Beeks line: Christopher Beeks, Immigrant

How did I miss writing about Christopher, who as far as we know now is the immigrant ancestor in the Beeks line?  If this is a repeat post, I do apologize but neither my hand written list nor my search function is turning up a post about him.  Maybe I was waiting to try to pin down more details about him.  As it is, there is too much of his life that is still a mystery, but since I am winding down on this process of writing about the immigrants in the Beeks family, it's possibly now or never.

We don't know much about Christopher's early life.  He is traditionally given a birth date of 1756 and it's said he lived in either Leicestershire or Lancastershire in England, born of parents yet undiscovered.  We don't really know if either of these locations is correct, but the first thing we do know of him is that he was in trouble-big trouble.

Life in England in 1770 was, shall we say, difficult.  Jobs were lacking, education was lacking, food was lacking and law enforcement was lacking.  George III was already King of England, but he was not a forceful nor a temperate king, and his officials were, for the most part, out to get what they could for themselves, with no compassion at all for the poor.  We don't know what Christopher's family situation was, but at 14 he was out on his own, just as many of his contemporaries were.  Christopher had the bad luck to be caught, or at least accused and found guilty, of "assault on highway".  This was from Manchester, Lancashire, England, but doesn't necessarily mean that's where his home was, as young men (and he was young, just about 14 at this time).

Some say he was sentenced to death by hanging and then reprieved, to be sent to America as an indentured servant, a dumping ground for "criminals" for either 7 or 14 years, again, depending on the source.  I have yet to find records of his master, or for that matter, of the ship he came on.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, Christopher was quite happy to side with the American colonists who wanted their freedom.  He enlisted in March of  1777 and served for at least three years in various Virginia Regiments, primarily the 8th and then the 12th.  There is evidence that the unit he served with went through that hard winter at Valley Forge, and I haven't yet found anything that says he was furloughed during that time (the next winter, 1778, yes, he was furloughed for part of that time, but not the 1777-78 winter).  So we can believe that he was there during that difficult winter, that he would have had ample chances to have seen George Washington, and that he survived the winter in good enough shape to continue soldiering.

We know that he served three years because in 1783 he was given a land warrant for 100 acres of land, and that is the amount of land that privates received for three years of service.  Christopher didn't hold onto this land, though, because there was some problem with the tax collector not recording the taxes due and so Christopher, along with several others, lost their land.  We don't know for sure where he lived when the war started, nor where he settled after the war.

We do know he married Catherine Barnes, who was the daughter of John Barnes and possibly Elizabeth, and we know they lived in western Virginia, variously listed as Augusta and then Berkeley County.  They had at least ten children together, with the first known birth date of 1787, so perhaps they married in 1785 or 1786.  No record has yet been located of this event, to the best of my knowledge.  By 1790, he was running a pub or tavern and was soon in debt.  He is found in various counties in Virginia until about 1811, when the family went to Xenia, Greene County, Ohio.  His widow remarried in September of 1814 so Christopher had died before then. Catherine's children would have been teenagers and older at this point, so perhaps they no longer lived at home.

This is as much as we know about Christopher.  He had a rough start in life and it appears that economically, he suffered for that through most of his life.  He struggled to support his ten children, he lost his land and his business, and he may have had life long physical problems because of his time in the service of his new country.  It's easy to feel sorry for Christopher.  But we should also feel proud.  He loved his new country well enough to fight for it for three years, and continued, in other ways, the struggle to give his children a better start in life than he had  He must have felt joy that his children would not have to commit crimes in order to eat, and that they had the freedom to go wherever on this continent they wanted to go.  Christopher Beeks, thank you for your service and for all the sacrifices you made!

The line of descent is:

Christopher Beeks-Catherine Barnes
William Beeks-Mary Elizabeth Nimerick
John Beeks-Polly Carter
William Beeks-Mary Wise
John Beeks-Elizabeth Wise
Wilbur Beeks-Cleo Aldridge
Mary Margaret Beeks-Cleveland Harshbarger
Their descendants