BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.  Town of Spencer.


     DAVID E. BEEM was born in Spencer, Owen Co., Ind., June 24,
1837, and is the sixth of twelve children of Levi and Sarah
(Johnson) Beem, the former a native of Kentucky, the latter of
Virginia.  The father came to Indiana Territory in 1810, and
settled in Owen County in 1817.  The grandparents both entered land
and made farms where the town of Spencer stands.  Here the parents
were married in February, 1825, and here they have resided every

since.  Having been born on a farm, our subject continued thereon,
and was accustomed to all sorts of farm labor until he was nineteen
years of age, when, having made suitable proficiency in the schools
of his native town and by study at home, he entered the University
at Bloomington, Ind., in 1856, and graduated from that institution
in 1860; also, having chosen the law for his profession, he was
admitted to the bar in the fall of 1860, and, forming a
copartnership with the Hon. Samuel H. Buskirk, of Bloomington, he
opened an office in Spencer.  The war of the rebellion, however,
broke out, and unsettled for a time his life purposes, as he felt
it his duty to respond to the call for troops.  He assisted in the
organization of the first company that was raised in Owen County.
On the 19th of April, 1861, five days after the fall of Fort
Sumter, he enlisted as First Sergeant in Company H, Fourteenth
Indiana Infantry, and on June 7, 1861, the company was mustered
into the service.  On the 10th of July, the regiment arrived at
Rich Mountain, Va., and composed the reserve force during the
battle of the next day at that place, joining in the pursuit of the
rebels after that successful engagement, as far as Cheat Mountain,
the regiment remaining there until October, 1861.  In August, 1861,
Sergt. Beem was promoted to First Lieutenant of his company.  After
having participated in numerous skirmishes, and having endured many
hardships through the winter of 1861-62, the regiment was
transferred to the Shenandoah Valley, and took an active part in
the battle of Winchester on March 23, 1862, where Lieut. Beem
received a severe wound in the chin.  On a Surgeon's certificate,
he received sixty days' leave of absence and returned home.  At the
expiration of his leave, he rejoined his command, and, in May,
1862, was promoted to Captain, which position he held until the
expiration of his term of service, in June, 1864.  After arduous
and faithful service in the Shenandoah Valley, Capt. Beem's command
was transferred in July, 1862, to the Army of the Potomac, and from
that date to the expiration of its term of service the Fourteenth
Indiana Infantry participated in all the great battles fought in
that army.  At Antietam, Capt. Beem's command lost in killed and
mortally wounded just one-sixth of its number; and at
Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, Cold
Harbor, and in many minor engagements, the Fourteenth Indiana
fairly earned its reputation as a fighting regiment.  In August,
1863, the regiment was sent to New York to aid in quelling the
great draft riots which occurred there at that time.  The number

of officers and men killed or who died from wounds received in
battle in Capt. Beem's company was nineteen.  Only two of this
number were killed when the Captain was not on duty with and in
command of the company.  On his return home from the service, Capt.
Beem resumed the practice of law at Spencer, in which he has
continued to the present time.  He has also been actively engaged
in business enterprises, with varying success, having organized the
banking firm of Beem, Peden & Co. in Spencer, in June, 1870, and
having been its managing member continuously to the present time.
In 1873, he embarked with others in the pork packing business at
Spencer, in which, on account of the failure of many of its
customers, he lost a large part of his earnings in that and other
business ventures.  Capt. Beem has held no public office, nor
sought any; is not a politician, in the usual sense of that term,
but takes an active interest in matters political.  Being a
Republican in principle, he has always voted and acted with that
party.  Although he has never been a candidate for a political
office, he has served his party as Chairman of its County Central
Committee during three political campaigns, and in 1880 was a
delegate from the Fifth Congressional District to the Chicago
National Convention, in which he voted for the nomination of James
A. Garfield for President.  He was a School Trustee for many years,
and aided in the organization of the Spencer Graded School.  Since
1860, he has been a devoted and consistent member of and an active
worker in the Methodist Episcopal Church.  On April 10, 1861, he
was married to Mahala Joslin, daughter of Dr. Amasa Joslin, one of
the pioneer physicians of Spencer.  Three children have been born
to them, one girl and two boys, all of whom survive.  Mrs. Beem is
a zealous laborer in the church and Sabbath school, and in all
benevolent and charitable movements.