But these are diversions . One day , when not so busy and on my peregrination of the Cathedral , instead of looking up and reading all the memorials on the walls , I looked down beneath a stack of chairs in the South aisle and my eyes lit upon a word . BECKWITH . What if ? My curiosity was aroused . Could this be a relative of THE BECKWITH I ’ d heard so much about ?
The gravestone merely records this : that Georgiana Beckwith died June 10th 1832 aged 19 years and then Major General William Henry Beckwith on 17th March 1844 , aged 78 years .
Through the internet ( remember that most researchers have had to use online tools in the lockdown period ), I was able to confirm my assumption , given the obvious military connections , that William Henry was indeed related to John Charles Beckwith . Charles was his nephew and executor of his will . From that will , a transcript of which can be found by a Google search , and from notes by a local history group researching the gravestones of his three daughters buried in a country churchyard near Great Malvern ( Guarlford in Herefordshire ), I discovered the following family information which links them to the Chester area .
There were five daughters and a son ( John Ferdinand , born in 1824 , the year after the last daughter Sophie ) born to the marriage of William Henry Beckwith and Sophia his wife . Before the father ’ s death the family moved around , reflecting no doubt his career as a military man . Charlotte , the eldest , was born in Ireland in 1808 when her father was already 42 . Elizabeth , the second , was born in Scotland around 1810 . Jessie Henrietta was born in Tullamore , Ireland , in 1812 . Georgiana ( who features on his gravestone ), who predeceased him , was possibly a victim of the cholera epidemic of 1832 , and must have been born in 1813 , but I do not know where . Two further children ( Sophie born in Scotland in 1823 and John Ferdinand in 1824 ) may indicate a second possible marriage ? Sophia Maria Johanna ( née Ewing ), his surviving wife , was born around 1784 ( 18 years his junior ), possibly born in Scotland ?
The paterfamilias forming the family connections was Major General John Beckwith ( 1712 – 1787 ), born in Yorkshire . He fought in the Battle of Minden in 1759 , the annus mirabilis of the Seven Years War , defeating the French . All five of the sons born to him and Janet ( née Wisheart ) of Edinburgh served in the armed forces .
John , the eldest ( b . 1751 ), served in various regiments , ending up as a Lt . Colonel in Nova Scotia in the provincial militia . He married the sister of the local judge and politician Sir Brenton Halliburton . It was their son John Charles ( b . 1782 ). born in Halifax , Nova Scotia , who also joined the armed forces in 1794 . Was William Henry the uncle perhaps the one who gave the then 12-year-old Charles Beckwith the Bible to take with him when he sailed from Halifax to Britain to join the Army ? Was this the beginning of the evangelical encounter which sustained him on his long military career which ended in 1820 , having by then lost his leg so heroically in the Battle of Waterloo ?
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