Guide to the Beatty Family Papers

Charles Clinton Beatty was born in Ireland, between 1712 and 1715. He left for America in 1729 and matriculated at the Log College in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania Colony. He succeeded William Tennent as pastor of the Neshaminy Church and was ordained around 1743. In 1754, the Synod of New York appointed Charles to travel as a missionary to North Carolina and Virginia. In 1756, he was chaplain on an expedition headed by Benjamin Franklin during the French and Indian War in the Lehigh River area of the Pennsylvania Colony. Additionally, the Synod of New York approved Charles’s commission as chaplain to the First Battalion of the Pennsylvania Regiment in western Pennsylvania in 1758.

In 1759, Charles was elected as a member to the Corporation for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers. The Corporation selected him to travel to England, Ireland, and Scotland to raise funds. In communications sent to prospective donors, the Corporation conveyed their intention to support and minister to “our Frontier Inhabitants ... As the Frontier Counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia were mostly settled by people of our Denomination.”1 This refers to white Presbyterian frontier colonizers who had encroached on Indigenous lands before and during the French and Indian War. Charles raised close to 4,000 pounds for the Corporation during his time in Great Britain, with the money to be used for the Corporation’s evangelistic work.

The Corporation and the Synod of New York and Philadelphia planned for Charles and John Brainerd to embark on a missionary trip to the frontier of the Pennsylvania Colony and Ohio Country in 1763. The Synod asked them to preach to the white frontier colonizers and to “report their distresses, and to let us know where new congregations are a forming, and what is necessary to be done to promote the spread of the gospel among them, and that they inform us what opportunities there may be of preaching the gospel to the Indian nations in their neighbourhood.”2 The trip was postponed with the onset of Pontiac’s War. Instead, Charles and George Duffield (Brainerd’s replacement) set off on their assignment on August 12, 1766, with Charles recording the trip in a journal. Joseph Peepy, a Lenape guide and translator, traveled with the party. Joseph had earlier converted to Christianity and had been a member of John Brainerd’s congregation. Joseph's services as a translator were used by other preachers who entered the Ohio Valley. His Indigenous name has elsewhere been recorded as Weholelahund.3 Starting in Chester County (Pennsylvania Colony), the party traveled through Lancaster County and Cumberland County to eventually reach Fort Pitt.

Once at Fort Pitt, the party planned to travel to “Keghalampegha” (Newcomerstown), the principal town of the Lenape peoples. They passed by “Maughwawame” (Logstown) and stayed the night in “Tuskatawa” (Tuscarawas), where they were hosted by “Opamaheghon” (Oppohwhyeckun), a Lenape leader. The party arrived at Newcomerstown on September 18 and requested a meeting with the Lenape sachem and spiritual leader “Netatwhelman” (Netawatwees).

Charles describes his time and the party’s actions in Newcomerstown, the locale itself, and the Lenape people in his journal. He records that Netawatwees granted the ministerial party an audience with the Lenape leaders. The party delivered a prepared speech, stating that “ther Fathers ye English con[c]erned for them & pitying thir Ignorant condition sent now two Ministrs to ask them whether they would Embrace to gospel that they might see clearly as we do & that the Evil Spirit might not tempt them any more to what is wrong.”4 The party asked if they would be allowed to preach the Gospel and to return to do more evangelizing in the future. After some discussions, Lenape leaders allowed the ministers to preach on September 21. After the ministers preached on September 21, Neolin, a Lenni Lenape prophet, visited the party that evening and discussed his visions.  On September 22, the party read to Lenape leaders a letter from John Gibson which called for the release of Betsey Henry, a prisoner of the Lenape. Lenape leaders delivered a statement to the party, asking that white frontier colonizers no longer sell rum to the Lenape peoples nor pay Lenape women alcohol for sex.5 The Lenape leaders then told the party of other Indigenous peoples and settlements in the region. The ministers preached again on September 23, then the party departed on September 24.

During the return trip, the party encountered Shingas, the brother of Tamaqua (King Beaver) at Beaver Creek on September 27.

Charles published his 1766 journal in 1768. In 1772, he traveled to Barbados in the West Indies on another fundraising trip, this time for the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) where he was a trustee. He and James Witherspoon, son of John Witherspoon, were to meet with wealthy plantation owners and slaveholders to seek donations and encourage the planters’ sons to attend the College of New Jersey. Charles died in Barbados of yellow fever during that trip on August 13.6

In 1746, Charles married Anne (Ann) Reading, daughter of the president of the Council of New Jersey. They had ten children. John Beatty, the eldest son, was born in 1749. He became a doctor, setting up his first practice in Hartsville, Pennsylvania in 1772. He volunteered for the Continental Army in 1776, was captured in the battle of Fort Washington, and was not exchanged until 1778. He was then appointed commissary general of prisoners and promoted to the rank of colonel. After the war, John settled near Princeton, New Jersey. He served as a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1784 to 1785 and as a member of the Third Congress of the United States from 1793 to 1795. John was absent from Congress during a vote of Thomas Jefferson’s 1784 proposed ban on slavery in all future territories. Jefferson said that John’s absence affected the outcome of the vote, with New Jersey not being able to submit its vote. This led to the proposal failing. John was Secretary of State of New Jersey from 1795 to 1805. He was also a slaveholder of an enslaved woman (Dinah or Diana) and her two sons Henry Hanibal and Charles Henry.7 John died on May 30, 1826.

William Pitt Beatty, Charles Clinton and Anne (Ann) Beatty’s youngest son, was born on March 31, 1766. In the 1780s, William worked as a tailor in Philadelphia and Neshaminy. In the 1790s, he held various clerkships with Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the Schuylkill Canal. He also had a mercantile business and opened stores in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In November 1799, he married Eleanor Polk. Their children were: Anne (Ann) Reading, Charles Clinton, George, Esther, and Erkuries. During his career, William worked in local government in Pennsylvania and in the private sector for companies like the York and Susquehanna Turnpike Co. The family eventually moved to South Carolina in 1811 after William accepted a job at the Columbia Bridge Company. Throughout his life, William was an active Presbyterian. He was a ruling elder at his church in Columbia, South Carolina, represented his church at presbytery and synod meetings, and attended general assemblies. He died in Philadelphia in July 1848.

George Beatty, the son of William Pitt and Eleanor Beatty and the grandchild of Charles Clinton and Anne (Ann) Beatty, was born on November 22, 1802. George attended West Nottingham Academy in 1817.  After briefly pursuing a career in medicine, he held various secretarial jobs in the transportation construction industries, including secretary to the superintendent of the Pennsylvania Canal and Railroad. In the late 1830s, he was the acting clerk of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northwest. In 1840, George participated as a conductor in one of the U.S. Army’s forced removals of the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) people from their land to the West side of the Mississippi. He married Eliza Salter Ansley on November 30, 1842. They moved to New York for George to work in real estate and in the lumber industry. He became proprietor and editor of “Niles National Register” in 1848.  In the 1850s, he took charge of the construction of a railway from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron. In 1863, he and Eliza settled in Philadelphia where he eventually died in 1888.

Bibliography/Works Cited

1. Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers, and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers Minutes, 1759-1797. Pages 17-18. Accession number 93 0208f. Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS).

2. Synod of New York and Philadelphia Minutes, 1758-1788. Page 385. Call number VAULTFOLIO BX 8951 .A3 1758-, 1788. PHS.

3. Soderlund, Jean R. “Lenape country : Delaware Valley society before William Penn” (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), page 191.

4. Beatty, Charles and Guy S. Klett (editor). “Journals of Charles Beatty.” Page 61, journal entry Saturday September 20, 1766. Call number BX 9225 .B458 A3 1963. PHS.

5. Ibid. Pages 66-67, journal entry Monday September 22, 1766.

6. Mack, Jessica R. “Princeton in the West Indies,” Princeton & Slavery Project, accessed 18 February 2025, https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/princeton-in-the-west-indies

7. Hunterdon County, Clerk’s Office, Birth Certificates of Children of Slaves, 1804-1835. Accession number 1977.013. Series number CHNCL004. New Jersey Department of State, New Jersey State Archives. https://www.nj.gov/state/archives/chncl004.html