REV. GEORGE BECKETT, rector and principal of the Columbia Female Institute and rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, was born in Wakefield, Yorkshirc, England, June 8, 1818, and is a son of William P. and Mary (Harrison) Beckett. Our subject was educated in England, attending Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, at Wakefield, and graduated in 1838. In 1840 he immigrated to the United States and located first at Cincinnati, Ohio, where he prepared himself for the Episcopal ministry. He was ordained, in 1843, by Bishop B. B. Smith, D. D., at Louisville, Ky. His first charge was in Hopkinsville, Ky., where he had management of a school. In 1852 he took charge of St. Matthew’s Church and Institute, in Jefferson County. Ky., and in the fall of 1866 removed to Columbia, and began conducting the Columbia Female Institute, and has met with good success. He entered on his pastoral duties in St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in 1868. In 1844 he married Miss Ann E. Temple, a native of Logan County, Ky., a great-niece of Gen. George Rogers Clark. They have one son–John Temple.

Source: History of Tennessee: From the Earliest Time to the Present; Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Maury, Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Bedford and Marshall Counties. Nashville, Tenn: Goodspeed Pub. Co, 1886.