John E. Beadles was born about 1859 in Illinois, probably in Fulton County. [Ref. 1, 2, 3] His father Lewis E. Beadles was also an Illinois native who for some years managed the Summum Hotel and carried mail on an Astoria route. [Ref. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5] John's mother was Sarah HUTTON, a native of Parke County, Indiana [Ref. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7]. John's grandparents were natives of Kentucky and Tennessee. [Ref. 3]
John had two siblings. One died as an infant, and the other Reuben D., was born in 1867 and died a day after his fifth birthday. [Ref. 6, 7] Reuben and John's mother are buried at the Summum Cemetery in Woodland Township, Fulton County, Illinois. [Ref. 6] There is also a stone for John's father Lewis, but no death date has been inscribed on it.
John took a college course in Canton, Missouri and then became an instructor at the same school [Ref. 6]. Later he was a surveyor in central Missouri. [Ref. 6] In 1902, he published a 444 page historical novel called Robert Gordon: A Story of the Mexican Revolution The cover page of this book indicates that John had also written With Maceo in Cuba and Under a Southern Sun . [Ref. 8]
In the introduction to Robert Gordon , John states that the novel was based partially on a diary of his grandfather, who traveled over a large part of the territory described in the book. Which grandfather was it? John's paternal grandfather was Rice Beadles, Jr. (1806-1878). Rice was born in central Kentucky. Rice came to Fulton County, Illinois in the early 1830s and moved to Mercer County, Missouri between 1854 and 1857, where he died in 1878. John's maternal grandfather was apparently Thomas P. Hutton (1810-?) who was born in Kentucky and lived in Parke County, Indiana. The family apparently came to Fulton County, Illinois during the 1850s. It appears that Thomas continued his migration westward into Kansas. I suspect it was the grandfather Hutton who had the diary.
John's mother died in 1905 while John was living in Lewistown, Missouri [Ref. 7]. She had been ill and in 1893, John's parents left Summum, Illinois for a visit with John in Missouri and then on to her brother William HUTTON's home in Gardner, Kansas. In 1910, John and his wife Julia, his daughter Lutie, amd his father Lewis lived in Jackson County, Missouri. [Ref. 3]
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