Derby, George Horatio (03 April 1823–15 May 1861), soldier and literary humorist, was born in Dedham, Massachusetts, the son of John Barton Derby and Mary Townsend. Derby’s father, a sometime lawyer and eccentric poet, abandoned his family in 1824, not long after George’s birth. Derby entered West Point in 1842. There his practical jokes and comic drawings earned him both a number of demerits and the nickname “Squibob,” one of the two chief pseudonyms with which he later signed his humorous writings. Derby graduated in 1846, seventh in a class of fifty-nine that included ...
