Beckwith, B. H.

W. D. Beckwith, born in Clinton County, New York, on August 1, 1841, was an energetic citizen and early agriculturalist who served his country during the Civil War. He volunteered with the First New York Engineers, participating in major historic conflicts including the siege of Petersburg and Richmond, the battle at Farmville, and the final surrender of Lee at Appomattox Court House. Following his honorable discharge, he returned to civil life and moved to Kansas in 1871, where he farmed for twenty years while buffalo still roamed the prairies. He later shifted his family to Nebraska to work as a merchant for four years due to the poor health of his wife, Josie Norris, who eventually passed away in 1910 after they relocated their residence to Fresno, California, in 1908.

Before his parents moved to California, his son B. H. Beckwith arrived in Fresno County in 1905, having been born in Kansas in 1881 and raised partly in Nebraska. The younger Beckwith worked as a skilled carpenter and building contractor in both San Francisco and Fresno before marrying Bertha Van Fleet in 1912. Upon his marriage, his father gifted him a deed to a forty-acre ranch in the Sanger district, where B. H. Beckwith cultivated peaches and apricots with future plans to transition the acreage into profitable English walnuts. The elder Mr. Beckwith remained a respected leader in his retirement, maintaining community ties through the Grand Army Post in Fresno and supporting Progressive Republican politics as a friend of Hiram Johnson.