Edwin Pinckney Becton

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Edwin Pinckney Becton (1834-1901)

Edwin Pinckney Becton, physician and legislator, son of Eleanor (Sharpe) and John May Becton, was born in Gibson County, Tennessee, on June 27, 1834. In 1841 the family moved to San Augustine, Texas. Becton attended Austin College and an academy in Rusk County and studied medicine in private offices in New Danville, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee, before entering the medical department of the University of Nashville, where he graduated on March 2, 1857. He did postgraduate work at the University of Louisville, 1873-74, the University of Maryland, 1879-80, and Tulane University, 1885-86. In 1862 he entered the Confederate Army as a private in the company of Capt. J. F. Pegue of the Waterhouse Regiment. He became assistant surgeon in the army and served with the Twenty-second Regiment, Texas Infantry, under Richard B. Hubbard. After the war Becton practiced at Tarrant (Hopkins County) and Sulphur Springs and also represented Hopkins County in the Texas Legislature, 1870-71. He was president of the Medical Association of Texas (later the Texas Medical Associationqv) in 1886. In 1895 he was appointed superintendent of the Texas School for the Blind at Austin. Becton married Mary Eliza Dickson on November 17, 1857.

After her death, he married Mrs. Olivia L. Smith in 1867. He died in Austin on January 14, 1901.