Wabash-Knox County IL Archives Biographies.....Beauchamp, William 1772 - 1824
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Deb Haines http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00003.html#0000719 August 9, 2008, 9:20 am

Author: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary

BEAUCHAMP, William, circuit preacher, was born in Kent county, Del., April 26, 
1772, son of a Methodist preacher who removed to Virginia and settled on the 
Monongahela river in 1788. The son acquired a good education, and in 1790 
taught school in Monongahela. The following year he began to preach, and in 
1793 left his fathers house and travelled the circuit with the presiding 
elder. In 1794 he joined the itinerary, and travelled two years on the 
Alleghany circuit, being ordained as deacon in 1796. He was afterwards in 
Pittsburg, New York, Boston, Provincetown, Mass., and in Nantucket. In 1807 he 
returned to Virginia and remained there until 1815, when he removed to 
Chillicothe, Ohio, to become editor of the Western Christian Monitor, at that 
time the only existing Methodist periodical. In 1817 he removed to Illinois, 
where he founded a settlement, and built up the town of Mt. Carmel, and, says 
a biographer, Showed himself the truly great man in all the details of this 
new business, planning public measures and economical arrangements, devising 
mechanical improvements, for which he had rare genius, directing the 
instruction of the youth and simplifying its modes, ministering as pastor to 
the congregation, and meanwhile advancing in his own personal studies and 
improvement. In 1822 he was at St. Louis, in the itinerant ministry, and in 
1823 was made presiding elder of the Indiana district, which included eleven 
large circuits. As a preacher he was gifted with overpowering eloquence, 
though his style was quite free from any element of the sensational, and he 
was designated the Demosthenes of the West. He was the author of Essays on the 
Truth of Christian Religion (1811). He died Oct. 7, 1824.

Additional Comments:
Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans.
Vol. I-X. Rossiter Johnson, editor. Boston MA: The Biographical Society. 1904.

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