Item 36

                                                                         Box 92, Tulsa, Oklahoma,
                                                                                   June 26, 1939.

Mrs. Elizabeth Clare Taubman,
274 Park Ave.
Long Beach California.

Dear Mrs. Taubman:

                       Your gracious letter of June 21st arrived today, and I hasten to answer and to express my appreciation of your kindness in sending me data about the Beatties.  I had visited Washington County, Virginia, searched records there, made a take off of the will of John and Francis Beattie had visited Miss Leba  [sic] Beattie of Glade Springs from whom I secured much data and have had several letters.  She was most gracious with me.  Like you I leaned on our good friend Lewis Preston Summers of Abingdon for help, to the tune of $25.00 and got the sum total of NOTHING.  So you are not the only one to feel hurt.  This month I had a letter from the State of Washington who made the same complaint, even and you and I.

`                      I am glad indeed to get your story of Francis Beattie and his family.  I had concluded that neither John or Francis his brother were at Kings Mountain. I wonder what proof, if any, you have of his (Francis’ service) at Kings M. The record you sent me about the John Beattie Family corresponds with what I have, except mine is a bit more full.  I shall remember you and when I overhaul my notes, run off a story of this family for you.  Many of the John Beattie family went first to Kentucky and then on to Missouri. I was born in the home of one of _e [the] Missouri Beatties in 1881. This man, John Breckenridge Beattie had married a sister of my grandfather, this sister being Sarah Jane Cole.  I knew many of the Beatties and Dysarts in Missouri.  There is a little army of them there.  A Dr. W. Logan Wood, of Bollkow [Bolckow], Missouri, is of the Gilmore, Beattie, Dysart and Logan Families.  His immediate forebears were of the Pulaski County Kentucky stock.

                       I am intrigued about the date found on thse [sic] third page of your letter regarding John Beattie (1775-1845) wife Mary (Polly) Forgay.  In my noted [sic]I have a record of a JOHN BEATTIE, son of William, grandson of John (d. 1790). This John seems to have been born 1786, d. 1861.  He married Sarah Edmiston died 1868.  They had eight children.  Now here is the interesting part of the matter. Robert F. Beattie of this family married Hattie Newell, his sister Florence Beattie married Henry Clay Newell.  I notice that in the John Beatty sketch you sent a daughter Margaret married John M. Newell, while a daughter Martha Jane, m. W. Montgomery Newell.  The tombstone record at Pisgah Cemetery, Pulaski County, copied by you quite evidently deals with the John who married Sarah or Sallie Edmiston.  You will be interested in knowing that I found this Beattie family while trying to trace the Edmistons. I am an Edmiston.

                       I know Mrs. E.E. Evans of Columbia.  Have visited with her.  I attended Missouri University, and frequently go to Columbi[a] where my father yet resides, and where my children have been or are being educated.  She has given me much data and I have thr_ of her publications on my shelves.  That reminds me.  I have about everything that has been published in the way of Histori_ and genealogies dealing with that South west Virginia country,

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Mrs. Taubman, Long Beach----------2------------June 26, 1939

and have access to Chalkley.  You mentioned “Bruce”.  I do not have any note showing what this refers to.  Can you give me a lead so I can check this record?  I have the History of Rockbridge.  Can you more fully designate CARTMELL’S History?  I seem never to have come across that publication.

                     I was once in touch with a professor Beatty (I believe that is the way he spelled it) who had collected much about the John beattie Family, but he did not answer the last letter I sent him, so I am not sure he is living.  When last I heard of him he was living on Long Island in New York.
 Now I have written more than a page and have told you prectically [sic] nothing. This is a poor return for the data you sent.  I could send you other sata [data], but much that I have is in the ahape [shape] of letters and charts which I loaned to Dr. Logan Wood of Bolckow Missouri and until I get it back, I am in no shape to write you at any great length about the Beatties.  I shall keep you in mind however, and when I have time to organize my notes and have same typed I shall remember my debt to you and send you a copy of what will serve your purposes.

                     I am not a Beattie, nor am I a Gilmore.  My forebears were Pattersons, Edmistons, Lowrys, Wheelers and Coles of Washington County, Va.  I have arm loads of data about these last named families and it was while trying to trace them that I kept coming in touch with the Beatties.  Then I met Miss Leana Beattie, and got her story.  It needed much enlargement ----- especially to show the Missouri Beatties. Last summer I was in Columbia, and Andrew County, Missouri and gathered up much Beattie data and by writing about soon discovered the connections and now have hundreds of names which show succeeding generations after John Beattie.  I have many many records of families too numerous to mention living in Washington County Virginia.  I profess to know more about those old families than does L.P. Summers, who is too lazy to go to the Court House and find what is stored there.  I do not now know what I will do with the data about these early families, there are about 40 of them, but if the country does not go entirely to the dem_ition [?] bow wows, I hope some time to publish a pamphlet showing the early history and family connections of these.

                     This letter is entirely too long, but I must not stop without telling you that my father a Virginia boy went to Missouri in 1872 to live with J.B. Beattie.  After thirty-five or more years of search I found the ancestry of my Coles (Plymouth Mass) and incidentally discovered I was connected with about twenty of the first families of Mass., not to mention numerous families I have connected with in Virginia, some going back to 1611.  I am a lawyer ---- my own typist, as you see, and this is my hobby.  If I have mentioned anything you are interested in, make your wants known and if I have anything it is yours for the asking.

                       With every good wish, I am,
                                                       Yours sincerely,

                                                 Redmond Selecman Cole,
                                                               Box 92, Tulsa, Oklahoma.