The holidays offer a magical reminder of the past. We relive days spent with family at sites with significance to our personal stories. We experience once again the laughter that unites us and the love that never dies. The slower pace of the holidays allows us to glance back and remember — and remembering is a gift.

This week we recall one of our earliest families: the Beans.

The Beans — William and Lydia — are recognized as the first permanent settlers in the “across the mountain” region that became known as Tennessee. Their son, Russell, is celebrated as the first child born in Tennessee. While we do not know the fate of the first white child born in the English colonies, Virginia Dare at Roanoke, we do know the generations of the Beans that have led and served Tennessee and this region and continue to serve today.

William Bean, the first settler, was born in 1721 in Northumberland County, Va., moved to Augusta County and married Lydia Russell, often described as a “beautiful and fiercely strong pioneer.” Bean and Daniel Boone became friends and hunting partners. The beauty of the wilderness drew Bean to leave Virginia and move his family to the Watuaga Settlement in 1769. His brothers-in-law, John and George Russell, joined him on the journey, undeterred by the threat of Cherokee attacks.

Lydia Russell Bean, a patriot of the American Revolution, was captured in 1776 by native peoples during a siege at the Watauga Settlement, while her husband and others were away on a hunting expedition. Mrs. Bean, refusing to provide information about the fort’s security, the number of families and the arms and munitions stored, was tied to a stake in the center of the encampment in preparation for burning. From the gathered crowd emerged Nancy Ward, who put out the flames and took the defiant Lydia Bean under her protection. In return, Bean shared many domestic traditions of the British Isles, which then were adapted to the Cherokee lifestyle.

The Bean children — William Jr., Robert, George, Jesse, John, Edmund, Jane and Sarah — were born before the move to Watuaga,

where most would marry into other pioneer families, notably Bowen, Ellis, Shaw, Miller and Tappen. By the 1830s and 1840s, some of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of William and Lydia Bean would find their way to Hamilton and Marion counties.

William Hamilton Bean, born in 1833, married Martha Stout, daughter of Samuel and Mary Stout, and his family settled in the Daisy community. Before the U.S. Civil War, he served as a constable. Once the war erupted, he and his brother, James M. Bean, Jr., joined the Federal

Army as members of the Mounted Infantry. William rose to leadership as a major, while the younger Bean served as a corporal.

By 1870, William had been designated as the Hamilton County tax collector, and two years later he was elected as sheriff in a controversial election. After a Tennessee Supreme Court decision, he was disallowed service. William remained actively involved in community affairs although Reconstruction politics created conflict at the local level between the two political parties. In 1909, Bean had a “paralytic stroke from which he had never recovered” and, after a ninemonth confinement to his bed, died and was buried in the Poe Cemetery.

The Beans’ daughter, Sarah Louise, married John Hill Poe, grandson of pioneer settler Hasten Poe of Poe’s Tavern fame, while their son, James A. Bean, became a prosperous businessman and political leader. James served as postmaster from 1901 to 1906 and later became the chairman of the Fourth District’s Republican Party executive committee and a well-known philanthropist. Their home on Highland Avenue was a prominent landmark until the mid-20th century.

William Hamilton Bean’s brother, James M. Bean Jr., also planted roots in Hamilton County, marrying Amanda Gann in 1870 and fathering six children before succumbing to an infection of a leg wound suffered during his military service. He is buried at the McGill Cemetery, while his wife and her second husband, John Gann, are buried in the Soddy Presbyterian Cemetery.

The Crawford Bean family of Hamilton County and their sons, Russell, Martin, Crawford and David, are descendants of James Madison Bean, born in Virginia in 1802, and his wife, Hollie Virginia Swearingen, relatives of William and Lydia Bean. Judge Russell Bean carries his ancestor’s name and, though recently retired, continues to be active in local civic endeavors.

Linda Moss Mines, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County historian, is vice chairman of the Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center and honorary regent, Chief John Ross Chapter, NSDAR. Go to Chattahistoricalassoc.org for more local history.