Taken from the Maine Antique Digest, Aug. 1999 magazine concerning a sale of BEALL heirlooms at Weschler's Auction, Washington, DC.:
"Also deserving extra attention are the two samplers that came from the Beall (pronounced Bell) family...... the provenance started with Ninian Beall in 1625. ....The Bealls of Maryland were perhaps America's first great family dynasty. Long before popular surnames like Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and now Bush dominated the political landscape, the Bealls held huge tracks of real estate, fought Indians, built mansions, and provided the colony with leadership and stability. Because this family never provided a president, a Supreme Court Justice, or a Wild West Explorer, the Bealls' legacy is not widely known. The patriarch, Ninian Beall, b in Scotland in 1625. (St. Ninian of the 5th century is known as the first Scottish Christian.) By 1650 Beall had risen to the rank of colonel and was fighting Oliver Cromwell's invasion into Scotland. At the Battle of Dunbar, 3000 Scots were killed and 10,000 taken prisoner. Beall was among them. He was shipped to Barbados in the West Indies for incarceration and slave labor. After two years he was transferred to the province of Maryland where he was an indentured servant for five years in Calvert County, today 35 miles south of Washington, DC. Given 50 acres of land upon his release, Beall stayed in the county and eventually became a surveyor, sheriff, and then commander of all Maryland military forces. At a time when the province was always under the threat of Indian attacks, Beall was credited with establishing a pact with the Piscataway tribe to the south to combat the Susquehannocks from the north. He received huge parcels of land as payment for recruiting at least 200 immigrants to the province, most from Scotland. His holdings were soon measured in miles rather than acres. His property line stretched some 40 miles from Upper Marlboro, Maryland, to what would become Georgetown in the District of Columbia. He married a second time and added perhaps ten more children to the son he had left in Scotland, who would later join him. Where Maryland met the Potomac River, some of it swampy lowlands, he owned 795 acres, which he called the New Scotland Hundred. His farm was the Rock of Dumbarton after a castle in Scotland. Fifty years before George Washington was born, Ninian Beall was acquiring the land that would become the city of Washington. Through marriage, the Beall family joined with the forthright Magruders of Scotland, and holdings and influence increased. At a time when the average life expectancy was 35 years, and men grew to about 5'6" tall, the red-haired Ninian Beall lived to be 92 and stood at least 6'7". Some historians say he measured 7' even. He died in 1717. His exact gravesite is unknown. In 1751 the Maryland Assembly bought some of the Potomac River land from Beall's son, also Ninian. They bought land from an adjacent holder, George Gordon. In 1752 a plat was laid out for a new settlement. In picking a name, Niniantown came in second behind Georgetown. In 1791 additional Beall property was acquired when the ten-mile-square boundaries were established for the new Washington City. The surveyors were Andrew Ellicott and an old African-American self-taught scientist, Benjamin Banneker. (see M.A.D, November 1997). There have been five later descendants bearing the name Ninian Beall.
Selected information from a D.A.R. article written by Ruth Beall Gelders in 1996:
Ninian Beall held a commission as a cornetist in the Scottish-English Army under Leslie raised to resist Cromwell, and fought and was made prisoner in the Battle of Dunbar, September 3, 1650. He was sentenced to five years of servitude and, after a short stay in Ireland, was packed into the hold of a prison ship with 149 other Scotsmen and sent to Barbadoes, West Indies. About 1652, he was transferred, still a prisoner, to the Province of Maryland where he served five years with Richard Hall of Calvert County. "Then came Ninian Beall of Calvert County, planter, and proved his right to 50 acres of land for his time in service, as military prisoner, performed with Richard Hall of said county. This servitude which came to him through the fortunes of war was an Honor." (From Liber 2, Folio 195, Maryland Land Office, Jan. 16, 1957) As Ninian Beall was responsible for about 200 immigrants coming to the country, when Prince Georges County was created out of Calvert County, over 7,000 acres of his property were found to be in the new county. On part of this acreage, the District of Columbia is now located, an on another part the famed "Dumbarton Oaks." His first tract of land was called "Rock of Dumbarton." This grant was received from Lord Baltimore and was for seven hundred and ninety five acres. The area in Maryland now included in the District of Columbia, in those days before 1700 was called New Scotland Hundred, and was a part of Charles County. This county was created by Lord Baltimore in 1658. It was the property along the Potomac River from Wicomico "as high as the settlements extend." New Scotland Hundred extended from Oxon Branch (opposite Alexandria, Va.) to the falls of the Potomac. Charles Beall was the pressmaster of this county. The area included: "The Nock" - grant of 500 acres first warranted to Ninian Beall. "Meurs" - 500 acres first granted to Ninian Beall, originally named Chance" "Barbadoe" - first laid out or surveyed by Ninian Beall, 250 acres "Inclosure" - patented on Oct. 2, 1687, 1503 acres surveyed for Ninian Beall and by him taken up in 1687, and which was a tract now part of the National Arboretum. "Beall's Pleasure" - The house is up a narrow, private road on the left, 16.3 miles N.E. along Bladenton Road from Old Toll Gate, or at Bladensburg. Rd. and H Street, but is visible from the main road. This early colonial and brick house was built in 1795 by Benjamin Stoddard, 1st Secretary of the Navy, and confidential agent in securing rights for the Capital City. This fine example of Georgian architecture was built of brick burned at clay pits still visible on the grounds. The house was erected on foundations of a still earlier house, probably one built by Ninian Beall when he first patented the land and gave in the name in 1706. "Mackall Place" - On R street between 28th and 29th in Georgetown. Soon after 1717, George Beall came to live on his inheritance called the Rock of Dumbarton, and this small structure may have been his first home here. It consists of a large room with a huge fireplace which was still standing when this description was written. Later, when the Rock of Dumbarton was sold to make part of the City of Georgetown, Beall built, about 1750, the large brick mansion at what is now 3033 N Street, northwest of the oldest brick houses now in the District. This is the house to which Jaqueline Kennedy and her children moved and in which they lived for a year when they left the White House after the death of President Kennedy. "Ninian Beall's Pleasure Map" - Land around the headwaters of the Anacostia had been patented in 1696 to Ninian Beall who sold it to Dr. John Gerrard. Charles Calvert, descendant of the Lords Baltimore, acquired it through marriage to Gerrard's daughter. Calvert's daughter Eugenia sold 60 acres in 1742 for the town of Garrison's Landing. "Dumbarton - Washington House" 1647 30th Street at R Street. Built by Thomas Beall shortly after he inherited the Rock of Dumbarton from his father George Sr. in 1784. At that time he gave his elder brother, George Jr., the Beall mansion on N Street. The new home "Dumbarton" went to Thomas' daughter Elizabeth Ridley as a wedding present when she married George Corbin Washington, great nephew of the President. It was inherited by their son, Lewis Washington, who sold it to Elisha Riggs, co-founder with W. W. Corccoran of Riggs National Bank. "Inspection House for Tobacco" - Ninian Beall received the patent for the Rock of Dumbarton in 1703. Some years later, George Gordon acquired some of the land and also acquired "Knave's Disappointment' from James Smith. He renamed the land "Rock Creek Plantation." "Rosedale," 3501 Newark, and "Woodley," 3000 Cathedral Ave. - Both estates were part of a much larger tract, 1300 or 1400 acres west of Rock Creek and extending beyond the Cathedral grounds, which George Beall acquired in 1720 and described as an addition to the Rock of Dumbarton grant to his father. "Dumbarton House" Q street in Georgetown - This red brick mansion was built by the Bealls and occupied by them until 1796. "Dumbarton" later belonged to Joseph Nourse, first Register of Treasury, and to Charles Carroll. It is now the headquarters for the National Society of the colonial Dames of America. Dolly Madison fled here when the British burned the White House in 1814. A bronze plaque has been installed on a large oval rock, symbolic of the "Rock of Dumbarton," in front of St. John's Episcopal church in Georgetown, 3240 O Street N.W., with the following inscription: "Colonel Ninian Beall, born Scotland, 1625, died Maryland 1717, patentee of the Rock of Dumbarton; Member of the House of Burgesses; Commander in Chief of the Provincial Forces of Maryland. In grateful recognition of his services "upon all Incursions and Disturbances of Neighboring Indians" the Maryland Assembly of 1699 passed an "Act of Gratitude." This memorial erected by the Society of Colonial Wars in the District of Columbia, 1910. Colonel Ninian Beall died at the age of 92 at Fife's Largo, named for the place of his birth in Scotland. This was the home mentioned in his will (1717) and was in Prince Georges County near Upper Marlboro. It is believed that he is buried at Bacon Hall, another of his homes in Prince Georges County.