Kentucky Beards...

I have spent a number of hours going through Pauline Beard Cooney's book "History of the Beard/ Bedichk/ Craven and Allied families and updating the wvbeard.com web site with the same. Although Pauline was from Texas and published this book in 1979, her family came from Kentucky, and was descended from Thomas Beard/Augusta County through his son William (Thomas -> William -> John C. -> Christopher Greenup -> etc.).

This family settled primarily in Clinton County, Kentucky in Albany. This town is located near Tennessee, and in fact the Beard family migrated first to Tennessee from Virginia, and then migrated to Kentucky.

Most of the information in Pauline's book seems to only exist there, it has not migrated to other sources such as online sources. So it has been useful to study this research in some detail.

A good place to start is:

http://www.wvbeard.com/bios/JohnBeard3.htm

To find some stories of the Beard family there.

I have also been contacted by a descendent of this family, Jennifer Louise Beard, who relates - After Thomas (note - Thomas Beard in Augusta Co., Virginia), it looks like my line went to Kentucky and from there it's a spread out. my dad says we have a lot in Arkansas. my father was born in Fayetteville, along with several other siblings. the military ties runs deep through the family and it did also in the close family ties. I myself was born in Fort Smith, Ark. but , have lived all over the U.S.

It has been a pleasure to go through and document this line of Beard descendants. All the best to my cousins....

Alan