Scott-Coleman History
By Brooke Marsh
Preface
In this paper, I have attempted to trace my family line back
through the Coleman’s. The actual
history was pieced together using a combination of census records, oral tradition,
newspaper articles, family records kept by individuals, family Bibles, letters,
interviews, discussions, and even a few books.
The information found here is only as accurate and complete as the
records on which it is based.
Oftentimes, the records were conflicting, in which case I used my best judgment
based on other knowledge in the family.
I am sure, however, that some errors may be found within this account,
either from typing errors or from inaccurate records. If, in reading this, you have any additions,
please notify the author or enter the information on Ancestry.com so that it
can be included in any future histories.
I want to thank the following for their help and
contributions: those working with the UTC/National Endowment for the Humanities
Summer Regional History Project; Mrs. Jack H (Mary) Gilbreath for her help in
getting me started; Ruby Hildah Scott Beaty, my grandmother, who has been an
invaluable help and source of information and photographs; Pearl Coleman Scott
Turner for her help; the Claiborne County Historical Society, especially Wanda
Wallen Hodges, for the information that they sent; David Adams and the
Claiborne County Progress for the article on Henry Frances Coleman; all my
relatives for their interest, and especially my mother, Myra Carol Gravitt
Beaty, for her help, interest, and support.
The Coleman family is of English
origin. Their ancient place of residence
was Langley in Wiltshire, England (Bales, 488).
My branch of the Coleman family immigrated first to the New England
States then to Maryland and then to Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee
(Bales, 488).
The first Coleman in America is not
known by name. It is known, however,
that he moved from Maine to Maryland and settled in Harford County. Some of his children were born in Harford
County and he lived there for a few years before moving to an area near
Richmond, Virginia. He and his wife died
in Virginia.
His son,
Thomas P. Coleman, is the first of the Coleman family identified by name. It is with Thomas that the history of this
branch of my family begins. He was born
August 4, 1783 in Harford County, Maryland.
According to a book by Hattie Bales, Thomas P. left Virginia as a young
man, moved to Orange County, North Carolina and in September 1806, married
Esther (Hetty) McClary (born May 10, 1785 in North Carolina).
Their older children were born in
North Carolina where they lived for several years before moving to Mulberry
Valley (Claiborne County later Hancock County, Tennessee) in 1820. There, Thomas was a prosperous farmer and he
and Esther had several more children. They had eight children total, an average
number in that day. They were:
1.
Calvin K. Coleman who later married Julia
McClary
2.
Thomas R. Coleman, born August 8, 1813 in Orange
County, North Carolina
3.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Coleman who later married
Alfred Corbin in Claiborne County
4.
Alvis P. Coleman, born March 26, 1816
5.
George W. Coleman, born February 3, 1819
6.
Cynthia Coleman who later married Moses Hatfield
7.
Sterling G. Coleman, born about 1822
8.
William Cooper Coleman, born September 1, 1828
Thomas died not long after William
was born (1833) in Claiborne County (Bales 489) and Esther (Hetty) died October
10, 1863 in Hancock County, where they are both buried.
The Coleman line through which I am
descended continues through Thomas P. Coleman’s son Thomas R. Coleman. His story and the story of his descendants is
as follows.
Thomas R. Coleman was born August
8, 1813 in Orange County, North Carolina.
On September 1, 1841, he married Frances B. Fitts. Isaac Thomas performed the ceremony in
Tazewell, Tennessee. Frances was the
daughter of Cornelius and Sarah (Randolph) Fitts of Lee County, Virginia. Frances was born April 16, 1819. She and Thomas settled in Mulberry Gap Valley
in Hancock County and became one of the prominent families of East
Tennessee. He was a prosperous farmer
like his father and, in 1850; his real estate was valued at $3,200. That amount rose, by 1860, to $9240 for real
estate and $15,200 for the value of his personal estate. After he died, the real estate value of
Frances’ property decreased to $3,000 and her personal estate was valued at
only $400.
During his and Frances’ lifetime,
they had eight children, all born in Tennessee.
They were:
1.
Callaway H. Coleman, born October 28, 1843
2.
Henry Francis Coleman, born May 13, 1847
3.
Mary Coleman, born around 1847-48
4.
Sarah Esther Coleman, born August 20, 1851 and
died October 20, 1902; married in 1868 to John Jett Livingston (born August 23,
1845 and died February 25, 1904)
5.
Martha Jane Coleman, born February 9, 1854; died
April 3, 1936; married October 21, 1869 to John Martin Southern (born January
21, 1842 and died November 3, 1902)
6.
Franklin Columbus Coleman, born March 7, 1855;
died July 12, 1912; married June 12, 1863 to Benith Atwood in Jasper, Missouri
7.
Julia Ann Coleman, born September 30, 1858; died
September 9, 1932; married J.B. Rice of Tennessee
8.
Mary Coleman, born around 1860 (Census of
Hancock County; Bales 489)
Thomas died May 16, 1862 in Hancock
County, leaving Frances with several children still at home. After the children left, Frances lived with
her son Callaway and his wife until her death on July 4, 1893 at age 74 years,
2 months, and 18 days (Bales 489).
There is not much else known about
the children of Thomas P. Coleman other than Thomas R. but according to family
tradition, at least two of Thomas P.’s sons owned slaves. According to Ruby Beaty, my grandmother, one
of them, it seems, “wasn’t very kind to his slaves, and one day, a big tree
fell on him and we just surmised that his slaves was the cause of that.” The
other, at one point, left his slaves at the house alone while they were out.
The slaves, “were roasting eggs in the fireplace and they set the house on fire
and burned the house down” (Ruby). Thomas
R., however, is not believed to have owned slaves.
It is the Thomas’ son Callaway
through which my line continues.
Callaway H. Coleman was born October 28, 1843 in Tennessee. He lived with his parents up to 1863 and
attended school and helped work the farm.
He even attended Cripple Creek College (Ruby). On October 29, 1863, he
married Mary Ann Riley. She was born on
April 23, 1842, in Tennessee, like her husband.
Not long after their marriage, the
Civil War began. According to military
records, Callaway enlisted on _________________________ and deserted
____________ later. According to family tradition, Callaway went to fight in at
least one battle in or near Cumberland Gap.
Mary Ann was left alone in their house 2-3 miles away in Harrogate. During the battle, a shell fell on or near their
house, and, some Yankee soldiers came and took Mary Ann’s only form of
transportation – a black horse. In keeping with her spunky character, Mary Ann
went after them, stopped the commanding officer and asked him to give her horse
back. He must have been impressed with
her nerve. For whatever reason, he gave the little black horse back to
her.
After Callaway returned from the
war, he and his wife started a family.
His mother lived with them for a while in Hancock County (Mulberry Gap)
but later they moved to Claiborne County, NT.
They had eight children in all. They were:
1.
Alice Coleman, born September 19, 1864
2.
Ida F. Coleman, born December 23, 1866, married
Ed Pruett
3.
William T. Coleman, born June 7, 1869; taught
school at Shawanee for a while, later became attorney general then county judge
4.
Robert Coleman, born March 27, 1873; later moved
to Rogersville, TN and became a civil lawyer
5.
Etta May Coleman, born June 11, 1876; married
William T. Bales and had four children: Mary, Jessie, Ann, and William T., Jr.
6.
Lula Narvesta Coleman, born May 16, 1879
7.
Henry R. Coleman, born July 6, 1882; became a
telegrapher at Rhoda, Virginia but still lived in Shawanee. One day at work, he heard a noise and went
outside to check on it. He was suddenly
shot in the head by what the authorities supposed was a prowler. He died a few days later on November 1, 1910.
8.
Mary Evelyn Coleman, Born May 9, 1885 (Census;
Bales 489; CH Coleman family records)
At one point in 1870, Callaway and
Mary Ann had servants. She and her
daughter lived with them. Her name was
Eliza Watkins and her daughter was Mary.
Eliza was 41 and her daughter was 5 in 1870.
At that same time, his property
value was $3750 and his personal estate was valued at $500. He worked as a fairly well off farmer for
quite a while but then became a lawyer and civil land enforcer and, later in
life, he was a postmaster in Claiborne County.
It was while he was a lawyer that a
band of gypsies came through and got in some trouble with the law so Callaway
became their lawyer. As it turned out,
however, they had no money with which to pay him. Instead, they left a very
fine violin for his pay. They said that
they would return for the violin when they had some money but they never came
back. This must have suited Callaway
very well for he was known to have a great love of music.
As a matter of fact, when he later
lived with his daughter Lula and her family, he tried to teach his
granddaughters music. As one of the granddaughters, Ruby, puts it, “He loved
music and he was tryin’ to teach us the notes and he would get kindly
aggravated cause we couldn’t learn them….” (Ruby, 6). He did however succeed in teaching his
daughter Lula to play the violin.
Despite a small amount of
occasional aggravation or frustration, Callaway was “always in a good mood,
everybody liked him” (Ruby, 6). That joviality was often seen in his sense of
humor. When he lived with Lula, her
husband, James Scott, and her children Ruby and Pearl, he would play jokes on
the children. Ruby describes it this way:
He was so funny…he was always
playing jokes on Pearl and me. Pearl would cry. She was a great crier, my
sister was. Oh she cried over everything, crybaby. And he’d say, “Here Pearl,
here is my hat. Cry in my hat.” Oh, it’d make her so mad. One time, Aunt Evelyn, who lived in
Louisville then, she sent him a box of candy and he brought it in and said,
“Ruby, she sent me a box of candy and she told me not to give you any at
all. It wasn’t for you, it was just for
me.” And I cried and cried. And, of course, he had to tell me
different. I mean that was just an
example. He was always pullin’ something
on us. He was really jolly all the time.
Because he
was so friendly and jolly, he got along well with Lula’s husband, James Scott.
They spent a lot of time arguing in a friendly way over politics. They were both Democrats but still found
cause to argue (Ruby, 8). They enjoyed each other and got along very well
throughout the years that Callaway lived with Lula’s family.
On May 15,
1911, Mary Ann Riley Coleman died. Her
youngest son, Henry, had been shot and had died November 1, 1910. Lula always said that Mary Ann died of grief.
“It just nearly killed her when he died.
He was her youngest son. It was a close family, very close and she
always said she believed she just worried herself to death. (Ruby, 7).
Then,
several years later, the eldest son of Thomas R. Coleman, Callaway H. Coleman
died on February 5, 1927 at about the same time that Lula’s husband James Scott
died. Callaway was 84 when he died and he is buried in Scott Cemetery along
with his wife Mary Ann and his son Henry.
The second
son of Thomas R. Coleman, Henry Francis, though not a direct ancestor of mine,
has a very interesting history also. He was born in Tennessee on May 13, 1847
and lived with his parents in Mulberry Gap, Hancock County until the time of
the Civil War.
According
to the memoirs of Henry, when the Civil War come around, there was a problem in
the country east and southeast of Cumberland Gap (including Lee and Scott
counties in Virginia and Hancock and Claiborne in Tennessee) with “roving and
raiding bands of Confederate soldiers, with here and there a few men that
belonged to neither army, but were engaged in pilfering and robbing the
citizens…And since these citizens were mostly favorable to the Union position,
they were being killed, captured and annoyed almost constantly.” At the time,
the nearest branch of Federal troops was too far away to protect them, so the
citizens organized a company for the purpose of defense and protection. Henry Francis Coleman, though only a
teenager, was a part of this company called the Tiger Company or the Riley
Company.
It was
sometimes called the Riley Company because William Riley was the captain. John Parkey was lieutenant. Some of the other members in the fall of 1864
included: Thomas Riley, John Fugate, Tennessee Parks, William Fugate, C.D.
Spence, John Martin Southern, Josiah Ramsey, William Ramsey, Harvey Ritchie,
Henry Hall, John Woods, Lafayette Mason, Calvin Mize, Calvin Brooks, Levi
Brooks, Samuel Estep, Jacob Estep, John Longeornite, John C. Fields, David
Brandham, Albert Overton, Rufus Overton, Isaac Livingstone, John Leary, and
Henry Francis Coleman.
This
company was active from September 1864 until the end of the war in the spring
of 1865. Its headquarters was at Tazewell, Tennessee, Claiborne County, and it
was allied with the second North Carolina mounted infantry. The Tiger Company acted with the infantry
until the close of the war. As a matter
of fact, the federal government provided clothing, horse feed, rations, and
ammunition. The men had to provide their
own horses, however, and, although the government provided some guns, most
preferred guns of higher quality so they brought their own.
Many of
these men were well off and they were an honorable company. No one in the company could pilfer or rob and
no one was allowed to insult or mistreat a prisoner. All prisoners were turned over to the
authorities and Henry remembers those prisoners being many in number. The
prisoners were treated kindly while in the company’s care and the company would
even pitch in to provide both the prisoners needs and wants while in captivity.
The company
was engaged in several clashes during its course of service. Two engagements were in Tazewell; two were at
Ball’s Bridge in Lee County, Virginia; and, before it was associated with the 2nd
North Carolina Regiment, the company had two engagements with the Confederates
near Rob Camp Church in Claiborne County.
They also had one near the Bales Iron Works in Lee County, Virginia.
After the
war, on February 17, 1867, he married Matilda Evelyn Parkey (born April 6,
1851; daughter of William and Martha Ann Martin Parkey). He also worked at a sawmill (census is
unclear of his role) and his real estate was worth $2000. His personal estate was valued at $200.
After 1870,
he became a farmer, cattle dealer, lawyer, Tennessee State Senator, Judge of
Hancock County Court, and a U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (Prog). He
seemed to be a very prominent and busy man but also a family man.
During his
marriage to Matilda, they had eight children, all born in Tennessee. They were:
1.
Rosa Coleman, born April 19, 1868; died January
28, 1935; married Frank Hopkins, son of Washington Hopkins of Hancock County,
TN
2.
Dora Ann Coleman, born in March 1870; married
Cass Jarvis of Sneedville, Tennessee
3.
John S. Coleman, born about 1872; married Nancy
Trent (born in 1874; daughter of James A. and Mary Jane Green Trent)
4.
Martha Coleman, born about 1874; married J.
Lewis Turner (born March 3, 1860; died February 6, 1908)
5.
William P. Coleman, born about 1878; married
December 29, 1898 in Lee County, Virginia to Myrtle E. Albert (born December 6,
1882; died July 1942 in Loudon County, Virginia; daughter of Jacob Paris and
Alice Shelburn Albert); after married they moved to Lee County, Virginia and
settled on Wallens Creek where William was in the milking and mercantile
business. Later they moved to Leesburg
and he became a farmer. They had four children: Vivian, Vinnie (Jean), Paris,
and Matilda.
6.
Frank D. Coleman, born September 8, 1884; died
May 4, 1944; married Mossie Lawson Gillenwaters (born June 15, 1885; died
December 3, 1949). They had no children
and owned and operated the Rose Hill Hotel in Virginia.
7.
Shirley Coleman; married Nelle Baker (daughter
of the Reverend Neil Baker and Jane Weston Baker)
8.
Isabella (Belle) Coleman; married 1st
to Horace L. Tyler (divorced); married 2nd to R.E. Whitney (Census
and Bales, 489).
On April 7, 1910, Henry’s wife Matilda
died. In September of that same year, he
remarried Martha (Drinnon) Surgener, widow of Abraham Surgener and daughter of
Thomas Jefferson and Ruth Johns Drinnon of Mulberry Gap, Tennessee. Then on August 16, 1914, Henry Francis
Coleman, the second son of Thomas R. Coleman, died (Bales, 489).
My line continues through
Callaway’s daughter, Lula N. Coleman.
Lula was born May 15, 1879 in Hancock County, Tennessee. When she was
eight, she and her parents moved to Claiborne County and she lived with them from
then on. During that time, her father imparted his love of music and taught her
to play the violin. In 1900, she lived
two or three houses down from a man named James Stewart Scott and his
family. This was the man she would
marry, but not for several more years.
At this time, James was married to
Nancy (or Mannie) A. Scott and they had been married for fourteen years. She
had been born on February 27, 1860 in North Carolina. James was born April 12, 1860 in Tennessee.
They had five children at home in 1900. They were:
1.
William S. Scott, born May 1886 in Tennessee
2.
Mossie Scott (Eads), born August 3, 1887 in
Tennessee; died May 1, 1914
3.
Floyd C. Scott, born in 1890 in Tennessee
4.
Catherine Scott, born May 1892 in Tennessee
5.
Minnie Scott, born January 23, 1894 in
Tennessee; died January 23, 1910.
On March 22, 1907, his wife died of
Tuberculosis. She is buried in Scott
Cemetery in Claiborne County, Tennessee.
By 1911, two daughters had also died of the same disease. Mossie died three years later. By 1912, only one son was still alive and he
was 40 at the time. James Scott had lost
most of his family within the space of 7 years, most to tuberculosis.
Lula’s personal papers list August
27, 1911 as the wedding date that an old maid of 32 married a widower of 51. They were married by Jessie Moore, a Quaker
preacher, who was later to perform the ceremony to marry Lula’s daughter Ruby
to James Agee Beaty. The marriage took
place in Claiborne County, Tennessee with the witness listed as Ruth Moore.
Then on December 21, 1912, Ruby
Hildah Scott, Lula’s first daughter, was born.
Later, on October 20, 1916, Pearl Coleman Scott was born. James Scott had a happy second family.
Although this was his second
family, he built a new house up on a hill above Shawanee for Lula. Here is what his daughter Ruby says about it:
He built it for her and it was an odd
house. It was pink – pink and white.
Well, nobody had ever seen a pink house back then but my brother in law had
been to Florida. He was a carpenter, a very good one, and he said he could
build it and he said down in Florida, they were all pink. And he said, “Now,
I’m gonna paint this house pink.” And he trimmed it in white. And it was
beautiful. Oh – it was so pretty – up on
a hill with lots of trees. And I really never envied anybody their home ‘cause
I thought we had the prettiest home of anybody in the world. Yeah, it was really kinda unusual but it was
pretty – real pretty. (Ruby, 6).
Within the
house itself, there were four rooms – two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and
one closet. But the whole house was big
– “big kitchen, big high ceilings, and big rooms, and big windows” (Ruby, 6).
The site of
the house often came in handy because, when Lula would play the violin, people
would come in from all over town to hear her.
It was a large attraction since there were no radios or phonographs
prevalent at the time. People would
enjoy it greatly. However, Lula and her family had a little dog that would
start to howl every time Lula would start to play. “It was so funny,” remembers Ruby. They would have to put the dog up while Lula
played.
Lula must
have enjoyed music, especially church music, as she was a staunch Baptist. She took Ruby and Pearl to the Baptist church
for Sunday School and Church in the afternoon. They attended the Methodist
church with James in the mornings. Ruby
says this about James Scott and church:
He went to church and took Pearl
and I with him, my sister and I every morning…He sat on the front seat at the
church, at the Methodist church. I can
just see him sitting in the corner of the front seat - always sat in the
corner. And we had to go to church. He
was a good man, a very good man. And
there was one minister used to come to see us real often. And there was one
song that Daddy loved – they played it on the organ.. and this old minister
would play it on the old organ: Peace, peace, wonderful peace. Yeah, it’s an old, old song, and I remember
how daddy liked that.
According
to Ruby, James did seem to be at peace with God and man. He was very well liked
around town and continually did kind things for people. For instance, he ran a small grocery store
(along with a farm for the family’s food) and when things like coffee and sugar
were weighed out onto the scales, he would always heap it up and give a little
bit more than the customer had asked for, free of charge. That was his nature and everybody liked
him. He was popular, as was his store.
The store
was of the type you think of when you think of small town country grocery. The
men would spend their time sitting around on big sacks of meal feed gossiping,
talking, and spitting tobacco. The store had a high porch and one day, some men
were sitting on the porch sitting and chewing tobacco. At the same time, Pearl
just happened to be down near the edge of the porch playing. Before she knew
what happened, a big wad of tobacco hit her right in the face and she ran home
crying. She never forgot that. It was a
part of what it meant to be a daughter of a grocer.
To be the
daughter of James Scott, the grocer, also meant a degree of popularity at
school. Any friends that Ruby brought home
from school were allowed to get free candy from the store and James Scott never
said a word about it. He was generally
just kind and givng in his business and in life.
Besides the
store, James Scott also had a little farm that grew just enough to support the
family. “It really did support us very
well because he was a good gardener” (Ruby, 3). Lula would work on the farm
too, especially when James ran the store. She was happy with her work and her
life.
Lula was,
character-wise, a very happy person, an optimist at heart, despite her hard
life. Ruby says, “she was always happy
and enjoyed working in the garden and was a real good cook. As a matter of fact,
she cooked so well that the traveling preachers all liked to come there to
eat. She could cook the best fried
chicken and the Methodist preachers especially loved it” (Ruby, 5). For regular
meals, she would make jams and and jellies, ho-cakes (corn cakes cooked on top
of the stove), butter, molasses, buttermilk, beans, soup beans, and turnip
greens. She would even process meats and sausage from the animals on the
farm. She was a real southern cook and
managed to keep the family well fed.
Even after James and her father
died, she was able to manage the farm and keep Pearl and Ruby in school and well
fed. She did, however, have to close the store because she couldn’t handle it
on top of managing everything else. Everyone begged her to keep the store open but
with James gone, she couldn’t.
Right before James died, Lula was
so busy taking care of the farm and the stock that Ruby, at age fourteen, had
to take care of her father. She would
“get him out of bed, get him into his big ole’ rocker”, bathe him, and comb his
hair and much more. During that same year that Ruby was fourteen, James died.
Later on, after his death and after
Ruby’s marriage, Lula lived with Ruby and James A. Beaty, her husband. Then in
December of 1963, Lula Narvesta Coleman Scott died and was buried in Scott Cemetery,
Claiborne County, TN.
It is through her daughter Ruby
that my line continues. She was born in 1912 in Tennessee and went to school in
Claiborne County. She attended public school as a child. Her school was first
held in an old Masonic building that was in very bad shape so the whole
community got together and gave up their time to remedy the situation. There was very little money for a new school
so the women fixed lunch and the men worked together to build a brick school building
in just one day. It was an amazing feat.
The building was close enough for Ruby and Pearl to walk to and from school and
to even go home for lunch.
When Ruby went off to college, she
also stayed close to home and attended Lincoln Memorial University for one year
before she married James Agee Beaty (born July 18, 1909).
She and Beaty, as she called him,
met when she was fourteen. She tells the story like this: “I believe it was the
day that my father was buried, the lady and her daughter that my husband lived
with and worked his way through college. They had this big farm in Shawanee and
so they were very good friends of momma’s and they came up that night. We lived
up on a hill and there was a big gate at the foot of the hill. Well, Beaty, my
(future) husband, drove them up and he parked down at the foot of the hill and
I was sitting on the front porch reading a magazine so he stayed down there a
while and he kept lookin’ up and lookin’ up and I looked down at him and
finally he moseyed up, you know, and we started talking and I think that was
the beginning of our long, long relationship.”
The relationship was a very long
one. It was not until Beaty had finished college and had taught for a year that
they were married. Finally, on April 16,
1931, James Agee Beaty and Ruby Hildah Scott were married in Claiborne County
by the same Quaker preacher that had performed the ceremony for her mother and
father.
It was then that they moving around
begin because of Beaty’s many job changes.
They stayed in Shawanee for a while, long enough to have their first
child – Jimmy Jeanne, and their second, Lee Scott, before they moved to
Pennington Gap, Virginia where William Patrick was born. After that, they moved
back to Shawanee, then to Harrogate, then to Bristol, Virginia, back to
Shawanee, and finally, to Chattanooga.
During this time, Beaty taught
school in Shawanee for three years right after they were married. Due to the
Great Depression, schoolteachers got very little pay and, once they were paid,
they had to take their checks to a man in Claiborne County who would cash them
and take a percentage of the check in order to cash them. After this, Beaty only ended up with $88.00 a
month for being a teacher and principal of Tazewell High School. This wasn’t enough to support his growing
family, so he decided to quit.
After that, he went to Roanoke,
Virginia to try to sell insurance but that didn’t go well during a depression
so he came home and worked for the government for a while. His job required
that he go out on farms and teach the farmers in the Shawanee area to conserve
soil.
Next, he got a job teaching school
in the mines above Middleburg, Kentucky and worked there until 1942 when he got
a job with the Knoxville News Sentinel and worked with them until 1950 or
so. Then he moved to Bristol, Virginia
and became the circulation manager of the Bristol newspaper. It soon went broker so he went back to
Shawanee for a while before moving to Chattanooga to work with the Chattanooga
News Free Press.
When World War II began, Beaty took
his physical (1941) but he kept being deferred from the draft because he was
with the newspaper. At that time, since TV and radio were not common, the
newspaper was the main source of information so the government considered
newspaper work a very important job and vital to the war effort. At one point, however, he was about to go to
war when the government announced that men with families weren’t going to be
taken up anymore. So James Beaty ended
up not going to war. He spent the rest of his life in Chattanooga as a
newspaperman, husband, father, and grandfather.
As a matter of fact, James Agee
Beaty died a short time after his youngest son’s first child was born. The
newest grandchild and her grandfather were in Memorial Hospital at the same
time but he never got to see her. He
died after 38 years of marriage to Ruby.
Ruby’s sister Pearl also married.
She married George Turner in Mississippi.
They had no children.
Ruby’s firstborn, Jimmy Jeanne
(born January 8, 1932) first married Don Warren and had three children: Donna
Leigh, Mary Ann, and Donald Richard. Later, she divorced and remarried to
George Dunn. Donna Leigh married Jim
Rimer and had Kristen and Jackie. She
later divorced and married again and had Leigh Ann Brown. Jimmy Jeanne is
deceased.
Mary Ann married John Tipton and
had two children, Sarah Faith and Lauren Lee. She and John Tipton later
divorced. Mary Ann passed away March 1,
2007 at the age of 52. Donald Richard
(Rick) passed away in 2013.
The second child, Lee Scott Beaty
(born April 12, 1936; died July 22, 2006), married Ruth and had two children,
Lee Scott Beaty, Jr. and James Lawrence Beaty.
Ruth and Lee later divorced.
William Patrick Beaty, the third
child in the family, was born on March 14, 1938 in Pennington Gap,
Virginia. He married Myra Carol Gravitt
(born June 28, 1942 in Marion County, TN; died July 28, 2004) on December 21,
1964 in Ringgold, Georgia. They had two children, Wendy Brooke Beaty (born
April 26, 1969) and Amy Beth Beaty (born January 27, 1977).
Wendy Brooke married William Bruce
Marsh (April 2, 1968) on August 12, 1989 and later had two children, Daniel
Patrick Marsh (May 12, 1996) and Heather Grace Marsh (January 6, 1999). Amy
Beth married David Andrew Sherman (April 2, 1966) on August 2, 2002.
The Coleman family who began in
Wiltshire, England before 1783 end up as the Beatys, Marshes, and Shermans of
Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2013. The
story is to be continued…..
