So what you're proposing is that Thomas Beale of Fincastle was alive and well even as his estate was being settled, and that he was still enlisted and on active duty well into the 1830's. In the meantime his kids, family, friends, associates, debtors, estate executors, and even the courts were oblivious to the fact that he was still alive.

Not too shabby for a guy who had famous duel with Risque and saved New Orleans....I can see how easy it was for him to remain so obscure.

He was known on the river boats, praised in New Orleans, famous in the Lynchburg region, and was well know to the military. Yet nobody bothered to tell his kids, family, friends, associates, acquaintances, estate executors, debtors, the military, or the courts that he was still alive. Absolutely amazing, indeed, and quite impossible.