Horace A. Beale Jr. (1827-1897) was the owner and president of the Parkesburg Iron Works and the major sports promoter in Chester County in the early 1900’s. He started his athletic career driving harness horses and then turned to racing cars and trapshooting. He had a race track in Parkesburg for both horses and automobiles. He won the Lippincott Cup, an automobile race from Camden to Atlantic City, in 1904.

Baseball and Basketball became Beale’s chief sports interest. He built a baseball stadium in Parkesburg along major league lines and fielded a semi-pro team that dominated their league. They played major league teams on Sundays when the major leagues were blacked out. The Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies and Athletics and many other teams played Parkesburg bringing in stars such as Ty Cobb and others. They had an excellent record against them.

He also had a semi-pro basketball team that had a record of 71 – 2 before disbanding. The team was made up mostly of Eastern League stars and they were forced to disband when the President of the Eastern League issued an ultimatum “not to play Parkesburg”. The team had just won 45 straight games. The pro athletes that Beale recruited claimed that he paid much better than the majors.