Beveridge, John

John Beveridge Sr. was probably younger than ten years old when he first set foot on Virginia soil after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, leaving the place of his birth behind. Beveridge was born on 2 February 1748 in Fife, Scotland, and likely traveled to America with his father in 1752.  

Beveridge had four sons and two daughters with his wife Susannah Nobel, who died in 1780, perhaps as a result of complications due to childbirth. The couple’s youngest son, Nobel, was born the same year that Susannah died.  

While it is unknown where the family lived during the Revolutionary War, Beveridge mustered with Michael Reader’s company from Dunmore County (originally named for Virginia’s last royal governor but renamed Shenandoah County in 1778). During the 1780s and early 1790s, it appears that Beveridge worked in some capacity for James Mercer, a prominent resident of Spotsylvania County who had been one of Virginia’s delegates to the Continental Congress. Between 1798 and 1820, Beveridge was an employee and perhaps overseer on at least two plantations, including a plantation owned by Andrew Monroe—the younger brother of future president James Monroe.  

In 1804, Beveridge married Mary Beavers of Loudoun County. Together, they had two children. Beveridge retired to a fifty-acre plot of land in Leesburg that he purchased from Loudoun County attorney John P. Duval around 1820. In his 1821 will, Beveridge left his entire estate, including four enslaved people, to his wife, writing that the children from his first marriage “have received of me either by deed or gift or possession all that they shall ever have of my estate, either real or personal.” However, he did leave one enslaved person named Yorick to his son Nobel. 

By Anne Champlin