From: Miss Virginia A. Rugg of Newport, Kentucky
Granddaughter of Samuel Beaumont:

(Note: probaby written circa 1880)

...Shortly after the close of the war of 1776, four of the families left their New England home, in the town of Saybrook, Connecticut, and emigrated to what was then the township of Marietta, and there took up government land, I believe it is called a section. They were all revolutionary soldiers under General Washington

The first was Samuel Beaumont, my Mother's (note: probaby Amelia Beaumont Rugg) father and family, his son in law, William Zebulon Griffin and family(note: wife was Virginia Frances Beaumont Griffin)... As I understand this section embraced the township of Marietta, in Vienna County.... It was six miles from Parkersburg and four miles from Blannahasset Island..

When little Amelia was still a very young child a party came on from the east and entered a prior claim to the aforesaid land, and offered to pay for the improvements put upon it...but Samuel Beaumont and son in law accepted and removed with their families to Kanawha, W.Va., where they opened the first salt works that were ever opened in the Kanawha Valley...

...Samuel Beaumont's grounds were noted for their thrift and beauty of cultivation.

As I pen these lines, a vision of the long, long ago, comes floating before me. It was night, the boat had landed and the captain bearing a sleeping child, my baby brother and I, a little girl clinging to the hand of her Mother (note: probably the same, Amelia Beaumont Rugg), and one of the boat crew, bearing a lantern, went up the cedar lined avenue to the old home, now occupied by the eldest daughter of Samuel Beaumont, Mrs. Griffin(note: Virginia Frances Beaumont Griffin), now a widow. I thought even as a child, how strange it was that after the silent embrace of the two sisters, they both wept. They had not met in years. So many loved ones had passed away in that time. Then again, there comes other memories of that visit. Going up the beautiful mountain, facing the old home following the old man, my Mother's only brother (note: probably John Towner Beaumont), gathering the wintergreen berries, and wandering about the beautiful woods and grounds. Samuel Beaumont in after years regretted very much that he had ever accepted the proposition that was made to him to leave Ohio, for he was anti-slavery man, and while he employed a number of colored people on his premises, he would not, he said "traffic in human blood."

The old home was, during the Civil War, occupied by both the Confederate and the Federal troops at different times as Headquarters and was finally burned as a signal light, but the guilty party was never known. The beautiful cedar trees lines the avenue that lead to the river and still live in my memory of the sweet long ago.

The grounds where the old home stood is now occupied by the Freight depot.

Samuel Beaumont always dressed in the colonial fashion wearing the silver buckels on his shoes, and his hair in a que down his back. He passed away at the age of eighty in 1837. He, together with his wife Thankful Towner Beaumont, sleep in the old cemetary on the banks of the Kanawha.. Revolutionary War Records can be obtained from the submitter of this biographical information.