My Genealogy Hound

Rev. John E. Beck, president of the Beck, Bransford & Ekdahl Furniture Company, is a native of Huntingdon County, Penn., born August 22, 1840, son of John and Susan (Krotzer) Beck, and of German descent. His parents were natives of the Keystone State, and there his mother died. His father now resides in New York. Our subject is the third of their ten children and in early life attended the common schools and later received an academic education. At the early age of fourteen years he went to Wisconsin, where he remained one year, and then removed to Hickman County, Ky. He taught school for some time, and in 1861 enlisted in the Seventh Kentucky Infantry, and remained in the service about two years. In 1862 he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and became a member of the Memphis Methodist Episcopal Conference in 1866, and from that date until 1882 was a regular minister in Kentucky and Tennessee, and was very popular. In 1868 he came to Union City and here now resides. He engaged in the lumber business in 1872, and is now president of one of the most extensive establishments of the kind in Tennessee. Julia Fowlkes became his wife in 1863. They have four children: Nettie, Herbert A., John W. and Eugene. Mrs. Beck died in 1876 and a year later Rev. Beck married Rosa Roberts, of Union City, who departed this life in 1879. In 1880 Nannie Embry, of Alabama, became his third wife. She was born in 1856, and is the mother of three children: Embry K., Clarence and Wilma. Rev. Beck is a Democrat and belongs to the Masonic, I. O. O. F., and K. of P. fraternities.