Beadle Family
The first of the name Beadle in this country of whom there is any definite information was Samuel Beadle, who died in Salem, Mass., in 1663 or 1664. Four generations after Samuel, drifting away from Salem, certain members of the family settled in Connecticut. In 1796 Benjamin Beadle, who was born in Wethersfield, Hartford County, Conn., December 18, 1741, moved his wife and children from Colchester, Conn. and settled in the state of New York. Mr. Beadle first located on what was known as Stewart's Patent, now Pierstown, between the head of Otsego Lake and Richfield Springs. A few years later he moved to Sherburne, Chenango County, and died there June 24, 1810.
Benjamin Beadle was married three times and was the father of twenty-three children. It was of his second wife that Samuel Beadle was born March 18, 1788, in Colchester, New London County, Conn. Having grown up in Otsego County, Flavel was married, in Pierstown to Miss Polly Tuller. Polly was born in Stock-bridge, Mass., October 11, 1787 and moved to Otsego County a few years before her marriage to Flavel. In 1833 Flavel and his family moved to Portland, New York and later that year to Schoolcraft, Kalamazoo County, Michigan. After only eighteen months they all returned to Portland. Residing there until the fall of 1838, Mr. Beadle and his wife returned to Otsego County, and lived there the rest of their lives, the former dying August 1, 1854, and the latter at the home of her daughter in Delaware County, April 12, 1864, aged seventy-seven.
Erastus Flavel Beadle, son of Flavel and Polly, was born at Pierstown, New York, September 11, 1821. Erastus served an apprenticeship. to a miller and in 1841 took a job in a printshop. He moved to Buffalo with his brother Irwin about 1850 and in 1852 they opened a printing business that soon undertook publishing as well, beginning the magazine "Youth's Casket" in 1852 and "Home, A Fireside Monthly" (later "Beadle's Home Monthly") in 1856. In 1856 Robert Adams joined the company, which became Beadle and Adams, and two years later the entire operation was moved to New York City. Success with the experimental issue of a ten-cent paperbound song-book led to dime joke books, dime etiquette books, and in 1860 to the first dime novel, which was a runaway best seller. Beadle immediately arranged for more such books and the dime novel series was launched. Several other firms entered the field to flood the country with yet more millions of cheap books, but Beadle and Adams retained the lead and the distinction of having invented the most popular and characteristic literary form of the nineteenth century. Beadle himself retired a millionaire in 1889 to his Cooperstown estate and died there on December 18, 1894