The Beards in North Carolina
Noted historians did some of their work
while living in Try on.
By DOROTHY THOMAS TUCKER
When Charles A. Beard, perhaps
the most eminent and certainly the
most widely discussed historian of our
times, chose western North Carolina
in which to do his writing work in the
winters from 1943 to 1946 — a most
fruitful period — he was but returning
to the state where his forebears had
lived.
Five generations of the Beard family
had made their homes in Guilford
County, North Carolina. Richard
Beard, Jr., a shipmaster born in 1718,
came to the North Carolina coast sail¬
ing his own boat. Entranced by the
area, he sold the boat, moved out of
the sight of the sea, and bought a
place which was named hopefully New
Garden. One may merely surmise
the reasons why the young Quaker
shipmaster and shipbuilder was re¬
nouncing the trained skills of his lucra¬
tive craft; perhaps he was disappointed
over the uses to which the ships he
built were being put.
New Garden is gone now from the
map. but it lay between Guilford Col¬
lege and Friendship, North Carolina.
In the next two generations there
were boys named William, one of them
a hatmakcr near Florence, South Caro¬
lina. The fourth generation was Na¬
than Beard who married a Methodist
girl and was promptly read out of the
Ouaker meeting for marrying out of
the faith. Nathan's response to this
was to set up what was described as
a "one man church." in which he was
aided by six hundred volumes of com¬
parative religion, an extraordinary li¬
brary on a specific subject. Charles
Beard, coming to North Carolina to
retrace his family's history, found this
event chronicled in the old records at
Guilford College. He found also the
ancient ruins of the hat shop, and some
remains of his grandfather Nathan's
home. The chimney of this house had
a double construction for use as a sta¬
tion of the underground railway to aid
escaping slaves.
The Beard family was a free think¬
ing. strong-minded lot.
Nathan’s son was another William,
and it was he who moved to Indiana,
before the Civil War convulsed the
nation. And so it happened that
Charles A. Beard the historian, sixth
in this fragment of lineage, was bom
a Hoosier.
His family was but a part of the
great migration from North Carolina
to Indiana which settled largely the
southern part of the state, then reached
northward by way of the Whitewater
and Wabash valleys, established
churches and many small hand craft
industries, and founded colleges — a
mass movement that was to bequeath
to the state of Indiana an individual¬
ism so strong as to often be described
as "queer." The migration brought a
method of cookery, a turn of phras¬
ing. and a fresh literary burgeoning.
The bursting forth of the great golden
era of Indiana literature half a century
and more ago. which gave to the coun¬
try such names as Lew Wallace. James
Whitcomb Riley, Gene Stratton Por¬
ter. Booth Tarkington. George Ade.
Maurice Thompson and many others,
had its literary and educational roots
in North Carolina more clearly than
in New England.
This migration also presented the
state with the name of Hoosier. A
North Carolina hatmaker settled in
Johnson County, Indiana, near the
center of the state. When a controversy
which arose over the location of the
state capitol was generating heat —
whether it should remain at Corydon
in the southern section or should be
removed to the center where a new
city could be laid out — the set of
disputants who sponsored the central
Indianapolis site, chanced to be of the
clientele of the North Carolina hat-
maker. This group, because of the
make and cut of the hats they wore,
came to be known as “Hoosicrs." There
is no certainty as to whether the term
was one of admiration or derision, but
unquestionably Mr. Hoosier's hats
must have been distinctive. You will
find other explanations of the origin
of the term “Hoosier" but this is by
all odds the most persuasive.
Father William — William Henry
Harrison Beard — had transported
from North Carolina with him weighty
stacks of books and by the time the
children were ready to use them, with
the additions he made, a remarkable
library, by Nineteenth Century Indi¬
ana standards, had been assembled.
Charles and his brother attended a
Quaker school near their home in
Knightstown, Indiana, which is situ¬
ated between Indianapolis and the
heavily settled Quaker area around
Richmond, the seat of the Quaker Col¬
lege of Earlham. But it was their father
who found time from his work as con¬
tractor and banker to give them a
sturdy course in the classics, and in his
own words, to teach them "backbone."
In the four years which elapsed be¬
tween his Quaker schooling and his
attendance at DePauw University, a
Methodist school, Charles owned and
conducted the Knightstown weekly
newspaper, using a font of hand-
type and an old hand press. The news-
THE state. October 15. 1966
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