| Notes |
- Thomas' original surname was Beals. Later he changed it to Beales.
The first Friends minister of record to cross the Ohio River and preach in the limits of the Northwest Territory was Thomas Beals who was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in March 1719, the son of John and Sarah Bowater Beals. From John and Sarah descended a very large number of members of the now widely extended Yearly Meetings of Indiana, western, Iowa and Wilmington, as well as those west of the Mississippi River and to the Pacific coast. Among them are to be found a large number of outstanding ministers in the Society of Friends.
The Beals family moved from Pennsylvania and Maryland and later to Hopewell, near Winchester, Virginia. Thomas Beals moved with this family to North Carolina in 1748 or 1749 being then about twenty-nine years old, and first stopped at Cane Creek. Then, with his family, he moved to New Garden, North Carolina, which was frontier territory. In a very short time he was joined by some other families, and in the year 1753, being then about thirty-four years of age, he came forth in the ministry. How long he lived at New Garden we do not know but presume it was for several years. The next move he made was to Westfield, Surry County, North Carolina. Here he was instrumental in the development of a large meeting. He must have lived at New Garden and Westfield about thirty years, during which time he paid several lengthy visits to the Indians.
In the year 1775, twenty years before Wayne's Treaty with the Indians at Greenville, Ohio, Beals, accompanied by four Friends, started to pay a visit to the Shawnee Indians and some other tribes and, after passing a fort not far from Clinch Mountain in Virginia, they were arrested and carried back to the fort to be tried for their lives on the charge of being confederates with the hostile Indians. The officers, understanding that one of them was a preacher, required a sermon before they went in for trial. Beals thought it right to hold a meeting with the soldiers, which proved to be a highly favored season. A young man then in the fort was converted and, some time after, moved among Friends and became a member and, at a very advanced age, bore public testimony to the truth of the principles of which he was convinced at the fort. After this meeting was over the Friends were kindly entertained and were treed and at liberty to go on their journey. They crossed the Ohio River into what is now the state of Ohio and held many meetings with the Indians with satisfaction and returned home with much peace of mind. Thomas Beals told his friends that he saw with his spiritual eye the seed of Friends scattered all over that good land and that one day there would be the greatest gathering of Friends there of any place in the world and that his faith was strong in the belief that he would live to see Friends settle north of the Ohio River.
In 1781, Beals moved from Westfield, North Carolina, to Blue Stone, Giles County, Virginia, where he lived but a few years. While there, their sufferings were very great in many ways, not only from lack of the necessities of life, but their son-in-law, James Horton, was taken prisoner by the Indians and, from the most reliable information that could be obtained, was carried to old Chillicothe, near Frankfort, Ohio, and there put to death. This move to Blue Stone does not appear to have had the approval of Beals' friends, for Nathan Hunt states that they sent a committee to send him back to Westfield, North Carolina. The little meeting of twenty or thirty families was entirely broken up at Blue Stone.
In the year 1785, he moved to Lost Creek, Tennessee, and in 1793 he moved to Grayson County, Virginia, at which several places Nathan Hunt states that Thomas Beals set up meetings and says that he was very zealous for the support of the testimonies of Friends. In 1799, Beals, who had visited this country twenty four years before, now moved to Quaker Bottom, Ohio, along with other members of his family and in the spring of 1801 he moved to Salt Creek, near the present town of Adelphia.
On August 29, 1801, he died and was buried near Richmondale, Ross County, Ohio, in a coffin of regular shape, hollowed out of a solid white walnut tree by his ever faithful friend, Jesse Baldwin, and assisted by Enoch Cox and others, and covered by a part of the same tree, which was selected for the purpose by the deceased while living. The grave of Thomas Beals was recently Iodated and local Friends have erected an appropriate monument to his memory.
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1719 - 1801 (82 years)
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