Beaman, Clara Hinnant Watson

NOVEMBER 14, 1937 - NOVEMBER 12, 1997

Clara Hinnant Watson was the daughter of James Gaston Watson, Sr. and Annie Sutton Watson. Clara was born and raised on a tobacco farm on Lipscomb Road in Wilson County. Clara’s father died when she was six years old, and Annie Watson, with the help of her children, tended the farm until Mrs. Watson’s death in 1977. The family continued to farm the land until it was sold in 2000 to the Wilson County Board of Education as a site for the new Charles H. Darden Middle School.

Clara graduated from Charles L. Coon High School and worked with the Department of Motor Vehicles in Raleigh. She met and married Philip L. Beaman, from Walstonburg, then a student at N. C. State University, and they were married on July 28, 1957. Together, they had two children, Kimberly and Randall, and four grandchildren, Ashley, Jacob, Rebekah and Micah.

Clara W. Beaman was a devoted wife and homemaker of forty years and a strong and faithful supporter of her husband, a career educator. She was especially devoted to her family and was known for her excellent cooking and an immaculately clean home.

She was very active in her church, serving for over twenty years as church librarian at St. James United Methodist Church in Tarboro, where she participated in Bible studies and prayer groups with friends with whom she had a close relationship for many years.

Although the family left the farm for other careers, they continued their devotion to the land, and the values and skills acquired growing up on the tobacco farm have remained an integral part of their character and their culture.

PRESENTED BY HER HUSBAND, PHILIP L. BEAMAN, AND HER CHILDREN, KIMBERLY B. FULKERSON AND RANDALL C. BEAMAN