Shilo Cemetery and the Beckman Family

By Marianne Jones

Members of the Beckham family known to be buried at Shilo include the following:

Rev. James Beckman whose gravestone reads: REV JAMES BECKHAM 1829-1891.

His wife Sarah Barrett Beckman whose stone reads: SARAH BECKHAM DIED FEB 25, 1907 AGED 70 YEARS.

Sarah shares a gravestone with her granddaughter Ophelia Barrett Wheeler.

Ophelia’s stone reads: OPHELIA WHEELER BORN OCT 12, 1872 DIED NOV 26, 1906.

Rev. William M. Beckham, a son of James and Sarah. His stone reads: REV. W.M. BECKHAM APR. 26, 1868 DEC. 20, 1914 - THY GOD HAS CLAIMED THEE FOR HIS OWN.

Ophelia’s husband Nathan Wheeler and father-in-law Nelson Wheeler are believed to be buried at Shilo. Death certificates place their burials at Shilo; and bois d’arc stakes in the cemetery near Ophelia’s gravestone quite likely mark their graves. Nathan Wheeler, a mulatto born into slavery around 1859, died July 23, 1911 and his father, Nelson Wheeler, died Feb 15, 1907 aged 80 years.

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Reverend James Beckham and Sarah Barrett Beckham, a mulatto, were born into slavery in Pike County, Georgia. Rev. James was born between 1826 and 1829, and he is quite likely the “Jim” named as a slave in the 1862 will of his owner and namesake, James Beckham. In the will he was given and bequeathed to James’ wife Martha Carson Beckham. James the slave owner died in 1863 at the age of 75, and probate papers name some of his many slaves who were parceled out amongst his grown children. Manumission, or the granting of freedom from slavery, even by will or deed, was illegal in Georgia.

Sarah Barrett Beckham was born between 1827-1830 and was a slave of the William Barrett family in the same district of Pike County as the Beckham family. James and Sarah married December 24, 1868 in Pike County. James would have been around 40 years old, and Sarah about 38. They both had children before their marriage -- before the Civil War, marriages of the enslaved were not legally recognized. Prior to her marriage to Rev. James, Sarah had at least one child – a son named Ben Barrett, born around 1855.

James had children before his 1868 marriage to Sarah, but it’s not clear if Sarah was their mother. Pulling from a variety of records, the Beckham children were: Lewis, Joseph V., Wilkerson, Fannie, William M., and James Bernaiah. Death certificates name Nancy Ishman as the mother of Fannie, William and James Bernaiah, but no other mention could be found of Nancy.

Land ownership was somewhat unusual among freedmen in Pike County in the early years after emancipation, but James appears on tax records as the owner of 215 acres in Pike County as early as 1871. Sometime in 1883, he sold the land and much of his personal property, and moved his family to Fannin County, Texas. The following February, in 1884, James bought 119 acres of land south and west of Shilo Cemetery for $800 in cash and a promissory note for $1200. Twenty acres that extended from the south border of Shilo down to today’s CR-3015 was carved out of the 119 acres and transferred to Sarah. This was where James and Sarah lived for the remainder of their lives.

Sarah’s son Ben Barrett stayed in Pike County, Georgia. He married Nicey Manghum in December 1869 and they had the following known children: Ophelia, Sallie, Cinthy and Benjamin. Ophelia appears to have either moved to Texas with her Beckham grandparents, or to have joined them soon after, for on March 1, 1887, at the age of about 16 years, she married Nathan Wheeler, a former slave 11 years her senior, in Fannin County. Nathan and Ophelia had only one daughter, Sarah Banner Wheeler, born in 1897.

Rev. James’ sons, Lewis (born around 1857) and William (M.) purchased a 99-acre tract that encompassed Shilo Cemetery in February of 1890 from John E. and Ellen M. Arterberry, and sold it in December 1896 to Ed D. Steiger.

Records pertaining to James Beckham as a Reverend could not be found. Perhaps he held services in the Shilo Cumberland Presbyterian Church building that was abandoned when that congregation moved to Dodd City in 1879. Reverend James Beckham died in 1891, and was buried in Shilo Cemetery. On the 1900 census, his widow Sarah was sharing her home with her granddaughter Ophelia, son-in-law Nathan and great-granddaughter Sarah B. Deed records filed September 1, 1904, reveal that Sarah gave the title of the 20-acre tract of land to Nathan and Ophelia for “love and affection I have for my granddaughter Ophelia Wheeler and her husband Nathan Wheeler.” Sadly, Ophelia died only two years later, on November 26. She was 35 years old. Three months later, on February 25, 1907, Sarah Beckham passed away and was buried beside Ophelia. They share the same gravestone. The house and the 20-acre homestead remained in the family’s possession until 1914, when Sarah Banner, who by then was married to Henry Seals, sold it to J.A. and Roxie Lanius.

Two of Rev. James’ sons were also ministers, and one of them is buried at Shilo. Both brothers were Baptist ministers – James Bernaiah Beckham (1870-1935) in Springfield, Illinois, and William M. Beckham in Nashville, Tennessee. Rev. William M. was prominently active in the National Baptist Convention and upon his death, his obituary appeared in at least two newspapers - the Bonham Daily Favorite and The Western Outlook – “A Journal Devoted to the Interests of the Negro on the Pacific Coast and the Betterment of his Condition.” According to the obituaries and the 1913 edition of Who’s Who Among Colored Baptists, Wm M. Beckham was ordained in 1891 in Abilene, Texas and served there as a pastor. Both Guadalupe College in Seguin, Texas, and Friendship College in South Carolina conferred a Doctor of Divinity to William. He was elected General Superintendent of the Baptist Sunday School Missions before moving to Nashville, Tennessee, to work as field secretary of the National Baptist Publishing Board for over twelve years until his untimely death. As part of his job, he traveled to Europe, once as a delegate to the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, Scotland in 1910. He died on December 20, 1914 in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri about six weeks after suffering a stroke. His brother, Rev. James Bernaiah, lived in Independence and arranged the transportation of William’s body to Texas for burial at Shilo Cemetery. He does not appear to have ever married. A photograph of William is below.

From the first burials in the 1840s, Shilo had been the final resting place for a community of white people – primarily family members of the nearby property owners and members of the Shilo Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The arrival of the Beckhams heralded the addition of black burials to the cemetery. For decades after the Beckham’s departure, until the final interment in the 1950s, Shilo continued to serve as a burial ground that knew no segregation.