Exciting Beadles DNA News

For a very long time, descendants of Lewis Yancey Beadles of Graves County, Kentucky and descendants of Basset Beadles who settled just south of Graves County in Weakley County, Tennessee have been searching for their origins. Karen Frazer who descends from Basset has been working with her own family members and descendants of other Beatles families to encourage male family members with the Beadles surname to participate in Y-DNA testing at Family Tree DNA. In the last week Karen has shared the matching Y-DNA results of a descendant of Basset Beadles to a descendant of James Beadles of Louisa County, Virginia who was the uncle of our ancestor Lewis Yancey Beadles of the Jackson Purchase. To add to these great results, there was also a descendant of Edmond Beadles whose DNA matched. Edmond Beadles was initially from Louisa County and also migrated to Kentucky.

Both Lewis Yancey Beadles and Basset Beadles were born in Virginia and migrated to the Jackson Purchase area shortly after it was opened for settlement arriving in May and June of 1830. Lewis Yancey Beadles received his first land grant from the Bureau of Land Management on the 31st of May 1830. Less than a month later on the 17th of June 1830, Bassett Beadles and his son William both received grants all of which are recorded in Kentucky's grants west of the Tennessee River.

The map of the Jackson Purchase area above points out Wingo, Kentucky where Lewis Yancey Beadles received six (6) sections of land adjoining the section granted to his son-in-law Jerman Jeduthan Wingo for whom the town derived it's name.

Basset's first land grant in 1830 was in the area of Cuba, Kentucky to the southeast of the town of Wingo where Lewis Yancey Beadles had settled. Within the next few years Basset moved further south and is recorded in Weakley County, Tennessee in 1840. The town of Dukedom in Weakley County is credited with having been named for Basset's son Duke.

During the 1850's Basset's son William was also a resident of Graves County, Kentucky where he was the County Clerk. William's two sons, Alfred and Marshal, became physicians and Dr. Alfred Beadles practiced in Wingo, Kentucky.

It has been speculated that these Beadles' families may have been related but until Karen received the Y-DNA results, there was nothing more than proximity to connect the two families of the Jackson Purchase. Since he was listed on the tax lists of Louisa County, proximity is also the only thing to connect the third matching Y-DNA tester's probable ancestor Edmund Beadles to brothers James and William Beadles.

There were two Edmund Beadles of the same era, one living in King William County who was a Revolutionary War soldier and brother to Joel Beadles. That Edmund does not appear to have ever left the Tidewater area for his Revolutionary War pension statement given in 1834 states that he was at that time a resident of King William County and had always been. I had initially believed that a small scrap with Edmund Beadles' signature as a witness in the file of a Louisa County chancery suit involving William and his brother James Beadles was the Edmund Beadles who migrated to Pittsylvania County and subsequently to Kentucky, but recently discovered that he signed with an X on several deeds in Pittsylvania which indicates that the signature is not his. This second Edmund Beadles who is believed to be the ancestor of the third Y-DNA tester is recorded on the tax lists of Louisa County along with brothers William and James Beadles. In 1782, Edmund or Edmond was listed on the tax lists there but by 1795 he was apparently living in Pittsylvania County for he is listed on their tax lists of that year. In 1788 he was joined by Rice and Seaton Beadles on those Pittsylvania tax lists. Two deeds dated 1797 that name him along with wife Unity indicate that they were selling their property in Virginia prior to migrating to Kentucky. By August 16, 1800 Edmond and Rice Beadles were listed on the tax lists of Lincoln County, Kentucky. The third DNA tester descends from John Beadles who married Priscilla Harralson in Person County, North Carolina around 1792 and is believed to be a son of Edmond. Person County is just below Pittsylvania County on the Virginia-North Carolina border. John was still recorded in Person County in the 1800 census but within a few years, he had settled in Mercer County, Kentucky adjoining Lincoln County.

This by no means solves all of the mysteries of the Beadles of Virginia's Tidewater region, but these Y-DNA results are an important discovery in regard to the research of the Beadles families of Virginia and has proven that they were very closely related. All three of the Beadles' descendants whose Y-DNA matched are extremely close genetically, matching on 109 of 111 SNP markers.

If you are a male Beadles' descendant with the Beadles surname, please consider participating in the Y-DNA project at Family Tree DNA and further adding to our knowledge of these families.

The Other Beadles - Bassett Beadles

At around the same time that Lewis Yancey Beadles arrived in the Jackson Purchase, another Beadles family came to the area. Lewis Yancey Beadles received his first land grant from the Bureau of Land Management on the 31st of May 1830. Less than a month later on the 17th of June 1830, Bassett Beadles and his son William both received grants. Many years of research has failed to reveal whether Lewis Yancey Beadles and Bassett were related or had even been acquainted in Virginia or North Carolina.



Bassett Beadles was reportedly born in Richmond, Virginia around 1775 and had married Elizabeth Cashion sometime before 1800 for they were recorded in the 1800 census of Iredell County, North Carolina. In that census Bassett and his wife were both 16-25 years old, they had one male child and one female child each under 10 years old. By the 1810 census they were living in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina and had six children. They were next recorded in the 1820 census of White County, Tennessee with 7 sons and 2 daughters, before moving to the Jackson Purchase.

Bassett's first land grant in 1830 was in the area of Cuba, Kentucky to the southwest of the town of Wingo where Lewis Yancey Beadles had settled. Within the next few years he had moved further south and is recorded in Weakley County, Tennessee in 1840. The town of Dukedom in Weakley County is credited with having been named for Bassett's son Duke who served as the postmaster there from 1833 to 1846. This community is located on the state line between Kentucky and Tennessee.

Bassett Beadles is believed to have died around 1846 and in the 1850 census, Elizabeth Beadles is a 74 year old widow living in a Weakley County, Tennessee community in the midst of her children. According to the best available information, the children of Bassett and Elizabeth Beadles were Lucinda, Alfred, Duke A., William A., Franklin G. Joseph, Bassett Jr. Malinda and James.

Bassett's son William was the County Clerk in Graves County, Kentucky during the 1850's. William's two sons, Alfred and Marshal, became physicians and Dr. Alfred Beadles practiced in Wingo, Kentucky until his death in 1875.

Because Bassett named his son Duke, I have always been curious as to whether he may have been a son of Harmon Duke Beadles of Hanover County, Virginia. Hanover County is just north of the city of Richmond where Bassett is believed to have been born. Harmon Duke Beadles was a taxpayer in St. Paul's Parish of Hanover in 1786 and 1788. Few details are known of his life and there is no known record of his children. He had served as a private in an infantry regiment during the Revolution. After his death in 1813, his wife Ann received a pension on his service.

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See update with current news about Beadles' Y-DNA matches to descendants of Basset Beadles at the following post - Exciting Beadles DNA News.

The Mystery of Sarah D. Beadles

Recently I received an email from the husband of a descendant of Sarah D. Beadles suggesting the possibility that she was another daughter of Lewis Yancey Beadles and Martha C. Vaughan. The fact that this family might have included another child that had never been identified hadn't occurred to me before.




Lettisha Wilson Webb
daughter of Sarah D. Beadles Wilson 

After the idea was suggested to me, I looked back over census records of Lewis Yancey Beadles, and in the 1830 census of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, there is a daughter that is never listed in family group sheets or pedigrees. Lewis Y. Beadles' household in 1830 is shown with 3 females still living at home. Daughter Ann had married Jerman J. Wingo in 1826 and was no longer listed in her parents' household, so, based upon previous beliefs regarding the children of Lewis Y. Beadles and Martha C. Vaughan, there should only have been two daughters living at home in 1830. But that was not the case, there was 1 female 15-19 - Letitia, 1 female 10-14 - Mary Elizabeth and 1 more female 5-9. Was this Sarah, born in 1821?

Sarah D. Beadles married Benjamin Franklin Wilson in 1839. The 18th of November 1839 is listed on numerous internet family trees as their wedding date but none cite any source for that date. They apparently married in Kentucky for their first son was born there in 1842. By the birth of their next child, Laura Priscilla, in 1846, the family was living in Tennessee where they're found in the Dukedom community of Weakley County in the 1850 census.

Based solely upon the fact that the family was living in Dukedom, my initial thought was that Sarah must surely have been a descendant of Bassett Beadles, but after some research of that family it doesn't appear so. Bassett Beadles was living in North Carolina until after 1820 when he was recorded in the 1820 Mecklenburg County census. Bassett's children all give North Caroina as their place of birth in later census unlike Sarah whose birthplace is generally recorded as Virginia. In the 1850 census, her birthplace has been transcribed as VT for Vermont, but that is apparently because VA for Virginia was not written clearly. Other census and death records of her children give her birthplace as Virginia.



1870 Census of Cuba District, Graves County

Sarah and Benjamin F. Wilson named their first son, James Yancey Wilson. The name Yancey is used extensively in the Lewis Yancey Beadles family. His mother was Ann Yancey and her surname was given to numerous descendants as a given name. After James Yancey Wilson married Julia Quisenberry around 1866, they were recorded in the 1870 census living in the Cuba District of Graves County three households from the residence of Jerman J. and Ann Y. Beadles Wingo who was very probably his aunt.

The name of Sarah's daughter, Lettisha, born in 1858, was also used consistently in the Beadles and Vaughan families. The use of the name Letitia seems to have originated in the family of Martha C. Vaughan and dates back at least to the family of her grandfather, Phillip Williams of Gloucester County, Virginia.

The loss of all the records of Graves County prior to 1886 when the courthouse burned may make proving Sarah was another child of Lewis Yancey Beadles difficult, if not impossible, but I believe she is very probably a member of that family. Hopefully some source of documentation that she was the daughter of Lewis Yancey Beadles and Martha C. Vaughan can eventually be found.



(Gravestone photo by Paul R. Wilcox for FindaGrave)