Life is a Journey

Current photos are here:

Ben — Thu, 19 May 2011 18:24:29 +0000

The main thrust of our web activities these days is to get photos online. Aside from the two tabs above, please go here for

2010 photos of family, events, and fun pics,

2010 photos from Europe, and

2010 photos of the kids and our friends riding and learning to play polo.

You’ll need me to give you the password. Email me!

Digging in to the history of Spring Place - and a nugget found

Ben — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:21:39 +0000

In the late summer of 2008 I had the chance to get over to Spring Place. It was a brief, overnight trip and unfortunately the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society offices were closed by the time I got there. Nevertheless I got to look around the area, and gradually a rough outline of the settlement began to emerge in my mind.
My goal was to try to learn more about the history of my anscestor John Beall (JSB). Spring Place formed around the home of (more…)

Wow, what a year!!

Mary — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:46:32 +0000

Wow, what a year!! Where do I start, well, perhaps at the beginning….Just a year and a bit ago, we were settling into our newly purchased home in Bad Homburg, Germany. We had big plans for making our lovely Altstadt home even more lovely. Ben was commuting to London three days a week, while we were busy at home with school, church and community. Then, out of left field, came a real surprise. In mid-October 2007, we learned (more…)

Moving to South Carolina

Mary — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:11:25 +0000

Trading church bells for fog horns?

In case you didn’t know, we’ve moved, after 12 years of living overseas! We enjoyed a happy holiday season in Charlotte, NC, where we visited with both our families. It was one of only a few times that Ben’s entire family had been able to get together in the past twelve years - a very special Christmas for everyone.

We arrived on Sullivans Island (near Charleston, SC) on Dec. 27, settled in over New Years, shot fireworks off on the beach and then (more…)

Farewell party for Jack at Accadis

Ben — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:02:22 +0000

This has been a big week for Jack, finishing up school at Accadis on Wednesday with a Halloween Party, followed by a Good-bye Party today. According to Jack, it was ‘excellent!’ He is still recovering from all the group hugs and being carried around the room.

We’ve posted some photos from (more…)

Cousins you didn’t know you had

Ben — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:56:40 +0000

Perhaps the most pleasurable part of digging into family history over the past couple years has been meeting people like Patti Johnston Case. Through one of my shot-in-the-dark queries asking some Beall somewhere if he know anything about my earliest known ancestor, Patti got wind from a mutual cousin, Jerry Beall of Portland, and dropped me an email. Lo and behold, I had a new cousin (and new relation, in her grandfather) that I didn’t even know I had before. John S. Beall was her great great grandfather, and she’s been gathering family material (more…)

Welcome to our family history.

Ben — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:31:21 +0000

Did you love hearing the stories your parents or grandparents told, when you were growing up? I did. I loved it when my Mom and Dad brought to life the ’simpler,’ barefoot Tom Sawyer times of their childhoods (back in the Great Depression), or the great adventure of dodging a freshman English term paper (to learn to fly and go off to war.) As I write this, I still have a crystal clear image of ‘Grandmamma Ragsdale’ as a little girl, watching silently as the Yankee soldiers rode off, then skipping the hardtack biscuit they’d given her over a big wide mud-puddle. The occupying soldiers thought she needed their pity, but she’d rather have starved first. I wasn’t there, of course, just after the end of the Civil War; Mary Elizabeth McCrorey (Ragsdale) was my mother’s grandmother. These romantic images were planted young in me. The silver-screen adventures with their historic backdrops are better than any fiction for me, and their grip on my imagination is as strong as ever.

These Bealls, Longs, Ragsdales, McCroreys, Davidsons, and Mary’s Mitchells, Leonards, Paynes, and others were fascinating people who lived in very interesting times. Learning about the things that went on during their lives has been at least as interesting as the ancestry detective work. John S. Beall, our earliest known Beall ancestor, moved onto land in north Georgia that had been vacated just a couple of years before by the Cherokee Indians, who were forced westward on what became known as the Trail of Tears.

Mary’s great grandfather, Freel Mitchell, went west, too, as a young man. Much further, across-country to California after a bout with tuberculosis. He returned to the North Carolina mountains to settle, choosing a beautiful hollow where he established the homeplace the family still calls “home” today (no matter where they live.) Ours is a family of pioneers and planters, explorers and expats, soldiers and sowers. Pilots, and now sailors!

The basic genealogical records of the Beall family have been published here. This material is excerpted from my grandfather’s work, for whom family and relations were an enduring passion. Most credit for this carefully compiled family history goes to him. Thanks also to Ben’s Mom and Dad for having preserved this material and enriched it with their own.

This page will be a permanent, shareable diary of the people I meet, the historical sketches and guesswork, and the new or refreshed stories other family members tell me. I hope it will chronicle the discovery where JS Beall came from, more than a century and a half ago, when he took a bride and settled down in that remote, former Moravian mission and seat of the Cherokee nation. We know he settled on this near western frontier to become postmaster and clerk of court, merchant and slaveholder, but where did he begin?

In the meantime, Mary and I are scanning in the wealth of historical family photos that have come our way, and will be posting them online in a special family history section of our photo gallery, as time permits.

Do you remember some of those stories, too, from your childhood? Want to share?

Ignore that man behind the curtain…

Ben — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:28:09 +0000

Welcome! This is the prototype for the new-and-improved (read: easy to update and maintain) website. It’s not finished yet, but I’ll tell you when it’s ready to be launched…

If you’re reading this, it’s probably because I pointed you here to look at some photos or family history stuff. Please ignore the mess and have a look around. Click on the tabs above, and leave us a comment.

Meanwhile, thanks for stopping by.

Great day out - Air Races in London

Ben — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:24:21 +0000

Serendipity for an adrenaline junkie? Happened to be in the right place at the right time, when my friend Jeff Boyle told me the sixth stage of the Red Bull Air Race was going to be in London this weekend. I’d never heard about this travelling event, but had always wanted to see one of the speed races out in the western US, and this seemed like something similar. Found myself staying over the weekend not too far from London, so thought I’d go check it out.

It was a blast! The rest of the crowd and I had a great day out - by the end we were all cheering and (more…)