Family and Education
George Rumford Baldwin was born in the Baldwin mansion at North Woburn, January 26, 1798, and died there October 11, 1888, "having devoted his lengthened life, with the full possession of his faculties till its close, to the pursuits of practical science, as a surveyor, a civil engineer, and a constructor. He was the son of his father's second wife.
His middle name recalled the early and continued friendship which existed between his father and Count Rumford. When Count Rumford had attained that rank and title at Munich, a correspondence began between the two which is of great personal and historical interest. In a letter following the birth of George Rumford Baldwin, the father writes to the Count, "I have had a son born to me to whom I have given your name." The father wished this boy, as he grew up, to enter Harvard College, but the son was disinclined to scholarship in that institution as its standard then was, and from his earliest years his bent was for mathematical and scientific studies, pursued by himself, and for practical out-of-door work in waterways, surveying and engineering, in the examination of mills and water-power, dams and raceways. He, as we have already noticed, had marked facilities for practice of this sort, with preliminary training in a school kept by Dr. Stearns in Medford, and by accompanying his father and brother in field and office work. In his fourteenth year he made some sketches of the fortifications of Boston harbor in the war of 1812, of which his brother Loammi Baldwin, Jr. was the chief engineer.
George married December 6, 1837, the stepdaughter of his brother, Loammi Baldwin, Jr., namely, Catherine Richardson Beckford, daughter of Captain Thomas and Catherine (Williams) Beckford, of Charlestown. Her father was at one time the partner of Joshua Bates, the London banker. Mrs. Beckford had two daughters by her first marriage, but no child by her second. He had but one child, a daughter, who married, and resides mainly in Quebec.
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