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

Beeks line: Done with the Beeks line?

Of course, I'll never be done writing about this family, or at least learning about them.  However, I've come to a stopping point and any posts I write now will either be of things I've learned from the Huntington newspaper, or I'll post when I find the story of a new Beeks ancestor.  Since some of these people right now are first names only, I don't hold out a lot of hope for locating them, but certainly stranger things have happened.  My criteria for including people on this list is that they at least died in this country.  Some were probably immigrants and some may have been here for several generations, but I just can't trace them. 

Here are the names I'm looking for:

Timothy Martin, born about 1798 died before 1870; married in 1833  in Shelby County, Ohio to
Hannah Tilberry or Tilbury, born about 1810.  They may have died in Wabash County, Indiana.
possibly Eva, the wife of George Philip Serfass.  She would have been born about 1783, maybe.
Sabina, wife of Frederick Serfass, born about 1760.
Felix Weiss about 1720-1779 died in Hamilton Township, Monroe County, Pa.
Anna Maria van Buskirk, his wife, born about 1726
George Featheringill 1710-1767-died in Frederick County, Va.
possibly Elizabeth Marie Settlemire, his wife
Hannah, wife of William Lehew  about 1745-1810, died in wythe County, Va.
Tabitha, widow Underwood, wife of William Hunt, early Virginia
Elizabeth, wife of Hugh Donaghe
Isabel Hamilton, wife of John Donaghe
Thomas Hicklin, 1689-1772
Richard Bodkin 1710-1773
Elizabeth, wife of Richard Bodkin
Barbara, wife of Johan  Jacob Bentz
Rebecca Caroline, wife of Christian Funk
Polly Carter 1805-1880, Lagro, Wabash County, Indiana, wife of John Beeks
Elizabeth, wife of Johann Gottfried Neimrich 
Johann Gottfired Neimrich
possibly John Barnes and his possible wife Elizabeth, parents of Catherine Barnes

As you can see, for most of these people I have little to go on.  However, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.  They also ask for help, which is what I'm doing now.  Can you help me learn the stories of any of these people, and possibly their parents? 

Holbrook Line: Anne Lovelace, "gateway" immigrant and heroine

Gateway immigrants are precious jewels in the world of genealogy.  These are people who immigrated to America before the year 1700 and have proven ancestors back to one or another line of royalty.  Anne Lovelace Gorsuch fits this definition.  We have to go back 11 generations to get to Anne, born about 1610, and then another 15 generations to get to royalty through at least one of her lines, but there he is, King Edward I, married to Eleanor of Castile, who was the daughter of King Ferdinand III of Castile, and through those two gentlemen there is royalty all the way back to Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, and most of the other royal lines of Europe.  So, we now have reason to be termed "royal pains", I guess.

Anne Lovelace has always fascinated me.  Her brother was a famous poet, some were governors here in the colonies,  her parents were important people ("Sir William"), and she married an educated minister, John Gorsuch.  Her parents were William Lovelace, who was a member of the Virginia Company that founded the Jamestown colony, and Anne Barne, who was also of a famous family. She was the granddaughter of the Archbishop of York. Reverend  John Gorsuch was a Royalist, and during the English Civil War, in 1647, he was killed by opponents.  His name is still listed in the English Book of Common Prayers, as being a martyr. 

At that time, Anne was the mother of as many as 11 children.With her husband gone and extremely difficult and uncertain times in England, she came to America with three of her children about 1650, and four more followed shortly.  Anne died in 1652 in Lancaster County, Virginia, so she did not enjoy life in America for long.  It was difficult to leave England during this time period (Civil War still in progress), so she must have had some help in making her escape, if that is what it was. I sometimes think about what she must have gone through, in making the decision to leave, in taking only part of her family with her, and in starting life anew in America.  It surprises me that she didn't remarry, because widows typically remarried quickly, so she must have had steel in her backbone. 

There is an excellent article posted on line from the Carolina Journal, called "They Were Cavalier About It", by John Hood, and this is worth Googling if you're at all interested in this family. There is much more information available on the web, too, but this is a blog, not a book, so I've tried to keep it short.  

This is our line of descent:

John Gorsuch/Anne Lovelace
Charles Gorsuch/Sarah Cole
Charles Gorsuch/Sarah Cole  (it looks like they were first cousins)
Hannah Gorsuch/Thomas Stansbury
Rachel Stansbury/Alexis Lemmon
Sarah Lemmon/Abraham Hetrick
Isaac Hetrick Elizabeth Black
Mary Alice Hetrick/Louis E Stanard
Etta Stanard/Loren Holbrook (my grandparents)

Anne is one of my most interesting ancestors. I'd love to sit down to English tea with her, wouldn't you?