Joseph Will Beverly was a prominent businessman in Crowell, Texas. He took great interest in the early history of his native county of Collin and wrote numerous articles in McKinney papers on historic subjects, thus saving for posterity much information which would otherwise be lost.

I was born in Collin County, Texas on 2 May 1850. My parents, John Beverly and Isabel Russel, located in Collin County in 1846 before their marriage.

My father had six brothers in the Confederate Army. After the war, one of them got home leaving his right arm buried somewhere in Louisiana. The other bots were buried on various battlefields.

Joseph Beverly and Laura Ann Reid were married 4 July 1877. In October, 1885, her father, Mr. Reid, John Klepper and Joseph Beverly came to Harrold, Texas which was the terminus of the Fort Worth & Denver Railway. The town was wild and wide open. I can't tell the number of saloons and gambling houses. At a small building just wesdt of the depot was the school house. A Methodist Church met in the building at night with a small congregation holding a prayer meeting. The next morning, Mr. Reid took the train back to Plano. John and I hired a livery team and started to Margaret. We camped that night at Antelope Spring with eight or 10 teamsters, each with three wagons and 10 mules hauling coke and supplies to the Copper Mines on Canal Creek on the John C. White Survey. The Grand Belt Copper company was owned by George B. McLellan. In 1889, work was abandoned and the machinery was shipped elsewhere.

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BEVERLY, JOE W.
Joe W. Beverly has been identified with the growth and development of Crowell and of Foard County since the days of their infancy, and his lineage traces back to the pioneers of the Lone Star state. John Beverly, his father, and who is now deceased, was one of the most prominent of the early residents of Collin County, whither he went with his father in 1845. The latter was from Tennessee, but came to Texas from Illinois, and in early years he was prominent in Collin County affairs and was one of its first commissioners. The old Beverly home is a farm in the southern part of the county, near Plano, and there the mother of Joe W. Beverly. Isabel (Russell) Beverly, has lived continuously for sixty years and more, and there her son Joe was born in 1850.
Joe W. Beverly lived in that home until 1885, coming then to what is now Foard County, but which then formed a part of Hardeman County, and here he has ever since remained, one of its honored early pioneer settlers, one of its largest landowners and real estate operators and one of its most active citizens. In his own life on the northwestern Texas frontier, he has repeated the experiences of his father and his grandfather as pioneers in Collin County. Following his arrival here, Mr. Beverly began the development of a farm four miles northeast of the present town of Crowell. The few settlers of the community at that time were scattered over a wide expanse of country, it being for the most part occupied by the large cattle firms for range. The county of Foard was detached from Hardeman County in 1891 and organized as a separate division, and in the same year the town of Crowell was started and was made the county seat. Mr. Beverly located in the new town and erected its first livery barn and conducted it for seven years. In 1898 he embarked in the general real estate and abstract business, and he has since continued a successful representative of those vocations, and in later years he has been joined by his brother. Tom W. Beverly, who came from Collin County for that purpose, and he is the present mayor of Crowell. The firm of Beverly and Beverly transact a large business both in town property and farms, and, associated with C. C. Hemming of Colorado Springs, they purchased the well-known McDonald property near Rayland, about fifteen miles east of Crowell, in Foard County, which they divided into farms, improved and are selling to experienced farmers. The firm also has the Beverly and Martin addition to Crowell, consisting of one hundred and sixty acres adjoining on the northwest, a splendid residence subdivision. Joe W. Beverly owns and conducts some fine farming land of his own. Owing to his long residence and practical experience he is thoroughly familiar with the rich and varied agricultural resources of Foard County and is exceptionally well qualified to give advice and the benefit of his experience to prospective settlers. He is the secretary of the Crowell Independent School District, and a member of the Masonic order and of the Methodist church.
He married Laura Reed, a daughter of the late R. M. Reed, of a Georgia family, and one of the first merchants of Crowell. He died in 1893, and his widow is living with her daughter, Mrs. Beverly. The five children of Mr. and Mrs. Beverly are Joe Russell, Lee Allen and A. Y. Beverly, and Mrs. Lizzie Roberts and Mrs. Mattie Hutchinson. Joe R. Beverly, the eldest son, has charge of the abstract department for the firm of Beverly and Beverly. Source: A History of Central and Western Texas, Vol 1, Captain B. B. Paddock, The Lewis Publishing Company, New York, 1911