CAPTAIN WARREN BECKWITH Captain Warren Beckwith, whose intense and well directed efforts have brought him into close connection with many lines of actively of far-reaching effect so that it is almost impossible to determine which has been the most important chapter in his life history, is now living retired in Mount Pleasant although he yet has financial investments in a number of paying enterprises. He was born at West Henrietta, Monroe county. New York, January 21, 1833, and is a son of George L. and Sarah E. (Winslow) Beckwith. The ancestry of the family can be traced back to 1635, when the progenitor of the Beckwiths came to America and founded .one of the early colonial families. In 1760 representatives of the name removed to New Brunswick, but later generations of the family returned to the United States. George L. Beckwith was a farmer at West Henrietta and there remained until the time of his death, devoting his entire life to agricultural pursuits.  Captain Beckwith of this review, one of a family of six children, was educated in the common schools of his native town until ten years of age, when he became a student in Monroe Academy, at East Henrietta, and subsequently attended Lima Seminary, where he completed his school life at the age of twenty years. Then entering upon his business career he joined an engineering party in the construction  of the Genesee Valley Railroad, now that part of the Erie system extending northward from Corning. In December 1854, on the opening of that state. Captain Beckwith went to Kansas and entered the employ of a town company of which General Lyons was the executive officer. For this company he laid out Pawnee City, near Fort Riley. Governor Reeder agreed to make the new town capital of the state it  the company would erect a building in which the legislature elected in November could meet. The site of town was one hundred and twenty-five miles from the Missouri river, and the company cut timber, quarried the stone and erected a building which was completed in June, 1855. It was a two-story stone structure, the ruins of which are still seen within the reservation at Fort Riley. The rebel legislature held a day session there but at that time the Kansas war [illegible] inaugurated and the building was not used further.  His work being completed in Kansas, Captain Beckwith came to Iowa in the spring of 1856, and assisted in locating the line of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad from Ottumwa to the Missouri river, acting as transit man for a year. He was in the service of the company in the construction and train department until June. i860, and was thus a factor in the early development of Iowa for no interest is of greater value toward the up-building of a state than railroad construction for rapid transportation facilities bring it into close touch with the older east and make possible the securing of advantages and privileges known to the older settled districts. At the date mentioned, however, Mr. Beckwith withdrew from railroad interests and with a partner purchased two thousand sheep and some horses, with which he started for Texas. Driving across the country they reached the vicinity of Houston in December, i860, and remained there until July, 1861, when Captain Beckwith sold his interest. The venture, however, did not prove financially successful. He got out of it money enough to bring him home, and to take passage on a flatboat from Galveston to New Orleans, where he landed on the 4th of July, thence proceeding by rail to Cairo, where he arrived on the 8th of the same month. He was the first northern man to make his way through for a month for the Civil war had been inaugurated.  In September following, Captain Beckwith responding to his country's need enlisted for service in the Fourth Iowa Cavalry, and in November of the same year was promoted to the rank of battalion  adjutant. In April, 1862, he joined General Curtis in Missouri and marched with him through Batesville and Jackson Port to Hannibal, Missouri, arriving at the latter place in the middle of July. In August he was made regimental adjutant and in October regimental quartermaster, and his promotion to the captaincy of Company C came on the first of January, 1863. The regiment went with Grant to Vicksburg, crossing below Grand Gulf and coming up in the rear of the city. Captain Beckwith was thus in service in Vicksburg and throughout the state, and remained there until the first of March, 1864, engaging in the meantime in various raids including the Meridian raid and the raid eight hundred miles to Memphis, Tennessee, in September, 1863. After being granted a veteran furlough he returned to Memphis in May, 1864, and was engaged in frustrating the advance of Forest, who attempted to approach in the rear of Sherman's army then on the march to Atlanta. He also participated in pursuit of Pierce through Missouri, the regiment marching two thousand miles in ninety days and following the rebel commander from St. Louis westward to Kansas City and on past Fort Scott, Fayetteville, Arkansas and the Arkansas river.  The Union troops then returned to St. Louis, capturing two division generals, Marmaduke and Cabel, also two thousand prisoners in a grand mounted charge on the prairie. After this event they then joined General Wilson on the Tennessee river, reaching Gravelly Plains in February, where the united forces formed a guard of fifteen thousand mounted men. They then started on a march southward through Alabama, captured Selma, Montgomery, Columbus and Macon and participated in the last battle east of the Mississippi at Columbus, on the 15th of April, 1865. This was after Lee surrendered and they reached Macon on the 20th of the month, where news of the fall of the Confederates was received. Following the surrender of the rebel forces, the Union troops were stationed at Atlanta until the last of August, when Captain Beckwith and his entire regiment were mustered out. He had the usual experiences that are meted out to the soldier, taking part in long, hard marches, difficult skirmishes and hotly contested engagements, in which his valor was many times put to the test.  Following his arrival home Captain Beckwith was immediately appointed as road master for the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, and served in that capacity until its consolidation with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system in 1872. He was then made superintendent of the work of the consolidated road and thus served until 1879, when on account of ill health he resigned. In that year he turned his attention to contracting and manufacturing the famous western wheel scraper, erecting a factory for this purpose at Mount Pleasant. The business had already become an extensive one and Captain Beckwith was the owner of one-half of the original patent. A company was organized consisting of C. H. Smith, Warren Beckwith and Dr. A. W. McClure, and the manufacture was for some years carried on in Mount Pleasant, and was the largest enterprise ever conducted here, and on the removal took about two hundred families with it.  In 1892, however, the business was removed to Aurora, because of the interstate commerce law. There an extensive plant was erected and in fact it is the largest factory in the world manufacturing grading machinery, giving employment to five hundred men for eleven hours per day, while its output is shipped to all parts of the world. At the present time the company is building cars for the Panama canal. They also have a plant at Har[illegible], Illinois, employing four hundred men in the same line. Captain Beckwith is secretary and one of the directors of the company which is a close corporation. It is a splendidly successful factory, the business having gained world-wide fame and recognized as a most important and valuable enterprise. Its successful management and conduct is attributable in no small degree to the business sagacity, keen discrimination and enterprise of Captain Beckwith who has realized there from a handsome fortune. He has likewise aided in organizing the Inland Coal Company, of which he is director and which is operating a mine in Lucas county, Iowa. He is a director of the Western Clay Ballast Company and other important industrial and commercial enterprises, making judicious investment in business interests which have yielded a paying return. He is not active in the management of any of these at the present time, but for his own diversion and occupation he has a fine farm of six hundred acres in Mount Pleasant, on which are found about one hundred and fifty head of pure-bred Hereford cattle and standard trotting horses. He employs a regular trainer and has an excellent track. His Herefords are considered one of the finest herds in the state, and his interest in agricultural pursuits gives him a pleasing source of recreation. Captain Beckwith is likewise the owner of a beautiful home on West Monroe  street. He was married in 1863 to Miss Luzenia W. Porter, of Mount Pleasant, a daughter of Colonel A. B. Porter, one of the pioneer residents of this city, and whose sketch appears on another page of  this work. Mrs. Beckwith passed away in 1880, leaving five children, who reached mature years : Everett, who is now in Chicago, connected with the Austin Manufacturing Company; Orville, who is engaged in the quarry business at Mount Pleasant; Emily, at home; Florence, who died in 1896; and Warren W., of Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1882 Captain Beckwith was again married, his second union being with Miss Sarah E. Porter, a sister of his former wife. She has become well known as a member of the library board and also as editor of the Mount Pleasant Republican. Captain and Mrs. Beckwith hold membership in the Episcopal church, in which he is serving as vestryman and he also belongs to Mount Pleasant Lodge, No. 8, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and is a member of the commandery of Iowa, of the Loyal Legion and of the Grand Army of the Republic. In politics a stalwart republican, he has been active in the work of the party and has frequently attended its conventions and sensed on its executive committees. In 1900 he was made a delegate to the national convention which met at Philadelphia, and nominated McKinley and Roosevelt. He has, however, never been an aspirant for office himself, preferring to perform his public service as a private citizen. His life has been one of signal usefulness and activity. He who formulates a plan or institutes a work that has effect upon the general welfare, the business development, the political stability or the social or moral progress is of use to his fellow men and his value is reckoned by the extent to which his services reach out. Judged in this light Captain Beckwith has lived a most useful life, being connected with or promoter of business industries of far-reaching effect. In citizenship being equally loyal and interested he stands today as a representative of a high  type of American manhood and his career is an honor to the state and to the people who know him.  Later Captain Beckwith died after a brief illness, July 17, 1905, and was interred on his family lot at Forest Home cemetery.   ©2009 Genealogy Trails