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Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Beatty, Erkuries

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Edition of 1900.

BEATTY, or BEATTIE, Erkuries, soldier, b. 9 Oct., 1759; d. in Princeton, N.J., 23 Feb., 1823. He was the son of Charles Beatty, chaplain, to whom he owed his singular name, compounded from the Greek (Ε and κυρίος “from the Lord”). He was apprenticed to a resident of Elizabethtown, N.J., when the war for independence began, and enlisted at once. He served at the battle of Long Island under Lord Stirling, was acting sergeant at White Plains, and ensign of the 4th regiment of Pennsylvania line, 3 Jan., 1777. He was promoted 1st lieutenant 2 May, and was in battles of Brandywine, Germantown (where he was wounded), Monmouth, and Newtown, besides participating in the hardships of Valley Forge and the campaigns of Van Schaick and Sullivan. When the Pennsylvania line was reorganized after the mutiny of 1781, he went south with Gen. Wayne, joined Lafayette on the Rappahannock, fought at Jamestown (6 July, 1781), and was present at Yorktown and the surrender of Cornwalis. Until 3 Nov., 1783, he was on duty guarding prisoners at Lancaster, Pa., and was then mustered out of the service. After serving for a time as clerk in the war department, he was appointed 1st lieutenant in the regular army, 24 July, 1784. From 1786 until 1788 he was acting paymaster of the western army, and during the two years succeeding was in command at Fort St. Vincent (now Vincennes, Ind.). He was a major under Gen. St. Clair, but escaped the defeat of that officer 4 Nov., 1791, having been sent to Fort Jefferson with a detachment. He resigned from the army during Wayne's western campaign in 1793, and went to Princeton, N.J. His journal as paymaster of the western army was published in the “Magazine of American History,” vol. i., from the original manuscript in the possession of the New York Historical Society. Maj. Beatty had three brothers, all of whom were officers in the revolutionary army. - His son Charles Clinton Beatty, D.D., was the founder of the Steubenville, Ohio, female seminary, and president of the board of trustees of the Western Theological Seminary of Allegheny, Pa.