Gen 1: Mary Jane Beal

What are the origins of Johann Nicholas Biehl?

I hope you will follow along with me as we start on this research project. I expect it will be informative and provide examples of the challenges in researching early German immigrants; in this case one that probably arrived in the 1700s and initially settled in Pennsylvania before he and his descendants migrated to Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas. You can follow the blog posts on this website, which will be filed under the Johann Nicholas Biehl tag. Let’s get started!

Surname Variants

As we work back through the generations to the first immigrant ancestor, we are going to encounter many surname variations for Biehl. Over time, it appears that the surname became regularly rendered as Beal or Beall. I have recorded 14 variants so far: Bale, Beal, Beale, Bealle, Beeil, Beel, Beil, Bell, Beyl, Biehl, Biel, Bihl, Bill, and Peel. In German, the letter B and the letter P can sound similar, which is why the surname Peel is included. Recording all the surname variants will ensure I thoroughly look in indexes and don’t miss an entry. Interestingly, FamilySearch indicates that the surname is likely English or French. It does not mention German.

Mary Jane Beal

Mary Jane Beal is the first generation we are going to start with and trace back with the intent of documenting the immigrant ancestor and determining their origins in Germany. Based on current information, the ancestral line should be Mary Jane Beal > Peter Beal > Johannes Beal > Johann Nicholas Biehl. The goal is to thoroughly research and confirm each generation as we go along. I have researched intermittently on these generations in the past, but have not properly documented the individuals, so it is time to start over and do it right.

First Steps

The first steps when starting any research project is to gather the starting point information. No family documents have come down through my family. We will be determining her birth, marriage, death, and parentage information. Of course, since she is a female who lived in the 1800s, we will also have to thoroughly research her husband, James Henry, as well. I visited the cemetery where Mary Jane (Beal) Henry was buried in Arkansas in 2024. The tombstone was not in great shape, but it was still legible.[1]

Source Survey

To get some clues, FamilySearch’s Family Tree provides some starting information and references an 1849 marriage, census records, and cemetery records (Find a Grave).[2] The census is a good place to start. Val D. Greenwood notes that “no research on an American family history problem that is centered in any time period since the beginning of the census is complete until all pertinent census schedules have been consulted.”[3]

Next up: Documenting our background and starting information beginning with the tombstone and census records.

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[1] Jane M. Henry tombstone, Friendship Cemetery, Springdale, Arkansas; photographed by Debra A. Hoffman on 26 August 2024.

[2] “Mary Jane Beal,” ID no. LZKB-LVL, Family tree, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/sources/LZKB-6VL : accessed 20 October 2025).

[3] Val D. Greenwood, The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, 4^th ed. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2017), 315.