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FOREWORD
"Better
to write something now
than everything never."
- Sir Iain Moncreiffe
In
the late 1950's, Van
Zandt Beall of Fort
Worth gave to his niece,
my wife Lucile Beall
McLean, his small file
of correspondence on,
and pencil sketches of,
his Beall family tree.
Among his correspondents
was Nancy Harrison Beall
Williams of El Paso, who
earlier had taken an
interest in Beall
genealogy. Conclusions
of the two cousins,
although lacking
documentary proof, were
substantially correct,
except for one ancestral
generation based upon
published sources
subsequently refuted.
Sir
Iain Moncreiffe's maxim,
prompted by unfinished
and unpublished material
wasted with death and
time, plus extinct names
among my wife's and my
families that could be
identified by our
generation or "never,"
led to my genealogical
research and this book.
From
the 1640's in Scotland
to 1914 in Fort Worth,
Texas, only two wills
were found executed by
male members of this
Beall line, those in
1742 and 1744 in
Maryland. Property was
otherwise disposed of by
gift to children as a
custom, or by necessity,
as this Beall family was
ever at the forefront of
the western movement in
advance of local
document recording
offices. That, added to
the typical loss of
records over the years
by fire or lack of care,
required proof of
descent by secondary,
often circumstantial
evidence, producing a
vast number of
references and a text
too detailed and
technical. For that and
the inevitable errors
and omissions, I
apologize.
Wm.
Hunter McLean
Fort Worth, Texas
February, 1977
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