Mercy Beach

(Mercy of Welsh decent? Had trace of Indian Blood?) Her father was a blacksmith.

This essay, as typed by my grandmother Carrie Bascom Thompson's Beach-line 2nd cousin, Coralyn Brownlee (a granddaughter of Moses Sheldon Beach via his daughter, and a great niece of Elihu Miles Beach), was sent to my grandmother in a letter in the late 1940's. Coralyn bases this essay on -- and refers to -- letters by Mercy Moses Beach to which she had access. What became of those letters, I have no idea. [Janet Blair: owner of this typewritten copy and this tree, Blair Family Tree.]

Mercy Moses Beach

I suppose that you were named for your Uncle Jay Beach, and he used to say that he was named by his great-grandmother, Mercy Moses Beach, whom he could but dimly remember. She died in I85I. For her times, she must have been an unusual and forceful character, worthy of a fuller biography than I can furnish She was born in I76I, probably at Simsbury, Connecticut. Her father’s name is not recorded, but he was a metal worker and at least one piece of his handiwork is still in existence. His wife, like his daughter, was named Mercy, and she must have outlived him, for a tattered old receipt, dated I8II, certifies to the transfer of “one cow belonging to Widow Mercy Moses, likewise three sheep, all appraised at $2I.00.” I have an idea that this transaction was part of the settlement of her estate and that she too was dead at this time. The couple had at least two sons, Frederick and Elisha, besides their daughter, our great-great-grandmother Mercy. Tradition says that there was a trace of Indian blood in the Moses family. A little Welsh, too, probably; for Dr. C.H. Moses, of Sharon, of Welsh parentage, told me that a branch of his family migrated to America in very early times.

   Our ancestress, Mercy Moses Beach, had a long and rather adventurous life. She once told Mrs. Almira Simmons that as a girl of sixteen she stood with her brother Elisha on a hillside near their home and watched Burgoyne’s defeated and disgraced army marching down to the prison camp in the South. Three years later, she married a youthful veteran of the Continental Army, Elihu Beach [in 1782]. Three years later, our great-grandfather, Elihu M., was born. He was her second child and five others followed, so Mercy had a family of seven to rear.

The year before the elder Elihu’s marriage his father, Zophar, deeded to him a parcel of land in Litchfield County, Connecticut, and we can believe this was Mercy’s first home. She had many others before she died. In I798 George Miller deeded to Elihu and Mercy Beach thirty acres of land with house and barn in Hartland for “One hundred and eighty pounds, lawful money”. So then, if not before, Mercy herself became a landowner, rather uncommon for a woman in those days. Again in I809, perhaps when he was starting off on his westward way, her son Elihu M. deeded to her another piece of real estate in Hartland.
But Mercy herself felt the call of the West. In 18II, when I surmise her mother died, she was 50 years old and several times a grandmother. She might well have been considered past pioneering. Nevertheless, she and Elihu set out, probably stopped for two or three years near Dryden, New York, where their two sons and some of the daughters had settled for a time, and by I8I5 were here in Vernon. I feel quite sure it was Mercy and not Elihu who was the moving spirit. In I8I5 they bought from Jeremiah and Amelia Wilcox the forty acres at the south-east corner of the Center of Vernon, a part of which is now the site of the Vernon school, and for eighty-five years it remained theirs and their descendants’.

   But Mercy did not sit still long. In I828 she and Elihu made a trip back to Connecticut where their oldest daughter lived. How they went and the time it took we do not know, but it must have been a long, hard journey, and they were nearly seventy. Did they stop to see the folks in New York? Undoubtedly. Four years later, Elihu died. First her son Elihu, then her grandson, Moses, was selected to “look after her.” Little need of it.

   Mercy still was not through with her travels. In September of I835, when seventy-four years old, she made a visit to her children and brother in New York State. She wrote back to her daughter a detailed account of her journey. It gives a vivid picture of her experiences. I infer that she went in company with her granddaughter and the latter’s husband. Here is the pilgrim’s progress:

First day (Thursday), went to Andover. Bill 6 cents. Friday, went to Girard. Bill I2 cents. Saturday, went to Westfield, I2 miles over the New York line. Bill, 22 cents. Sunday, did not travel. Monday, went to Collins, Erie County. Bill, I2 cents. Tuesday, went to East-pike, Allegheny County. Bill, I2 cents. Wednesday, went to Hutsons’ at Bristol. Bill, I8 cents. Thursday, went to Ovid. Bill, I8 cents. Friday, went to Etna. Arrived at two o’clock. (No bill, so probably they found relatives there.) Saturday, went to McKees’. (Mrs. McKee was her daughter Faithie, so she was at last at her destination.)
In her letter she said that her expenses on the road amounted to 90 cents, and she gave Marcus five dollars. I imagine it was Marcus who furnished the transportation. The distance covered daily ranged from twelve to fifteen miles. Such was travel in I835. Mercy spent nearly two months with her children, grandchildren, brother, and family. In October the daughter Faithie died. Was her death expected? Was that why Mercy had made the long journey? No hint is given. In November she came home by boat and stage in considerably less time but with various adventures.
The next letter from Mercy that I have read was written in I848. She then was very old and feeble. Her small, regular handwriting had become shaky, and sometimes a word was omitted. Her high spirits had ebbed away. She mentioned a severe illness of the year before when “I and all that saw me thought that I should never walk abroad any more.” She inquired about “the state of religion” and exhorted her children to faithful Christian living. She seemed even then to be standing in the presence of eternity, but she lived three years longer and died at the age of ninety.

   She is buried beside Elihu far back in the old Vernon cemetery, but the stone carries only his name. I think Mercy would have wished their graves, like their real estate, to have borne the names of ELIHU and MERCY BEACH.