Daughter of John Thomas and Jemima Jane Beard. She was united in marriage 23 December 1834 to George Wesley Stults
their children:
Mary L Stults
Margarett Ann Stults
Jemima Jane Stults
John W. Stults
Charles Matthew Stults
George Alfred Stults
Benjamin Taylor Stults
Amanda W. Stults
Margaret R. Beard was born in Adair County, Kentucky. She married George Wesley Stults on 23 December 1834 in Adair County. He was born on 25 August 1813 in Lincoln County, Kentucky, the son of William and Rhoda Coulter Stults, and he was mostly raised in Adair County. George had two brothers, William Burke and Benjamin B. Stults, who would also marry into the Beard line. We have so far ascertained that George and Margaret had six children together but then Margaret died on 24 February 1847 in Adair County. As she had a child, Amanda, born ten days before, it is very possible that Margaret died as a complication of childbirth. She is buried at the Beard Family Cemetery in Portland, Adair County. The baby, Amanda, died before the year was out. After Margaret's death, George Stults took the four sons they had and moved to Macoupin County, Illinois, where his uncle Richard Stults was living. It appears that the only living daughter, Jemima, was left in Adair County in the care of her Beard relatives. Macoupin County was a wilderness at this time, and the family set about settling it. On 2 July 1848, George married again to Hopestill Jane "Hoppy" Stults, who was the daughter of his uncle and neighbor Richard Stults. In 1850, twelve year old Jemima lived in the home of her grandparents, John and Jemima Beard, in Adair County. In that same census, George Stults was listed in Macoupin County, Illinois with new wife, Hoppy Stults, and his four sons by Margaret and one baby son he had with Hoppy. We are still searching for the family on both the 1860 and 1870 census. An old history of Jasper County, Missouri states that George and his family lived in Macoupin County for about nine years and then lived in Champaign County, Illinois for the same length of time, and moved to Jasper County, Missouri in May 1866. They settled on a farm just west of Oronogo. On the 1880 census they were living at Mineral, Jasper County, Missouri. Again from The History of Jasper County, Missouri, published in 1883: "Our subject has a farm of eighty acres about one mile west of Oronogo, where he at one time controlled a half section. Twenty five acres sown to wheat in 1882 produced an average of twenty-four bushels, and twelve acres of corn had, the past season, a good crop. There is one of the finest orchards of the county on the farm of seven acres, which produced at least 500 bushes of apples in 1882. In his younger and palmy days, Mr. Stults was the village blacksmith 'with strong and sinewy hands,' who made both welkin and the anvil ring for the bread of honest toil and sweat, for the yeomen who then came from Joplin, Carthage, and Spring River. Times and custom in those days were strangely new. The subject of this sketch recalls being compelled to purchase corn and pay $15 per bushel in Dade County. George Raider, the first postmaster of Carthage, used to take a meal bag and get the mail from Ft. Scott weekly. Wild game was plenty and Mr. Stults used to go out and bring down a deer often in half an hour. Few men, indeed, live to raise such an unusually large family to usefulness and manhood. Being deprived of many school advantages, Mr. Stults loses no opportunity to secure the benefits of an education for his children, in which he is an enthusiast, being himself a great reader and a lover of public enterprise." George Wesley Stults died on 23 August 1889 in Oronogo, Jasper County, Missouri and he is buried at an old cemetery near there.