William Beard : Enslavement , Emancipation and Entrepreneurship in the 1800s
By Carmine Bell , Ph . D ., PHSC Professor Emerita
In the 1860 U . S . Federal Census , six-year-old William Beard , the great-great-grandfather of Dr . Timothy L . Beard , Ph . D ., was listed among the nameless property of slave owner John Preston Braid of Greene County in the Piney Woods region of southeastern Mississippi . Braid , also spelled “ Baird ” and “ Beard ,” owner of 14 chattel slaves , moved from South Carolina to Mississippi in the early 1800s . Braid was 60 years old in 1862 when the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the Homestead Act , both signed by President Abraham Lincoln , dramatically changed his life and that of young William Beard .
The Homestead Act of 1862 “ provided that any adult citizen , or intended citizen , who had never borne arms against the U . S . government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land . Claimants were required to live on and ‘ improve ’ their plot by cultivating the land . After five years on the land , the original filer was entitled to the property , free and clear , except for a small registration fee .” In 1877 , William Beard , by then married to Ann Moffett and living in Wilmer , Alabama , submitted Homestead Application # 714 for land he had farmed for about five years . To support his application , William built a house , a stable , a corn crib , a smokehouse and other structures on land he had fenced and cultivated for agriculture and animal husbandry . On December 30 , 1879 , Beard received Homestead Land Patent # 364 , recognized as a legal deed to 159.98 acres of land .
William also owned his own timber company , with logging teams in Mississippi and Alabama . The challenges of supervising operations in two states eventually led to closure of the Mississippi site , but the Alabama business remained profitable . William employed family members and neighbors . In the
1880 Federal Census , he listed the timber industry as his occupation .
Numerous sources estimate that no more than 10 % of African Americans were literate in the antebellum South . Anti-literacy laws often criminalized the teaching of letters to African Americans , slave or free . William could read and write but chose to use an X to sign his Homestead Land Patent . However , he openly displayed his and his wife ’ s names as charter members of the Moffettville Missionary Baptist Church , founded in 1868 by Cyrus and Rachel Moffett , parents of William ’ s first wife , Ann . Chairman of the church ’ s deacon and trustee boards , William was a counselor known for helping bereaved families . Upon request , he ordered caskets and stood in for the families of the deceased until their debt was paid .
Until his death in 1939 , faith and family were major forces in William ’ s life . Thrice widowed , he married four times and fathered 22 children . His last child , Eleanor Beard Moffett , known affectionately as Auntie Eleanor , took on the role of family historian until her death in 2013 .
Today the Beard Family historian is Atlanta-based genealogist Marcia Lamar Green , mother of four and grandmother of seven . Marcia is also third cousin to Tim Beard since they have a common greatgreat-grandfather in William Beard . A member of the Daughters of the American Revolution ( DAR ) and other historical associations , Marcia has used multiple DNA analyses to identify both her European and African ancestors . Her article on William Beard is published online by the National Park Service and in Black Homesteaders of the South by Bernice Alexander Bennett ( History Press , 2022 ).
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