The Jackson Purchase region of Kentucky is comprised of the eight westernmost counties - Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Fulton, Graves, Hickman, Marshall and McCracken. It is bordered on the west by the Mississippi River, on the north by the Ohio River, on the east by the Tennessee River and the state of Tennessee to the south. By Kentuckians it is generally referred to simply as "the Purchase".

Andrew Jackson and Isaac Shelby purchased the land lying west of the Tennessee River from the Chickasaw tribe and opened the area for settlement around 1820. Within the next few years, my grandfather's ancestors came there from Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee - the Beadles, Clapps, Pryors and Wingos settled in Graves County with the Reeves and Halls in neighboring Ballard County.

Beadles


The first Beadles known to arrive in America were brothers John and Gabriel Bedell who arrived with the second supply at Jamestown in 1609. There is no evidence that they survived the Jamestown massacre of 1622, remained in the colonies, married or had descendants. From 1650 to 1660, several more Beadles' individuals arrived in Virginia with most recorded as settling in the Northern Neck counties and one or two listed in the court records of York County. There appear to be no more arrivals between those earliest recorded Beadles and the appearance of Robert Beadles in a 1720 deed in King William County.

By the period prior to the Revolution, the Beadles family of Virginia is an assortment of families with no documentation to connect them and develop a clear idea of how they are related or whether they were completely unrelated.

The earliest known ancestor of the Beadles family of the Jackson Purchase is William Beadles who was born circa 1750. He is first identified on the 1779 rent rolls of Caroline County, Virginia. There are several other Beadles' individuals of approximately the same age living in Virginia around the time of the Revolution. Capt. John Beadles, born circa 1740, of Orange County, brothers Edmund and Joel Beadles in King William County along with Augustine Beadles in Amelia County. An older individual who could be the appropriate age to be the parent of some of these individuals, Robert Beadles, is recorded in the area of Spotsylvania and Orange Counties from around 1749 but his 1783 will names no male children.

William Beadles married Ann Yancey, daughter of Lewis and Mary Yancey, sometime around 1780 for their first child, Lewis Yancey Beadles was born on 27 April 1781. Their second child William's birth was recorded on the 14th of October 1784 in the Douglas Register of St. James Northam Parish, Goochland County. The family was apparently living in Louisa County at this time for William Beadles is listed from 1782 to 1784 on the tax lists there. During this period of time, a James, John and Joseph Beadles are also found in Louisa County who could be William's siblings. New information recently discovered in Louisa County records has proven the family connection to James Beadles. An 1804 Chancery Court case, Wm. & James Beadles vs Achilles Tandy, Adm. of Wm. Tandy, establishes that William and James Beadles were brothers.

From 1788 to 1796 William is found on the tax lists in Albemarle County and by 1798 he had relocated to Charlotte County where the family remained until 1810 to 1820. It appears that Ann Yancey Beadles died before 1820 for there is no wife in William's household in the 1820 census of Halifax County.

William Beadles died before May of 1827 when Lewis Y. Beadles as administrator of the estate submitted an inventory to the Pittsylvania County Court. After the death of his father, Lewis Yancey Beadles and his extended family migrated to the Jackson Purchase area where he is recorded in the land records by 1831.

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