Daniel Beatie was born April 30, 1823 at Argyle, New York to John and Hannah Beatie, descendants of pre-Revolutionary War Irish immigrants. He was apprenticed to a tanner and followed that business until he went to Illinois.

Genealogy shows that Aurora Priscilla Baldwin, born January 8, 1826 to Thomas and Polly Lanfear Baldwin, was a sixth generation American whose family first settled in Massachusetts and moved to Dorset, Vermont. It was there Daniel Beatie was working as a tanner when they married in 1848. In Dorset, four children were born to the couple:

• Thomas - b. May 16, 1850, d. Mt. Shasta, CA April 8, 1913
• Mary Jane - b. January 22, 1852, d. March 15, 1874
• Ann Elizabeth - b. August 21, 1854, d. August 9, 1859
• Annie - b. March 6, 1857, d. July 25, 1878

In Vermont, Daniel worked at tanning, did some cooperage and farmed. In 1861, Daniel left Vermont and became a farmer at Hampshire, Illinois. Three more children were born in Hampshire:

• John - b. December 19, 1861
• Charles - b. September 23, 1864, d. December 2, 1949
• Georgia Annie (adopted **) - b. January 30, 1875, d. October 26, 1965

** Born Georgia Gertrude Bell to James and Mary Bell, she lived with the Beaties from the age of two, when her mother died.

Both were members of the Methodist Church in Hampshire and Daniel was active in the Odd Fellows Lodge. During the Civil War, Daniel was a member of Company A, 153rd Illinois Volunteers.

Son John came out to California in 1877 and then persuaded his parents to follow him. At that time he was working in Lincoln, near Sacramento but his parents soon moved north to buy a ranch on Cow Creek, across the Sacramento River from Anderson. Part of this land was the former site of Fort Reading, which had been established there in 1852.

The pioneers who came to California after the transcontinental railroad was completed, could bring more of their early lives with them and the Beatie grand daughters were impressed with the braided hair flowers, wreaths and samplers which were Grandma Aurora's artwork. She had lived twenty-one years in California when she died, January 3, 1902 at the age of seventy-six. She was buried at Millville.

Daniel survived Aurora by five years. Apparently, he went back to visit relatives or friends in Illinois, because he died in Hampshire, Illinois December 21, 1907. He was buried in Illinois.

Source: Shasta Historical Society
May 14, 1994