by Doug Preston
Jacob Beverett served during the Revolutionary War from 17 October 1781, to July 1783. “Revolutionary Records Book V-4501, State Archives, Raleigh, N. C., Payments by Wilmington District Militia, No. 303 Militia, 6.12.” When Jacob came home he brought the bayonet he had used in the war as a memento.
Jacob’s oldest son Joseph served during the Indian War of 1812 as a Private in Captain John E. Hussey’s Company of Infantry, 3rd Regiment (Moore’s) North Carolina Militia. His service commenced on 17 Oct 1814, and ended 10 March 1815. Joseph reentered the service in 1818, when General Andrew Jackson made his foray into Florida. In his position as butcher for Jackson’s Army, Joseph helped to conserve food for the General who was ill and on gruel most of the time of his march into Florida. Rice was especially hoarded for the General’s soup. Joseph walked home from the war carrying the bayonet that his father (Jacob) had used. Upon his return he persuaded his father and mother, his brothers John and Henry, and two sisters Sarah Taylor and Dorothy Vann, to go with him to Dale County in southeast Alabama.
John, second son of Jacob, served in the Mexican War of 1848 and, in turn, took the bayonet to war and brought it home again.
Henry, third son of Jacob, served in the war with the Creek Indians in 1837. In the files of the War Department his name is given as: “Henry Bevert, Wellborns Mtd. Vols., 3 months, Cpt. Ledbetters Company, Welborns’s Ref’l Ala. Appears on the Muster Out Roll, Ft. Breach, Ala., 4 July 1837. Enrolled 3 April, Dale County, 3 months, Private.” Henry also saw service in the last years of the
Confederacy. Each time he attached to the muzzle of his gun the old bayonet that had been used previously by his brothers Joseph and John and his father Jacob.
Alto Beverett, great grandson of Jacob came into possession of the rare old relic after the death of his father. It was last seen when he laid it on a shelf in the cow shed on a farm near Midland City, Alabama where he lived for a short time.
The Beverett’s were some of the early settlers of Dale County. Family legend has it that Jacob lived to be 113 years of age. The 1840 census of Dale County gives his age as over 100 years of age. He is the only Revolutionary War Veteran buried at Mt. Enon Cemetery on Dale County 67, 6 miles south of Echo.
[Doug Preston a native of Echo and a resident of Abbeville is retired from the U. S. Army and currently employed with Civil Service at Fort Rucker. He has been doing family research on the early settlers of Echo for the last 5 years.]
Sources: Beveretts of the New World, by Marie Parson Whitaker, Some Early Settlers of Echo, by William E. Preston, first hand knowledge of the descendants of Jacob Beverett, John and Ina Mae Preston Beverett and Verna Phillips Cherry of the Mt. Enon Community of Dale County.
