The large number of prisioners would have posed a problem to the English. Keeping them would be costly and freeing them would be dangerous. So many were put to work - some in mines in the North of England. Ninian, however, was one of about 150 men shipped to Barbados to work on the Dutch sugar plantations. Many of the Barbados Scots, including Ninian Beall, eventually ended up in Maryland, America. Still enslaved, Ninian was put to work on other plantations - some of the time as a carpenter. Around 1657, he was deemed to have completed his obligations as a servant and was freed and granted some land. This turnaround in Beall's life coincided with the death of Oliver Cromwell. The English recalled Prince Charles from exile and crowned him as King Charles II. Ninian Beall now found himself now welcomed in wider society.
He became First Lieutenant on Lord Baltimore's Yacht of War, Loyall Charles. He also studied surveying and was to become Deputy Surveyor with responsibility for laying out ports of entry and trade towns. With the fee for making a survey from one third to a half of the land involved, Ninian quickly added to the 50 acres he had initially been granted. At the age of 42 Ninian had married 16 year old Ruth Moore, a lawyer's daughter. Together they would have twelve children. It has been estimated that Ninian Beall has 70,000 descendants, who can probably be found in every American State!
The descriptions of Ninian Beall that exist paint a picture of a striking and extraordinary-looking man. His height was always commented upon - " a six-footer" say some...."six foot seven inches" say others. His hair was another point of note, ranging from "very red" to "sandy coloured". Other descriptions include his "wide set blue-gray eyes" and "spare but muscular build". I like the description given in the book "Colonel Ninian Beall" by C.C. Magruder Jr. which states that Beall had...
"a complexion characteristic of his nationality, and an unusually heavy growth of long red hair. Of herculean build considerably over six feet in height, powerful in brawn and muscle and phenomenal in physical endurance, a description which he sustained by his spirited activity after the age of more than eighty years."
His health did eventually decline and when he wrote his will in January 1717 was described as "indisposed of body but of sound and perfect memory". He seems to have died shortly after this, at the age of 91 or 92. To live to such an age was a rare thing at that time, when average life expectancy was reportedly 35 years. It must have been in the genes, as it appears that he may have had four siblings that also lived beyond 90 years. Ninian Beall never returned to Scotland but earned many honours in America where he built his new life and family, not to mention where he brought much of his old family to live with him.