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There were eight children in this family; four boys: William, our grandfather; John, Joseph and Samuel; and four girls: Ritty, Polly, Sarah, and Rachel.Our grandmother Beckett's maiden name was Caroline Logston, the daughter of one Terry Logston, our great grandfather on our grandmother Beckett's side of the house. I have no reliable information as to the ancestry of this family. It is evident that Terry Logston settled near the Ohio River in Marshall County, then the state of Virginia which is just across the river from Belmont County, OH, at about the same time that our great grandfather Beckett settled in Belmont County, OH.I know there were eleven children in the family of our great grandfather Logston, two boys and nine girls, one of which was our grandmother
Beckett, she being born on the 22nd day of July, 1822. As to the meeting and courtship of grandfather and grandmother Beckett I have no account. However, they were married on the 22nd day of March, 1838, by the Rev. James Jefferson in the County of Marshall, State of Virginia (later became West Virginia). On the date of their marriage, grandfather was less than 23 years of age and grandmother was 15 years and 8 months old. To this union were born 18 children. Later in this narrative I will give a complete list of births, marriages and deaths in grandfather's family as copied from his family Bible. They made their first home in Marshall County, VA, living there from 1838 to 1852. In the year of 1852, they moved over the Ohio River to Belmont County where they lived until the year of 1860. In that year they moved to a large farm in what is known as Washington Bottom, an area in Wood County, WV, located on the Ohio River and a short distance south of the city
of Parkersburg, WV. Here they lived until all of their children were grown. It was here they resided during the trying times of the Civil War. Grandfather was a staunch Union man with little patience for the "traitorous rebels", as he called them, and there were plenty of them in the neighborhood resulting in many personal fights and at times bloodshed. Two of his sons, Thomas and William, our father, were veterans of the Union Army. Thomas was seriously wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville, a wound from which he never fully recovered.On or about 1880, exact date not known, our grandfather disposed of his home at Washington Bottom, Wood County, WV, and purchased a farm in Ritchie County, WV, near the small town of Mole Hill. Here he met with adversity. First his home burned, which he rebuilt on a larger and rather expensive scale, then he became involved in some
trivial controversy with a neighbor, leading to an eventual long and expensive legal litigation. This, coupled with the panic of 1892-93 reduced him to almost bankruptcy. Now in his 78th year, this man, once considered the wealthiest man in Washington Bottom, finds himself with but a token of the wealth he once possessed, a condition brought about through unavoidable adversity in some measure, but in great measure to improper judgement in his declining years and his unwillingness to heed the advice and counsel of his wife and older sons. He now moves back to Wood County to live with his son James where he soon dies, April 4, 1894, at the age of 79 years 3 months and 10 days. Grandmother Beckett continued to live in Wood County, WV, where she passed away at the home of her grandson, James Beckett, Jr., on December 27, 1909, at the age of 87 years, 5 months and 5 days. Now in all my historical search, relative to the Beckett family, I find nothing spectacular or unusually
outstanding. Apparently, to date, they in America were, are and we trust will continue to be a good, sound and respectable middle class family, made up of farmers, teachers, preachers, doctors, businessmen and soldiers; patriotic, even to the extreme, and in most respects religiously inclined and of the Protestant faith. They are a strong willed people, independent, unshaken in their convictions, somewhat emotional, devoted to their families and at times, under provocation, pugnacious. |
