Isaac Beard

(1792/3 – c1834)

 

Isaac appears to be the eldest of Jacob Beard's children, apparently the male 16-26 in his 1810 household.[1]  We have only one record of his age, which suggests a birth year of late 1792 or 1793.  He enlisted in the regular army at Bowling Green, Kentucky on 29 October 1814 for a six-month term.[2]   The enlistment record describes him as 21 years old, 5' 5" with black hair, black eyes, and dark complexion, born in Virginia, and gives his occupation at enlistment as a hatter.  The same army records have him on the duty rosters of the 7th U.S. Infantry, and show his discharge on 14 April 1816 at Hopkinsville, Kentucky.[3]  His discharge paper repeats the same physical description and occupation.

 

How Isaac Beard came to be in Bowling Green (Warren County), is something of a mystery.  He may have been the same Isaac Beard who, on 18 September 1812, joined a militia company of Jefferson and Warren County volunteers for six weeks of service.[4]  An 1854 letter (see letters pages) written by his sister-in-law says that Isaac learned his trade as a hatter from his uncle Joseph Reese.  Since we know Joseph Reese had moved to Kentucky by 1810, first to Jefferson County then to Warren County, it is possible that Isaac Beard left home as a teenager to accompany him west.  [See the endnote for a more detailed discussion of this connection.]

 

Isaac received a land warrant on 31 December 1816 for his regular army service.[5]  On 16 January 1819, as Isaac Beard of Robertson County, Tennessee, he appointed George W. Lillars, a Congressman from Montgomery County, and William G. Blount, the then Governor of Tennessee, as his attorneys to procure a patent on this warrant.[6]  He signed his name to this document as “Isaac Beard”.   A 160 acre quarter section was awarded in Linn County, Missouri on 16 Feb 1819.[7]  On 6 June 1819 Isaac wrote George Lillars requesting “...to have my grant issued for land lying in Illinois or Missouri Territory which ever you should think advisable”, apparently not yet aware that the land had already been granted.[8]   

 

Since he didn’t seem to care where the land was located, Isaac probably intended to sell it rather than occupy it.  He probably did so, but there is no record of a sale.  The deed records of Linn County are lost before 1836, and no Isaac Beard is mentioned in its later records.  Linn County files show only that the land was owned by a Caton Usher who he sold the tract in 1842.[9]  A reasonable assumption is that Isaac sold the land sometime between 1819 and 1836, the period for which deeds are lost.

 

Following his discharge in 1816, Isaac Beard moved a few miles south into Robertson County, Tennessee.  There he associated with another former solder and hatter named John W. Ferguson[10], whose sister he married.  On 2 September 1817, Isaac Beard and John W. Ferguson jointly bought 36 2/3 acres on the Red River and 17 1/3 acres on the road to Nashville in Robertson County from Joseph P. Gunter.[11]  Both parcels were located near the present town of Springfield, about ten miles south of the Kentucky border.  They kept the land only three years.  Beard and Ferguson sold the land on 4 September 1820 to a neighbor, James Appleton.[12]   (Ferguson already owned several town lots in Springfield, on which he lived thereafter.)  Isaac Beard does not appear again in Robertson County deed records, except for witnessing a deed a few months earlier in April 1820.[13]

 

He is in the 1820 census of Robertson County, age 26-45, with a female (presumably his wife) aged 16-26 and one female under 10.  After the 1820 census and the sale of his land, Isaac, his wife, and the daughter disappear from the records.  He had a son, George Washington Baird, born in Springfield on 16 December 1821[14] so he was still in the area as late as mid-1821.  After that, I have not found any explicit references to him in Robertson County (see below). 

 

It is clear from later records that Isaac Beard’s wife was a sister of John W. Ferguson, and that she was deceased by 1830.  It is also clear that, despite the young female in the 1820 census, she had no surviving children other than George Baird.  George W. Baird was evidently raised by his Ferguson grandmother and two maiden sisters of his mother.  The Ferguson family maintained a single household in Springfield and George appears to be in it in both 1830 and 1840, with no sign of his mother or of the young female.  When his maternal grandmother Elizabeth Ferguson died intestate in 1845, George W. Baird was appointed administrator of her estate[15].   The final settlement of the estate, recorded in August 1849, shows that George W. Baird received a share equal to that of the Ferguson children.[16]  Clearly, he was the only heir of his mother alive at the time.  As additional proof, George W. Baird is called a nephew of Elizabeth Ferguson’s children Mary and Polly Ferguson in numerous court documents[17], as well as in several letters.  When Mary Ferguson died unmarried, her estate was subject to a suit by her siblings, with George W. Baird the only heir of his mother to the estate.  I strongly suspect that his mother died at or shortly after his birth. 

 

The most plausible theory is that Isaac Beard and his son lived with the Fergusons after his wife’s death.  The Ferguson family maintained a single household headed by John W. Ferguson which included his widowed mother and unmarried sisters as well as two males that were not part of the family.  His 1830 household, which appears to include George, also includes a unidentified male aged 30-40 who is the right age to be Isaac Beard. 

 

We know Isaac was alive in 1830, even though he does not appear as a head of household in the census of any state.  Isaac Beard’s grandmother, Esther Reese, had left a will in 1818 leaving her property to her children, one of whom was her daughter Mary Beard, Isaac’s mother.  A settlement record of the Esther Reese estate mentions a letter from Isaac Beard dated 13 November 1829 “on estate business”.[18]  On 13 November 1833, Isaac Beard of the State of Tennessee “one of the heirs of Mary Beard, deceased, and also one of the grandchildren of Esther Reese, deceased” sold his interest in Esther Reese’s land to Joseph Stover.[19]  He signed as “Isaac Beard” and personally appeared in the Shenandoah court the same day to prove the deed.[20] 

 

Additional proof that this Isaac Beard was the same person as Jacob Beard's son, as well as the link to his own son, comes from a letter written by Mary Ferguson to her nephew George Washington Baird on 3 December 1854:

 

I received your kind letter the 30th ult...And now I will give you all the information about your Farther's family that I can.  Your Farther's name was Isaac and come from Strasburg, Shenandoah Cty, Va.  I do not know what your grandfarthers name was.  I think that your grandmothers name was Mary.  Your farther had two brothers one was named Jacob he come here to this country in 1819 and died in Reynoldsburgh and he had a brother Joseph that remained in Va. and had two sisters and one of them was named Mary and I cannot remember the others name.  Your grandmother had two brothers by the name of Reece one was named Joseph.  Your farther learned his trade from him.[21]  I do not know the others name.  Your grandmother had an uncle that lived and died near Port Royal his name was Jacob Fettner[22] and this about all the information that I can give you it has been so long ago that I forgot about it nearly.[23]

 

This letter leaves us with no doubt that George W. Baird’s father Isaac Beard is the son of Jacob and Mary Beard of Shenandoah County. 

 

Isaac Beard apparently died shortly after executing the 1833 deed, perhaps even upon his return trip to Tennessee.   He appears in no 1840 census, and the “extra” male is missing in the 1840 Ferguson household.   He is also missing from the 1836 tax list of Robertson County, implying his death between 1833 and 1836.   Mary Ferguson’s letter implies that (a) she was aware of Isaac’s death, (b) that it occurred “so long ago that I forgot about it nearly”.   We can also infer that she mentions no date or place of death because both are assumed to be known to George Baird. 

 

Finally, we have a letter from William Seal, the former county clerk of Robertson County, to George Washington Baird dated 21 October 1869:

 

...the tract of land that you spoke of that your father held in Missouri I have some recollection about and one thing I know that you are the only heir of your father Isaac Beard and unless any conveyance made be recorded in the County in Missouri where the land lies such conveyance is of no account if you can get hold of the old original grant...and have it recorded in the County where the land lies.  You will hold this land this is beyond doubt...[24]

 

This letter seems to cement the case that Isaac Beard died in Springfield.  William Seal was living in Missouri in 1869, but he had been the Robertson County clerk from 1819 through 1839.  If Isaac died in the 1830s, that would explain why George wrote to Seal and why Seal seems to have such certain knowledge of Isaac Beard’s death. 

 

The county court records of Roberson County should contain a record of Isaac’s death, but they are not complete and no record of his death was found.[25] 

 

In summary, although there may have been a daughter, there was only one child of Isaac Beard and his Ferguson wife who lived to adulthood:

 

 

1.   George Washington Baird  (16 December 1821 - 12 Mar 1876)  See separate page.

 

 

 

 

Endnote:  The Reese Connection

 

Isaac Beard’s mother was Mary Stockslager.  After the death of her father, her mother remarried to Joel Reese and had two more children:  Joseph Reese (born 12 January 1784) and Isaac Reese (born 1 April 1785 ).[26]   (See the Stockslager pages.)

 

The Mary Ferguson letter says that Isaac Beard learned his trade (as a hatter) from his uncle Joseph Reese.  Joseph Reese was bound out to Peter Hoffman to “learn the trade of a hatter” on 13 October 1801, when he was 17 years old.  Note that Joseph Reese was only about ten years older than Isaac Beard.  If he taught Isaac his trade it must have been within a few years before Isaac’s enlistment in 1814, when he was already a hatter.  Isaac’s father, Jacob Beard, was in Shenandoah County, Virginia during that period.  Joseph Reese’s whereabouts between his marriage in 1806 and 1810 are unknown, but he was in Kentucky by late 1810.  Joseph Reese left a family Bible listing the birthdates of his children, two of them prior to 1810, which should help to identify him in the 1810 census.  He does not appear to be in Virginia in 1810, nor is he in his mother’s household.  There is, however, a Joseph Reese in the 1810 census of  Jefferson County, Kentucky who had extra adults in the household.[27]  Of the 11 children listed in the Joseph Reese family Bible, only two survived long enough to be counted in the 1850 census.  The eldest of these, born 13 November 1810, gave his birthplace as Kentucky, as did his brother born in 1825.[28]  So it appears Joseph Reese was in Kentucky at a time when Isaac Beard was presumably still in his father’s household in Virginia.  On balance, it seems likely that Isaac Beard left Virginia to join his uncle around 1810-12.

 

His brother Isaac Reese, who may have been one of the adult males in that Kentucky census, apparently returned to Shenandoah to marry Harriet Gardner on 15 September 1819.  Both Isaac Reese and Joseph Reese were in the 1820 census of Warren County, Kentucky.  Isaac Reese, of Warren County, and Joseph Reese “late of Warren County, Kentucky and now of Texas” together sold their interest in Esther Reese’s estate in May 1832.  Isaac Reese remained in Warren County but Joseph Reese moved to Texas by early 1830.  Two of his sons claimed land in the Austin Colony, stating they had moved to Texas in January and February 1830, respectively.