♂Beauchamp Harvey

Beauchamp Harvey (5 December 1788 – 23 February 1859) was a War of 1812 soldier, one of the army surrendered without a fight at Detroit in 1812, and an early settler of Mount Carmel, Illinois, where he served as a justice of the peace and as one of the first commissioners of Wabash County. He was the third great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son James Harvey (1821–1896).

Early life and the war

He was the son of John Harvey (1757–1819) and Jane Beauchamp (1760–1821), whose maiden name he was given as his first name. A family chart compiled in 1994 gives his birthplace as Baltimore; the 1850 census says only Maryland. A later biographical sketch of his grandson Beauchamp A. Harvey, in a history of Illinois, says that Beauchamp Harvey was reared in Baltimore and was a Friend (Quaker) in religion, though the next generation of the family became Methodists.

As a young man he went west to Ohio. A county history published in 1883 records that he enlisted there in the War of 1812 and was “with General Hull’s troops at the memorable surrender of Detroit” in August 1812; the unit he served in is not named. At Detroit the American commander, General William Hull, surrendered his whole army and the town to a smaller British and Native force without giving battle; Hull was later court-martialled and sentenced to death for it, though the President pardoned him.

On 1 January 1816, in Pickaway County, Ohio, he married Hester M. Saylor (1796–1873), whom the same history calls Esther. One compiled account of her family mistook his given name for a surname and recorded that she “married Mr. Beauchamp”.

Mount Carmel

The couple moved to Illinois in 1819 with their two eldest daughters, Jane and Sally, and settled at Mount Carmel on the Wabash River, which had been laid out only two years before. In the 1820 federal census he was written “Beauchamp Hervey” and was the head of a household in Edwards County, Illinois, from which Wabash County was formed in 1824. The town’s founders included a surveyor named William Beauchamp; whether he was related to Beauchamp Harvey’s mother has not been established. His grandson B. A. Harvey, writing a sketch of the county’s history in 1918, recorded that Beauchamp built and lived in one of the three houses then standing on the site of the town, and that his son James had told him he was born in one of those houses.

Harvey became one of the settlement’s first justices of the peace. When the second county court sat in 1826 he was one of its commissioners, and he was re-elected in 1830, serving two terms in all. He is also recorded on an early grand jury, and he signed a re-recorded early deed in his capacity as commissioner. In February 1834 he and Eliza Hawley, as administrators, signed a notice, printed in the Illinois State Register that spring, that they would settle the estate of Harvey Hawley, deceased, at the probate court for Wabash County at Mount Carmel in July. In the 1840 and 1850 censuses he was farming in Wabash County; in 1850 he was 62, living with his wife, his son William and members of an Austin family.

Five more children were born afterwards, making seven in all: Jane, Sally, James, Mary, Judith, William P. and David. When the county history was written in 1883, four were still living, three of them near Mount Carmel and Mary, the wife of Thomas J. Ray, in Lawrence County. No record of Sally or of Mary beyond that mention has been found.

Death

Beauchamp Harvey died “at the old homestead” in Mount Carmel on 23 February 1859 and was buried in Sand Hill Cemetery there. His wife survived him until 1873.