Henry Beeson and William Southerland (1775-1829) Wayne County KY
I believe this William is the son of Mordecai Southerland.This is based primarily on circumstantial evidence.When looking at the 1800 census of North Carolina, there are only two or three William Southerlands that match the age requirements from the 1810 and 1820 Wayne County, Kentucky censuses.Of these, the son of Mordecai lived, in 1800, very close to Henry Beeson.The same Henry Beeson who shows up in Wayne County, Kentucky in the 1810 census, living very close to William Southerland.To top it off, William named one of his sons Beeson, which has led many Southerland historians to postulate that William married a daughter of Henry Beeson and followed him to Wayne County.In any case there was a connection of some kind between these families as Henry's son Isaac N. Beeson stood surety for the marriage of William's eldest son Jonathan to Polly Worsham.
The one thing that has stood in the way of this is that Henry Beeson (Beason/Bason) was known to have married a woman named Leurana, about 1787, who outlived him, and who gave him eight known children including Isaac N. Beeson.All of his known daughters married men other than Southerlands.HOWEVER, it appears that Henry was born about 1744 and would have married Leurana at age 43.This is highly unusual if it was a first marriage, and she must have been much younger in order to have eight children over the next ~ 17 years.The 1800 census supports the notion that Henry was married before.There are older minors that cannot be accounted for by his marriage to Leurana in ~1787.