GEORGE W. BECKWITH – 16th INFANTRYDIED AT 19 YEARS OF AGE - Company E of the 16th Infantry was raised by its captain, John L. Stetson in the Plattsburgh area. George W. Beckwith enlisted on May 2, 1861, about three weeks after Lincoln’s call for the first seventy-five thousand men.The regiment organized in Albany and arrived in Washington at the end of June to join the Department of Northeastern Virginia. In July they had two engagements including a short time at First Bull Run. They came back to their camp in Alexandria and had two small battles at Pohick Church near General George Washington’s plantation.In 1862, after ten months with the Army of the Potomac, they began their fighting season in May. At the first of the Seven Days’ Battles, at Gaines’ Mill, the 16th suffered two hundred and thirty-one casualties in one day – 41 killed in action, 17 mortally wounded, and 173 wounded. Ten of those killed were with him when he enlisted in May 1861.After the battle at Malvern Hill on July 1st, the 16th removed to Harrison’s Landing seven miles downstream. While there, George became ill and was sent to the Satterlee Hospital in West Philadelphia where he was admitted on August 10, 1862. He was pronounced dead by Surgeon Isaac I. Hayes of chronic diarrhea on September 1, 1862. George’s captain, John Lemuel Stetson, was killed in action at Antietam a little over two weeks later, on September 17th.Captain Stetson was brought home to Plattsburgh to be buried in the Riverside Cemetery. George was buried Mount Moriah Cemetery in West Philadelphia where the Department of Veterans Affairs still maintains a section containing Civil War soldiers.
