George Chester Beckford.

Push.

George Chester Beckford.

Birth: 1834, Rhode Island.
Death: unknown, Providence County, Rhode Island.

Wife: Minerva (Cook) Beckford.

Married January 9, 1853.

Children: Georgianna, Sarah J. Rankin Beckford, Carrabell, Hattie Beckford.

Enlisted in Company D, Rhode Island 7th Infantry Regiment on 04 Sep 1862.Transferred from Co D to Co I on Feb 1 1865. Mustered out on 09 Jun 1865 at Alexandria, VA.

Burial: Oak Grove Cemetery, Pawtucket, Providence County, Rhode Island.

Rhode Island Seventh Infantry Regimental History.

Page 36, The washout was Company D's cookhouse, whence George C. Beckford regularly shouted, Company D, fall in for your salt horse, pea soup, beans, rice and tea or coffee !'' as the occasion required.

Page 279, It was a custom of the cooks late at night to visit the well just outside the stockade entrance and fill their camp kettles for the next morning's coffee. It chanced on a certain bright moonlight night the well-known and popular comrade George C. Beckford, who at that time was cook for an officers' mess, went out with his kettle at the weird hour of eleven p. m. Near the top of the slope up from the well were some scattered graves.

Now just as this man had raised his filled kettle to the well flooring he chanced to glance toward the graves, and there he saw or thought he saw a ghost looking over one of the wooden headboards. As he had been a sailor, this was too much for him. He dropped his kettle, rushed back to the fort and to his quarters, threw himself upon his bunk, drew his blanket over his head and never again went outside the fort after dark.

Page 364, During one of the terrific bombardments to which Fort Hell was constantly liable the lieutenant had the good fortune to arise from his bombproof couch just in season to escape a sixty-four-pounder mortar shell that penetrated his apartment, and, plunging directly through the bunk and its covering of blankets, buried itself several feet in the earth, and then exploded making a complete wreck of the habitation.

Cook Beckford of his officers' mess dug over the ruins and recovered what of his belongings he could discover. Among other things he brought forth an army blanket, perforated >through the center by that shell, which to-day is exhibited as evidence of a fortunate avoidance of death.