(1) Name: William BECKETT
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Birth: 1775 Pennsylvania
Death: July 1844 Clark County, Indiana Age: 69
Burial: Clegg Cemetary, Clark County, Indiana
Father: John Samuel BECKETT (~1745-)
Mother: Mary

Misc. Notes
THE DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM A. AND JANE SHAWHAN BECKETT
from “The Becket-Shawhan Geneology” by The Late Harold L. Becket and his aunt The Late Mary E. Becket

This account of the Beckett family begins with William A. Beckett, whose marriage to Jane Shawhan is attested by the marriage book in the courthouse of Bourbon County at Paris, Kentucky, dated May 7, 1802. 1 am sorry to say I am not able to say who William's parents were, or where they lived before emigrating to Kentucky. There is reason to believe they lived in Maryland, on the Eastern Shore, in Accomack County. There were also Becketts in Virginia during the Revolution, and many took part in the war, as the National Archives and Virginia Archives show. Some of them were in Pittsburgh during the disagreement between Lord Dunmore and William Penn over the Pennsylvania boundary. The argument might have ended in a fight if the war with England had not become a serious matter. Several Becketts were in Pittsburgh at that time, and some of them entered the Patriot army. When the war was over, settlers poured into Kentucky by the thousands, especially between 1785 and 1790, after Kentucky was permitted to join the family of States.

Among those settlers were John and Robert, whose names are found in the 1790 Taxpayers census, which proves they were there before 1790, and before 1800. Their names are found in the taxpayers census of 1800, with the names of Robert and William Beckett. John and Robert were property owners in Bourbon County before 1790, and also John in Harrison County. The county was divided in 1792, so the division means I think that it lay on both sides of the Licking River. The 1800 census shows Robert and William in Bourbon County and also in Washington County. This may indicate that they were either father and son or brothers.

By this time, several other counties had citizens carrying the name of Beckett. Some of these were Benjamin, Clark County, Humphrey, Fleming County. Joseph was now a taxpayer in Bourbon County. All of these except William are named, at one time or another, as veterans of the Revolution. (Mrs. Ardery, author of several books on Bourbon County and genealogist.)

A family named Shawhan arrived in Bourbon County in 1791. Among the children of this family, there was a daughter named Jane Shawhan, who was born in 1777, and who became the wife of William Beckett. We have some of the history of this family.

In the John Fox Memorial Library (Paris, Kentucky) are copies of papers published in 1944 on "Early Bourbon County Families", compiled by a committee of DAR researchers.

From the March 14, 1844 Kentuckian Citizen: "A Sketch of the Shawhan (Shaughen) Family."

Jane Shawhan, daughter of Daniel and Margaret (Bell) Shawhan, married William Beckett, May 7, 1802. Their children were: Robert A. Beckett, born January 18, 1808. He married Mary Downing. He is the only one we have a record of.

Daniel Shawhan was born December 17, 1738, in Kent County, Maryland, which date is given in Shrewsbury Parish Record Page 240. He died in Bourbon County, Kentucky, May 11, 1791. He served in the Revolutionary War from Maryland. He went with his father and family to Frederick County, Maryland, thence to Hampshire County, Virginia.

He married Margaret Bell about 1762-1763, who was born in Virginia, daughter of Robert Bell of County Tyrone, Ireland, and his wife Agness (Fleming) Bell of Edinburgh, Scotland, who had settled on land four miles from Romney, Virginia, on the South Branch of the Potomac, where he was killed (instantly), "the breaking of the saddle girth when his mount "Drednot" attempted to leap a brook" (See History of Alleghany and Fayette Counties, Pennsylvania). The Shawhans migrated to Alleghany County, Pennsylvania, some time after October 23, 1771, when their son John was born in Hampshire County, Virginia.

Daniel took up 640 acres of land six miles out (of Fort Pitt) in the vicinity of old Mt. Lebanon Presbyterian Church, a section now termed Carnegie, Pennsylvania.

The first child of William and Jane was John, born April 12, 1804. During that year they went to live in Indiana, just across the Ohio from Louisville. With them went two Shawhan children, Mary, born 1796, and Luke, born 1799. Mary was married to Josiah Thomas June 14, 1813. Luke married Nancy McComb, Feb. 10, 1819. In his application for a marriage license he gave his name as Lucas Shawhan, formerly known as Lucas Beckett. The minister was James Garner. Luke was called Luke Beckett in all the census reports except the one in 1850, where for some reason he gave his name as John W. Beckett, and his oldest son as John W. Beckett, Jr.

The family lived on a place called Pine Lick, in Monroe Township, Clark County, Indiana. It was north of Jeffersonville, the county seat, several miles. William and nearly all his sons, and Luke, gave their occupations as Cooper. They also farmed. Making barrels was a good business those days. Nearly everything was shipped in them, including whiskey, and they lived close to the whiskey capital of the country.

The Shawhan family, of which our ancestress, Jane Shawhan Beckett was a member, was an old family even in colonial times. Daniel Shawhan is known to have been born in Maryland, in 1738. A family of Shawhans is said to have settled in Maryland, leasing a parcel of land in 1743. Daniel's parents moved with him and possibly other children that we have no record of to Frederick County, Maryland; thence to Frederick County, Virginia, and after that to a place in Augusta County, in the part later called Hampshire County, and in the Civil War became part of West Virginia. The dates of these moves are not known, but they settled about four miles south of Romney, on the south branch of the Potomac River. A neighbor family was that of Robert Bell, whose family was called "the South River Bells", as there were two other Bell families in the neighborhood.

Daniel was married to Margaret Bell, daughter of Robert and Margaret Bell. Robert Bell was born in Northern Ireland, his wife Agness Fleming in Edinbergh, Scotland. There were several Bell children. While the Shawhans lived in Virginia they had two children, Joseph and John. Jane was born to them after they moved to Pittsburgh.

That removal was a result of the death of Robert Bell, who was killed by a fall from his horse, when the saddle girth broken when his horse attempted to jump a ditch. Most of the Bells and the Shawhans moved to a place about six miles from Fort Pitt, someplace between 1771, when John was born, and 1777 when Jane was born.

In the 1780's there was a tremendous land rush in Kentucky, attracting settlers by the thousands, many of them arriving by way of the Ohio River. Daniel Shawhan and his family arrived in Kentucky in 1791, and secured land near the south fork of the Licking River, north of Paris, County Seat of Bourbon County. There is a small community at that location to this day called Shawhan.

Shortly after the arrival of the Shawhans in Kentucky, Daniel died. It is possibly that his illness was the reason for the move from Pittsburgh. The 1790 tax census (the first US census was taken in 1790, but was lost in a fire, when the British took Washington during the War of 1812) did not list any Shawhans, but the 1800 census listed John and Margaret as taxpayers.

Daniel Shawhan was buried in a cemetery at Ruddles Mills, as were all members of the family for many years. They moved to Cynthiana sometime before the Civil War, and the bodies of the family members were disinterred and reburied in a new cemetery established at Cynthiana. A few years ago the old stone vault stood open, monuments stood about, so weathered that the inscriptions were illegible. Perrin's History of Bourbon County says that Daniel was the first buried there.

Daniel's and Margaret's oldest son, Joseph, married the daughter of the Ewalt family, who were people who came to Kentucky with the Shawhans. They had two children, John born Oct. 2, 1811, and Henry, born Nov. 20, 1805. These sons of Joseph and Sallie Ewalt became shrewd businessmen in Bourbon County and Harrison County during the early and middle years of the century. They became very wealthy and powerful, buying and selling land, operating several distilleries, a big store in Cynthiana, a bank, probably the first in Cynthiana, even built a railroad from the coal mines in the mountains to the east to Cynthiana, where the families all lived and operated their businesses.

John, when the Civil War began, recruited a regiment of soldiers with himself as the leader, and was killed at the head of his regiment in 1862. Henry lived into the 1870's. Both men married and had large families.

So we have at least a pretty comprehensive story about the Shawhans in the early days of the Commonwealth. I wish I could say the same about the Beckett family. It is not because the Beckett name was so unusual. Every history book and record of county and state affairs during the early days of the colonies seem to mention people named Beckett. That is just the trouble, they were scattered every place, and we do not find them mentioned in families so they might be more easily traced. They had interesting adventures, and not always of a character that we can add with pride to our family tree. Several were said to have been "transported" to work in the tobacco and cotton fields. You didn't have to be very much of a criminal to get into jail in the old England of the days of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, I have found at least four ministers of the Anglican church in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and maybe other places. They married into good families, as a rule, they just did not go in for publicity that would take the name into the archives.

Our William Beckett may have come to Bourbon County from Pittsburg with the Shawhans. In the 1790 census of Berks County, Pennsylvania, we find the names of several Becketts who were heads of families, and right in the middle of them is the name a family of Ewalts, three females, no males. This occurence suggests that the Becketts and some, at least, of the Ewalt family lived near each other, and. some of the Beckett family accompanied the Ewalt and Shawhan families to Kentucky. Perhaps further research will tie these little events together. The History of Pittsburgh mentions Joseph Beckett, and four or five are named in Augusta County Militia rosters, all from Augusta County.

No, we cannot say with assurance where the Beckett settlers of Bourbon came from. The census says over. and over that he came from Pennsylvania, and that he was born in 1775. It seems likely some of that family of Becketts enlisted with Daniel Morgan, who was kept busy raising troops for General Washington during the Revolution. Morgan enlisted most of his riflemen from the neighborhood of Winchester, Romney, Pittsburgh, and all the towns of the northern end of the Appalachians. One Humphrey Beckett was one of his men, and with him, he declares in his petition for pension, at Monmouth, and each of the series of battles, Washington's troops fought around Philadelphia during the early part of the War. Humphrey declared he was with Morgan's Rifles, 11th Infantry, for three years. He was one of the several Becketts in the military from Frederick and Augusta Counties. Unfortunately he did not leave us any information about the other members of his family.

Our William would have been a baby when the Revolution began, and it was fought for six years, at least.

John and Robert Beckett were the only Becketts listed on the 1790 taxpayers census of Bourbon County. A Kentucky researcher, Mrs. Ardery, writes that John and Robert, with some some others named, were all veterans, and died in Bourbon, or at least in Kentucky, leaving estates. I would like to believe that one of those two was father to our William.

At the time William and Jane were being married, Gen. George Rogers Clark and his brother William, and their brother-in-law, named Anderson, were engaged in a difficult and thankless job of portioning out the bounty land by which Rogers' soldiers were paid their wages. Among those veterans of the Indian and British battles and scuffles was one named Cornelius Ruddle. He was a member of a family of Ruddles that came from a few miles below the old Potomac home of the Shawhan family in Hampshire County and took up large holdings in Kentucky. This man and some of his family, when William and Jane were moving into Clark County, Indiana, across the river from Louisville, established his own home in the same area, and perhaps was instrumental in their move to that place. Rogers and the others worked hard for years distributing the money or land to the ex-soldiers. There must have been the basis for good feeling between Ruddle and the Becketts, but what that basis was is still a mystery. We are reminded of it, however, when we notice how often the name Cornelius is given the descendants of William and his children and children's children.

William Beckett died in 1844, and was buried in the old Clegg cemetery. The Indiana Geological Society has lists of pioneers buried in the Clark County cemeteries. I understand that there is a stone in the Hebron Cemetery near Camp Point, Illinois, inscribed with his name and date of his death, and also with that of Jane, although she died in Illinois in 1867, having outlived William twenty-three years. And Jane died a horrible death. I am informed by a member of the family that Jane fell into a fireplace and was burned to death. She had never remarried, but her youngest son James remained single and took care of her until she died. John and his wife, Martha remained in Clark County until 1856, and they, with James and Jane and a number of other neighbors and relatives removed to Illinois, to be with the other members of their family.

William's name is on the tombstone with that of Jane. It would seem that his remains may have been moved from the Clegg Cemetery to the one in Adams County, and a suitable monument set up.

Luke and his family remained in Indiana. It is said that he left three sons and their families in Indiana when he went to live with Joseph Beckett in Adams County, Illinois. He had been there only a short time when he was killed by a train as he walked on the track. His death occurred July 9, 1877. He was buried in the cemetery near Camp Point.


Spouses
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1: Jane "Jennie" SHAWHAN
Birth: 1775 Youghioghania County, Augusta district of Virginia
Death: April 11, 1863 Adams County, Illinois Age: 88
Burial: Hebron Cemetery Near Camp Point, Illinois
Father: Daniel SHAWHAN Jr. (1738-1791)
Mother: Margaret Fry BELL (1742->1830)

Misc. Notes
John Shawhan Marriage Consent for Jenny Shawhan
I do certify that the within named Jenny Shawhan is twenty one years of age. Given under my hand this 29th day of April 1802.
Teste
John Shawhan

Marriage: May 17, 1802 Bourbon County, Kentucky
Marriage Memo: Married by M. Hitt
Children: Mary “Polly” (ca1796-)
Luke (Shawhan) (1799-1877)
John (1804-1879)
Joseph Shawhan (1809-1878)
Elizabeth Nancy (1811-1871)
Nancy (1811-1871)
James A. (1815-1881)
Jane (1817-1866)
Robert Alexander (1818-1892)
Polly

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Last Modified: March 1, 2002
Created: February 25, 2003