COL. NINIAN BEALL

Col. Ninian Beall
Born Feb 28 1625 Largo Fifeshire Scotland
Died Jan. 15, 1717 Bacon hall Plantation, Maryland

According to Deborah Dunagan's research, I am related to Ninian Beall through the following line:   Ninian - Thomas - John - Samuel - Amelia Jane Beall; then Amelia Jane Beall married Thaddeus Beall, my 5th great grandfather (maternal), and Thaddeus came down from Josiah who was Samuel's brother. In the day it was quite common for 1st cousins to marry and I noticed the Beall family line did it quite often. Below is some research I found that appears to be well sourced and I found the story of Col. Ninian Beall extremely fascinating. Col. Ninian Beall was an unusually tall man measuring 6' 7" in height with bright red hair.

Ninian Beall was in the Royalist Scottish Army. He was one of 10,000 Scottish prisoners taken by Oliver Cromwell at Dunbar on September 3, 1650. Tradition has it that he was among those shipped to the Barbados and from there brought to Maryland as an indentured servant. He remained nominally an indentured servant, for five years during which time he won the esteem and respect of the colonists.


He had married in Scotland and had two sons, Thomas and John. Wrenched from his family by the disaster at Dunbar, Ninian was never again reunited with them, though the sons probably came to America at a later date.


Ninian Beall became an important person in the Colony of Maryland. He was the chief military officer in Calvert County, a large land holder, including tracts where Georgetown, Washington, D. C., is located. It was named for his son, George, not for George Washington. Under Ninian's supervision, 200 Presbyterians from Scotland were settled along the Potomac in Prince Georges County. He gave a parcel of land for their church, shrewdly appointing his sons and sons-in-law trustees thereof. In 1707, he gave a silver Communion Service to the congregation, parts of which are still in the possession of the Hyattsville Presbyterian Church, descendant of that of New Scotland.


The Maryland conservatives and ruling class were confronted first with the liberalism of the Puritans and Dissenters who overthrew the Council and the House of Delegates in 1654, but regained their established mode of living by the defeat of Puritanism in England and the return of the House of Stuart to the throne. Later, the liberalism of Coode, Beall, Jowles, Blakistone, and others, leftists of that day, overthrew the Proprietary Government of Lord Baltimore in 1689 and brought a new social and economic order to Maryland. The decline of seigniory therefore was imminent under the semi-radicalism, mingled with intolerance of Coode and his accomplices, yet negro slavery did as much as any visible force to abolish the manorial system of have it fade from the social fabric of 18th century Maryland.


[From Seigiory in Early Maryland, published in 1949, by the Descendants of Lords of the Maryland Manors.]


Although Ninian Beall is said to have come from Fifeshire, my own researches incline to the Stirlingshire idea, in which was situated the Parish of St. Ninian. In Stirlingshire we find the Rock of Dumbarton, the name given by Ninian Beall to one of his Maryland estates, while one of the earliest to his patents was for a tract called Ringan. The saintly personage from whom our Scotch Indian fighter took his name was Ninian, or Ringan.


The battle of Dunbar, in which Ninian Beall is reputed to have fought against Cromwell, was the first meeting of the opposing armies in Stirling. Cromwell sought the advantage of the coast, with its shipping, while Leslie, with his army, of which Ninian Beall was probably a leading spirit, was on the Hill of Doon above him. Down this hill of doom, rather, Leslie led his army to capture the wily Cromwell, whom he believed to have been delivered into his hands, but the rout at Dunbar is a matter of history and the escape of many of the adherents of the faith to the peaceful province of religious freedom is well known. In a land deed executed by Ninian Beall in 1667 he introduces a vein of wit and jollity not expected in a sober Scotch Presbyterian self-exiled from his country. In this recorded deed he refers to himself as "of me the said Ringing Bell," probably his nickname. He signed the deed "Ninian Bell." He arrived in the Province soon after the year 1650, some students of his life saying by way of Barbadoes and others direct from Scotland. He perpetuated the association and events of his life in the names given his lands, Soldier's Fortune, Fife Enlarged, Ringan, Rock of Dumbarton and others, while Bachelor's Choice was not appropriate after his marriage to Ruth Moore, of Calvert County, aged about sixteen.


The fact that he soon became a leader in the military affairs of the Province indicates that he had experience in these matters. In the year 1676, he was commissioned lieutenant of Lord Baltimore's "yacht or vessel of warr called the Loyall Charles of Maryland," of which the famous John Coode was commander. He took an active part in the revolution of 1689, led by Coode, who, it is said, called Major Ninian Beall his "Argyll," after the great Scotch Covenantor. While this revolution resulted disastrously for some of the leaders, he was appointed by the first Royal Governor to the high post of honor of Chief Military Officer for Calvert County. In the year 1689 the Assembly had reappointed Ninian Beall as major of the Calvert County militia, and in 1690 he was one of the twenty-five commissioners for regulating affairs in Maryland until the next meeting of the Assembly. In 1692 Ninian Beall was appointed High Sheriff of Calvert County. The year following he designated colonel. It is apparent that he was a great and efficient leader in the provincial army. In 1697 we find him one of the board of commissioners to treat with the Indians. Like our later military genius, General Washington, Colonel Ninian Beall was a surveyor, filling the office of Deputy Surveyor of Charles County in the year 1684, and later, during which time he continued his military services against the Indians. A fact not unworthy of notice is the intermarriage of a descendant of our Maryland "Argyll" and of the brother of the illustrious George. An act passed by the Assembly in the year 1699 reads: "An act of gratitude to Colonel Ninian Beall." This unusual recognition of service to his government is a high tribute to his efficient and untiring loyalty. The act in part refers to Colonel Beall's "valuable services upon all incentives and disturbances of neighboring Indians and though now grown very aged and less able to perform, yet continues his resolution even beyond his ability to do like service at this juncture of affairs, etc. Therefore, be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of this present General Assembly and the authority of the same, etc., that 75 pounds sterling be applied to the purchase of three serviceable negroes in recognition of Colonel Beall's services, etc."


In this same year he had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Rangers. In the year 1696 Colonel Ninian Beall had taken the oath as member of the House of Burgesses for Calvert County. He was also the first representative elected from Prince George's.


But it must not be imagined that this doughty Indian fighter knew nothing of the peaceful side of life. Certain it is that he served the church as loyally as he did the State, but from his own religious standpoint.


As member of the Assembly in 1699 he signed the petition to King William III for the establishment of the Church of England in Maryland, although he was a Presbyterian elder, and five years later gave half an acre of land in Prince George's County, to Nathaniel Taylor, the eminent Scotch divine, for "ye erecting and building of a house for ye service of Almighty God, that parcel of land being a part of a tract called ye Meadows, lying on ye western branch of the Patuxent River in Prince George's County."


It is therefore evident the Colonel Beall never renounced his Presbyterian faith, but simply wished to aid in the establishment of a Protestant as opposed to a Catholic supremacy. Ninian Beall, in his deed of gift for the site of an early Presbyterian Church in Maryland, made a number of is kinsman trustees. These were Ninian Beall, Jr., Thomas Beall, Sr., and Thomas Beall, Jr., James Beall, Charles Beall, Alexander Beall, Archibald Edmonston, William Offutt and others.


Colonel Ninian Beall is supposed to be the person referred to by Thomas Wilson, the Quaker preacher, who, writing of his trip through Maryland in 1691, says: "As we were traveling we met two men, one of whom being an ancient comely man kindly invited us to his house, where we stayed two nights and had a meeting, though he was an elder among the Presbyterians. He also lent a boat to go over the Potomac River."


Dr. Briggs, in the "American Presbyterian" says, "the Presbyterians on the Patuxent were kept together by their godly elder Col. Ninian Beall, from the time of Mathew Hill until the arrival of Nathaniel Taylor, who, it is said came over with a congregation of Scots from Fifeshire in 1690."

Colonel Ninian Beall lived to be ninety-two years of age. That he was a man of rare breadth of vision his charity to all men bears witness.


He was buried on his home plantation and when in recent years his remains were dug up, owing to the growth of Georgetown where his home was situated, it was found that he was six feet seven inches tall, and his Scotch red hair had retained all of its fiery hue.


That Ninian Beall was a man of wealth is shown by the large estates devised in his will to his children and grandchildren, many thousands of acres of Maryland's most fertile soil being left to his heirs.


His son, Colonel George Beall, inherited a part of the tract granted to Colonel Ninian Beall, by the name of Rock of Dumbarton, which had been bestowed by Charles Lord Baltimore "as of our manor of Calverton in free and common soccage by fealty only for all manner of service," etc. Georgetown was built on a large part of this tract.

Its second proprietor, Colonel George Beall, married Elizabeth Brooke, the daughter of Colonel Thomas Brooke and his second wife, Barbara Dent, and the great-granddaughter of Robert Brooke, of De la Brooke, and his wife, Mary Baker.

Ninian Beall, Jr., son of Colonel Ninian, was dead at the time of his father's death in 1717. He had married Elizabeth Magruder, by whom he left a son, Samuel, and a daughter, Mary, largely provided for in their grandfather's will who directed that they be carefully brought up and "have that education suitable to their estate."


Two of Colonel Ninian Beall's daughters married Magruders, another married a Belt and a third an Edmonston. Most of the alliances of his children and grandchildren were with the Scotch who had settled in that part of Prince George's County called New Scotland. Among so many notable lines of descent it is difficult to discriminate in the favor of any, hence the choice must be given to that branch which has a national interest by reason of the marriage of Eliza Beall, great-granddaughter of Colonel Ninial Beall, to Colonel George Corbin Washington, a son of William Augustine Washington and his wife Jane (Washington) Washington, who was also his cousin, being the daughter of John Augustine Washington, brother of General George Washington, while her husband was a son of Augustine Washington, the older half-brother of the first President of the United States. Although born in Virginia (Westmoreland County), Colonel Washington, who married Eliza Beall, adopted Maryland as his home and represented the Montgomery County district in three successive terms of Congress. He died in Georgetown in the year 1854.


[From Side-lights on Maryland History with Sketches of Early Maryland Families by Hester Dorsey Richardson, copyrighted 1913.]



Ninian Beall held a commission as cornet in the Scotch-English Army, raised to resist Cromwell. He fought in the battle of Dunbar, 3rd September, 1650, against Cromwell, and was made prisoner at that battle and sentenced to five years servitude. He was sent with 150 other Scotsmen to Barbadoes, West Indies. About 1652 they appeared in the Province of Maryland. Ninian Beall served his five years with Richard Hall, a planter of Calvert Co.


In the Maryland Land Office Records of 1658, there is a record of Ninian Beall making a land transfer in Calvert County, Maryland. It seems that these military prisoners were entitled to 50 acres of public land after completing service. By the inexperienced reader the servitude of Colonel Ninian Beall for five years under Richard Hall, on account of fighting against Cromwell, may be rated as a disgrace. This humiliation of servitude which came to him not on account of crime, but through the fortunes of war, was an honor. The principle for which he fought finally triumphed in the overthrow of Cromwell. His servitude was a halo of martyrdom for a principle which was honorable. Although he had many chances to escape from servitude after reaching Maryland, yet we find the instincts of a gentleman and soldier prompted him to not only honorably and gracefully submit to the fortunes of war, but at the same time, by so doing, he gained the respect and confidence of the people of Maryland to such a degree that they showered continuos honors upon him to the day of his death.


Ninian Beall's military ability in the Scotch-English Army seems to have been made good use of in the Province of Maryland, as shown by the following notations:

1668: Records at Annapolis, dated 31st October 1668, call him Lieut. Ninian Beall.

1676: Commissioned Lieut. of Lord Baltimore's "Yacht of War, Loyal Charles of Maryland, John Goade Commander."

1684: Deputy Surveyor of Charles County.

1688: Appointed Chief Military Officer of Calvert County.

1689: Appointed Major of Calvert County Militia by the Assembly.

1692: Appointed High Sheriff of Calvert County.

1694: Appointed Colonel of Militia by the Assembly 30th July, 1694.

1697: Appointed on a Commission by the Assembly to treat with the Indians.

1679-1701: Was a member of the General Assembly.

1699: The General Assembly passed an "Act of Gratitude" for "the distinguished Indian services of Colonel Ninian Beall."

Col. Beall's signal defeat and destruction of the great Susquehannah Tribe of Indians caused him to be recognized as an Indian fighter of ability. Many official papers written by Col. Beall and on file in the Provincial Records show that he was a man of broad experience, great mental capacity, undoubted integrity, perfect moral courage, and of good education. His signatures to official papers are bold and free. As he signed his will by witnessed mark, that would indicate that he must have been in a very feeble condition of body at the time, for he was 92 years old. He figures in many land transfers. It is estimated that he owned about 4000 acres.

He seems to have identified himself with the Presbyterian Church of Maryland before 1690. During that year, 200 Presbyterian immigrants came over from Scotland under his supervision. He located them along the Potomac River and called the settlement New Scotland. These immigrants brought with them Rev. Nathaniel Taylor. There is recorded at Upper Marlboro, a deed of gift from Colonel Ninian Beall to Reverend Taylor of land in Upper Marlboro upon which to build a church. In 1707, Colonel Ninian Beall presented the above church a costly silver communion set, made in London. A portion of this silver communion set is now in the Presbyterian Church at Hyattsville, Maryland.


Colonel Beall's will was dated 15th January 1717 and was probated 28th February, 1717. Colonel Beall was buried on his Rock of Dumbarton Plantation, at a point now Gay Street, Georgetown, D.C. When his body was removed, his skeleton was found to be perfect and measured six feet seven inches, and his hair had grown long and retained its youthful color of red.


[From Colonial Families of the United States of America, Volume II, edited by George Norbury Mackenzie, LL.B.