Of all the family legends, this one is by far the most melodramatic. You all remember the Beckwith coat of arms that hung in the dining room since forever. That family was ancestral to our Father Edgett’s grandmother, Ada Mai Maloy. Yo was tickled to show me the old notebook with the story of “The Ghostly Romance of Old Beckwith Manor” written out in it, one of the major treasures of The Rescued papers. We never knew who wrote the notebook, or whence the story, but now I’ve managed to track down at least some of the background, and it’s marvelous.

I’m still working on finding out all the ins and outs of the legend, the thrue historical facts, the way the legend came to be written and how it came to us. Two very dedicated Beckwith researchers, Mr. Frank Locke of Baltimore and Mr. William Thayer of Owings, Maryland have very generously shared the wealth of material they've collected. Both of them are trying to track down ancestors related to the Beckwiths of the “Ghostly Romance…” We’re not yet ready to write this story, there’s more material to collate. But you’ll have fun comparing the facts (see next page), and reading the beginning of the family story here.

The notebook we have is a school copybook, its covers very carefully covered in brown Kraft paper. It always reminded me of covering our schoolbooks with grocery bag paper. Titled The genealogy of Natalie Day Lawton, from Nicholas Harvey—Lord of St. Joseph’s Manor, St. Mary’s County, 1642 / One of the first Colonial Lords of Maryland Member of the Maryland House of Burgesses 1641 and 1642, it is sadly unsigned.

Our relation to the Days and Lawtons is pretty far removed. Ready? According to The genealogy… Ada Mai Maloy’s aunt on her father’s side Sallie E. Maloy married a Reverend Hamilton J. Day. Their daughter Natalie Turpin Day married William Tilford Lawton. I assume it’s that Natalie Turpin Day Lawton for whom The genealogy… was begun, and that she was something like a great great great great aunt to us, and a cousin to Ada Mai. We have another piece or two of memoribilia of a Lawton in the Rescued Papers. How The genealogy… came to be left to us I don’t know. Natalie Lawton apparently had children; there certainly should have been closer relatives to whom to leave her book. It’s probable that whoever was making the Maloy scrapbooks (in which The Lost Ancestor was found) had borrowed The genealogy… to either use as a reference, or to be the keeper of the family lore. The first group of pages are written in the hand of the titler. But other hands added to those, and letters and newspaper clippings are pasted in. Much of the scrapbook text seems very similar to The genealogy… It seems Natalie just never got her book back.

“The Ghostly Romance…” in The genealogy… is followed by the name Paul Beckwith. The notebook we have wasn’t written by him, it’s more likely that it was at least partially a copy of material from his book The Beckwiths, published in 1891. “The Ghostly Romance…” has been reprinted several times. The St. Mary’s County Historical Society printed it as their Chronicles of St. Mary’s monthly bulletin for July 1966 and Mary Louise Donnelly picked up that text for her book St. Mary's County, Maryland: Colonial Period Tenants and Owners of Beaverdam Manor and Surrounding Manors published in 1998. No one tells us where they found their “The Ghostly Romance…” I hope to find that out, but in the meantime, we know that Paul Beckwith was, sadly, a less than fastidious writer. His book was an infuriating mixture of undocumented fact, wishful thinking and downright fantasy. It attempts, among other things, to link George Beckwith, hero of “The Ghostly Romance…” to Beckwiths in England, and thence to all kinds of ancient English lords and even kings. I’m making notes as well I can to show what in it is fact, what mistake, and what fantasy. It’s almost as much a romance as “The Ghostly Romance…”

You may read the full text of “The Ghostly Romance…” as copied in our old notebooks, in the following pages. You may also download a PDF document with its text in bits, followed by the actual facts of history as well as they can now be ascertained. The truth of the matter is almost as strange as the legend, and in many ways much more interesting. But for now, I thought everyone should see the picture of Nicholas Harvey’s house and read the end of the story!

Paul Beckwith says,

He built himself a home in a beautiful cove at the mouth of "Town Creek," on a sloping hill overlooking the Patuxent River and Chesapeake Bay. The bricks he used were bricks used as ballast, imported from the Mother Country. Here he married and lived, respected by all, for many years. He served the Province in the General Assembly, and at his home the courts met.

Did he build his baronial Manor House of “bricks used as ballast, imported from the Mother Country”? “The genealogy…” and the scrapbooks have copies, printed on embossed cards, of a sketch of a frame building identified in handwriting on the scrapbook pages as St. Joseph’s Manor. The cards themselves have no identification at all, but there was never supposed to be any mystery about them. Two of the scrapbooks have the following text written on the page after the picture card...

This picture was copied by me from one in the possession of Cousin Mattie Lawton. The exact location of this early home of the first member of our family is still a moot question. It was, however, undoubtedly not very far from Leonardtown and quite near to a little Post Office station called California. I went to Leonardtown, was directed from there to “Califonia,” and then, about half a mile further, reached the Patuxent River and an Inn called “The Seven Gables” which, according to Miss Field, is the most likely place for the original home site to have been.

Oh brother, more names to identify. But first, who would “me” have been? Probably great great great aunt Edna Hopkins Maloy Canter, Ada Mai’s sister. Two of the scrapbooks begin with a quotation attributed to Elizabeth Du Hamel, and then subscripted “by Edna Maloy Canter / December 22, 1939” The handwriting of her name matches that of the scrapbooks well enough. Perhaps they were Christmas presents in that year? I remember Father mentioning Aunt Ed, who would have been his great great aunt.

I can’t identify “Cousin Mattie Lawton.” Natalie Turpin Day Lawton had three children: William Clifton Lawton, Henrietta Thomas Lawton and Dudley Day Lawton. William Clifton Lawton married Mary Elizabeth Shedd. Either Henrietta or Mary Elizabeth could have been “Mattie,” or Mattie might have been someone else altogether. How Cousin Mattie Lawton came to have a picture purporting to be of the manor house of St. Joseph’s isn’t explained.

Miss Field would have been Miss Mary Margaret Beckwith Field. The genealogy… has pasted into it a typescript page describing her as “…descended from one of the oldest and most honored families of Maryland…” that of Nicholas Harvey. There are a few other references to Miss Field in the scrapbooks. Miss Field’s ancestors are breifly mentioned in the typescript, but none of the names are familiar. Eventually I’ll get around to adding her to our family tree. For now, her status as “…member of the Colonial Lords of Manors in America, Maryland Society of Colonial Dames of America and National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution” qualified her as an expert—in 1939 at least—helper in locating old places. More modern research has been successful.

As we can read in Mary Louise Donnelly’s St. Mary's County, Maryland, ”The predication of the preceeding tale has come true. In 1982 Joseph Alfred Dillow, a descendant, built a beautiful home resembling the original ‘Beckwith Manor.’” There is even now a Historic Place highway marker near the site. Mr. Peter Himmelheber and others have determined the likely boundaries of the plantation.

For now, that will have to do. We’re still busy getting the scoop on the historical figures from which Paul Beckwith wrote his “The Ghostly Romance…” and when we’re finished, you’ll read it here!