underwood (probably his sons) pledged money to help buy the land for the Warrington Monthly Meeting while attending Sadsbury MM in 1745.”
Historical information about the Quaker settlements in the Shenendoah region:
Quaker historian Gilbert Cope lists those migrating from Pennsylvania to Hopewell Meeting (including Monocacy) in Virginia: Alexander Ross, Morgan Bryan, Caleb Pusey, John Wilson, Thomas Curtis, Nathaniel Thomas, John Peteate, John Beals, John Mills, JR, Thomas Anderson, John Hiatt, Isaac Perkins, Geo. Robinson, Richard Beeson, Robert Luna, John Richards, Giles Chapman, James Brown, Luke Emlen, John Littler, Benjamin Borden, John Hogg, Josiah Ballenger, Cornelius Cochrine, John Frost, Thomas Dawson, Thomas Brandon, George Hobson, Sr and Jr, Evan Thomas, John Wright, John Hood, Edward Davis, Thomas Babb, James Davis, Hugh Parvall, Morgan Morgan, Simon Taylor, and Abraham Holligsworth.
Quaker Corner Website
Gilbert Cope, Quaker historian