Armstrong County PA Archives Biographies.....Beale, Major Joseph F. July 14, 1816 -
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Source: History of Armstrong County, Chicago: Waterman, Watkins and Co. 1883.
Author: Robert Walter Smith, Esq.

The family of which the subject of this sketch and of 
the accompanying portrait is a representative is one of the 
oldest in the State of Pennsylvania.  One of the progenitors 
of the family came over the ocean with William Penn, and, 
being a civil engineer by profession, was employed by the 
proprietor to lay out the city of Philadelphia.  The family 
afterward settled in the Tuscarora valley, east of the 
mountains, where they engaged in agriculture and 
manufacturing pursuits, and in the year 1800, Washington 
Beale, grandfather of the man whose name heads this 
biography, crossed the mountains and settled in what at that 
time was almost a wilderness near Natrona, or the site of 
the soda-works in the northern part of Allegheny county.  He 
accumulated a valuable property in this region, and the 
family flourished, as was natural from their enterprise and 
intelligence.  Washington Beale, Jr., father of Joseph G. 
Beale, settled near his paternal homestead and devoted his 
energies to farming and stock-raising.  To him the people of 
this section of country are indebted for a practical 
advantage and improvement.  Seeing the necessity of a better 
class of heavy draft horses in the manufacturing districts, 
he went to England in 1859 and purchased and imported into 
this country the first English draft horses that were ever 
brought into Western Pennsylvania.  From these horses 
descended the fine stock for which the immediate locality is 
now so much noted.  It may be mentioned in this connection 
that Joseph G. Beale has taken much interest in the same 
matter, and that in 1875 he imported a superb draft horse 
from Scotland, after a visit to that country with his 
father.

  Joseph G. Beale was born March 26, 1839, and reared upon 
his father's farm. His first enterprise undertaken for 
himself was drilling for oil in the Kanawha valley, and he 
was there when the war of the rebellion broke out. He won an 
enviable reputation as a soldier.  Immediately after the 
breaking out of the rebellion and under the first call for 
volunteers he enlisted for three months' service in the Iron 
City Guards of Pittsburgh.  Before his time was up, however, 
he re-enlisted for three years and was mustered into the 
United States service in Co. C of the 9th Pa. Reserves.  He 
was wounded during the sixth day of the seven days' fight in 
front of Richmond, upon June 30, 1862, and left on the 
battlefield of Charles City Cross-roads, where the rebels 
found him seven days later, he having lain there during that 
time without food, except a few crackers.  He was taken by 
them to Richmond and placed in confinement in the dreaded 
Libby prison, where he remained until the following fall, 
when he was released and sent to Fortress Monroe.  After the 
battle in which he was wounded he was promoted to captain.  
His wound, however, was of such nature that he was never fit 
for active service again.  After leaving the army, and while 
still suffering from his injury, he studied law in 
Pittsburgh under the Hon. Samuel Purviance and N. Nelson, 
Esq.   In 1865 he engaged in the coal business, which he 
sold out in 1868, and then bought the Leech property at 
Leechburgh. Resolved to make his purchase practically 
useful, he began a systematic series of endeavors to induce 
the building up of manufactures, and in 1872 succeeded, by 
giving land and extending other aid, in securing the 
establishment there of large ironworks for the manufacture 
of fine sheet iron and tin plate.  In this mill natural gas 
was first used as a fuel.  The gas came from a well put down 
by Mr. Beale, in 1869-70, which was the first one in this 
country, or in the world, so far as is known, from which gas 
was used for any kind of manufacturing.  In 1875 the company 
who built the works having failed, Maj. Beale, with some 
others, bought them and carried on the manufacture of iron 
very successfully until 1879.  In that year he sold out his 
interest and built the West Pennsylvania Steelworks, the 
first established in Armstrong county and the first 
steelworks in the world in which natural gas was utilized.  
Although Major Beale has a number of other heavy interests, 
among them the ownership of a large body of lands in the 
Shenandoah valley of Virginia, he is devoting almost his 
entire time and energy to the management of the steelworks, 
of which he is the sole owner.  In maintaining and improving 
this manufacturing establishment, of which he was the 
founder, he has added largely to the material prosperity of 
Leechburg, and it is safe to say that no citizen has done 
more than he in that direction.

  After the war he was appointed major on Gen. Harry White's 
staff and served in that capacity at the time of the 
Pittsburgh riots.

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