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The Beasley or Beazley family has been in Virginia since at least 1735.
They were prominent slave and plantation owners for several generations
in Spotsylvania County.
In 1851, Thomas Beasley of Virginia married Ann Elizabeth Claggett,
the daughter of Samuel Claggett III and Lucy Sanford, and a granddaughter
of the Revolutionary War surgeon Dr. Samuel Claggett Jr. The Daughters
of the American Revolution report that in Dr. Claggett served in the
Revolutionary
War "est 1777 Charles Co. MD, while student of medicine at Port
Tobacco, MD, as surgeon's mate; settled in VA after RW [Revolutionary
War]; dd
[died] 4th Monday of March 1821."
Thomas Beasley and Ann Claggett's fourth child, Luther Sanford Beasley,
was born six miles from Brandy Station
in Culpeper, Virginia. According to the obituary of Ann Elizabeth Claggett,
Thomas Beasley's wife, "Her husband died in Virginia in October 1897."
She died one year later on Jan 24, 1898 in Lexington, Illinois. Why or
how they were separated is unknown.
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| The Beasley family circa 1914.
Front row, L-R: Luther, Kitty, Ruth; back row, L-R: Frances, Guy,
Johnson, Beulah, Felix, and Ruth. |
Luther Sanford Beasley married his first cousin, Ruth Matella Claggett.
They were both born in Virginia and grandchildren of Samuel Claggett III.
Their blood relationship is blurred by the fact that Samuel Claggett
III was first married to Lucy Sanford. When she died, he married her
sister Julia. Samuel and Lucy had a son James. James' daughter Ruth
Matella was born in Warrenton, Virginia, on October 1, 1856. Samuel
and Julia had a daughter Ann Elizabeth. Ann's son Luther Sanford was
born in Culpeper on March 15, 1859.
Ruth Matella Claggett and Luther
Sanford Beasley were married on August 20, 1882 in Lexington, Illinois.
They had seven children. Their youngest, a son named Johnson Tucker, married
Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bremser
of Norwalk, Ohio. They had five children, only two of whom lived to adulthood.
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| 1501 Park Avenue, Kansas City. The home where
Annabeth Beasley was born. |
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| Annabeth holding the author (Brian) with Buddy at 28 Ralston Drive
in Monterey. |
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| Annabeth Beasley Phelps in 1975, in the living
room on Ralston Drive, with her dog Pepper. |
In 1914, Robert Johnson Tucker Beasley was born and died after only four
days. The parents briefly separate over the grief and stress of losing
their son. In 1917, twin girls are born. The first baby, Jane, is the
hearty one. The second, Ruth, is frail, with only a tenuous hold on life.
She will lose this hold at 2 1/2 years of age to the flu during the 1919
worldwide flu epidemic.
In 1920, another girl, Betty, is born. She is a blue baby and is diagnosed
as having an untreatable heart anomaly, a defective heart valve. The doctors
say she will not live long. Elizabeth is pregnant with their fifth child
in December 1925 when Betty dies. Annabeth is born on July 16, 1926.
Elizabeth struggles to manage the mortgage payments each month, embarrassed
when grocery marketing and the bill goes unpaid at times.
When the Depression hits, Johnson's good job of at least nine years with
the American Seating Company of Chicago ("Exclusive Manufacturers of Furnishings
for Theatres, Churches, Schools and all Public Buildings") went from a
salaried, expense-account position to commissions only. Johnson drifted
deeper into debt. In 1930, Elizabeth and Johnson separated — again
— after he forced her to agree to a second loan on the mortgage.
Foreclosure loomed ahead, a dreaded specter. Johnson lost his job and
he moved to Chicago, where he managed a hotel for a time. Elizabeth and
Johnson were separated the rest of their lives. While family members spoke
of them as divorced, Johnson's 1950 obituary describes him as being survived
by his wife.
In 1930 Elizabeth rented the house in Kansas City and moved to Norwalk,
Ohio, to live with Gramma and Grampa Bremser. Elizabeth worked as a housekeeper
for her Aunt Minnie. When Annabeth is in first grade, the family moved
across Norwalk to live with their cousins, the Butlers. (See A
Hero in Our Midst—Mac Butler's "Battlin' Blue Bastards"
for more about the family.)
In 1933, they moved again to Des Moines, Iowa and in with the McDonalds.
Many, frequent moves followed. In 1934, during the depths of the Depression,
Annabeth's mother Elizabeth worked in a cafeteria. She is unable to care
for Annabeth, and Annabeth spent the summer in a children's home. Jane,
with the help of Gramma Bina Klein Bremser, was a freshman at Drake University,
where she worked in exchange for room and board. Elizabeth and Jane got
a room in a neighbor's, the Penniwells. Elizabeth worked in a sorority
home.
In 1935, they moved back to Norwalk, Ohio and into another family's home,
the Lexa's. In 1936, they spent the summer in Lexington, Illinois at Ray
and Ruth (Beasley) Rickett's home. Annabeth had several cousins her age
living there and no doubt made some friendships. However, when fall rolled
around, they moved back to Des Moines where Annabeth started in the fifth
grade. In the spring of 1936, Annabeth was in school in Norwalk and living
with her big sister Jane in the Robin's home. Their mother Elizabeth worked
in the Wentz' Childrens' Home in Norwalk as the Director of Girls and
a counselor.
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| Myron Ricketts visits his sister Carol at home
during 1942 in Lexington, Illinois, before shipping out for Europe.
He survived the war and numerous campaigns only to die in a drowning
accident afterwards. |
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| Seventeen year old Annabeth Beasley in 1942 on
the porch of 1501 Park Avenue. |
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| Johnson Beasley in 1948 or 49, shortly
before his death. |
When 1937 arrived, Annabeth continued to attend school in Norwalk. Jane
and 11-year-old Annabeth lived together. Finally, in 1938 as the Depression
started to end, Aunt Minnie and Uncle Curt made it possible for Elizabeth
and Annabeth to move back to the home in Kansas City by helping pay off
the two mortgages on the house at 1501 Park Avenue. (Around that same
time Grampa Henry Bremser paid for a bell for the Lutheran
Church bell tower.) Annabeth was back attending seventh grade in Kansas
City. Eleven-year-old Annabeth, after 11 moves in seven years, finally
got a room of her own.
From 1938-1947, living in the family home in Kansas City, Annabeth for
the first time since the stock market crashed, experienced some stability
in her life.
During 1942 Annabeth's cousin, 18 year old Myron Ricketts came to visit,
splendid and proud in his Army uniform. Myron survived the war only to
lose his life in a drowning
accident on the Wolfgang See near Salzburg, Austria after the armistice
was signed. Annabeth attended Southeast High School and graduated from
there in 1943.
Later that year, she began working part time as a secretary for a Kansas
City department store while finishing school. She also worked for a brief
period in the test kitchens for TWA airlines. During the Second World
War, Jane also works for a few months in a glider factory. She says she
could never forget the penetrating smell of the glue. In early 1944, Jane
married a serviceman, Art Budden Jr. Jane's intellectual, independent
attitude contrasts with Art's, and they separate and divorce within two
years.
In 1946, Annabeth meets a handsome Navy man, a student in civil engineering
in the "V-12" program at Kansas State University. Harold Bartle
Phelps Jr. and Annabeth are
wed in the Country Club Christian Church in Kansas City, Missouri on 21
Dec 1947. Her father did not attend the wedding.
They moved shortly afterwards to the Naval Training Center at Chincoteague,
Virginia. From there they move to Camp Pendleton, near Long Beach, California.
Bud was born there in 1951. The family then moved in 1952 to Great Lakes
Naval Training Center, 35 miles north of Chicago.
Annabeth's mother Elizabeth stayed in Ohio and moved to Sandusky, Ohio.
It was while Annabeth was in Great Lakes that her mother, Elizabeth Bremser
Beasley, entered a convalescent facility, where she died of a heart attack
in 1952.
Johnson Beasley remained in Chicago. In 1943, he worked for the Jonas
Photo Frame Manufacturing Co., largely estranged from his daughters. Jane
wrote, "In graduate school [about 1944] I came into Chicago to accompany
a friend to the hospital. On leaving the hospital I called my father to
tell him I was in town, was returning to Ann Arbor on a train later that
day, but would have some time to visit, if he were free. He became annoyed
that I had not told him in advance of my coming, saying that since I hadn't
bothered to tell him, he wouldn't bother to see me. I never talked to
him again or wrote him. I only attended a graveside burial service in
the little town where he had grown up. This was five or six years after
the call." In Chicago in 1950 he died, as his wife did, of a heart
attack at age 64.
In 1954 Hal was next stationed to Germany. Annabeth and Bud followed
in late 1954. Though a Navy man and far from the seas, he was attached
to a Seabees (civil engineering) unit at the 6th Army Headquarters. While
in Germany, their second son, Brian was born. The family left Germany
in February, 1956 and returned to California. Hal was assigned to the
Naval Air Station in Monterey, California. Annabeth and Hal were divorced
the next year.
Annabeth and Hal divorced in 1957. She worked for the federal government
much of the rest of her life as a stenographer and secretary at Ft. Ord,
California. She raised her two sons Buddy and Brian largely single-handed
and paid off the home mortgage.
Annabeth helped found a neighborhood association and Parents Without
Partners on the Monterey Peninsula. She retired in 1986 and continued
to occupy the family home on Ralston Drive. After much turbulence in her
early life, she held firmly to the home as a lasting symbol of security
for herself. She died peacefully in her sleep of an apparent heart attack
on May 17, 2001.
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