Beckwithia was named after Frank Beckwith, editor and publisher of the Millard County Chronicle of Delta, Utah in the early to middle 1900s, who had a passion for trilobites.

[1] Beckwithia has been collected from the Middle and Upper Cambrian of Utah (Weeks Formation, House Range, Millard County) and from the Franconian (in North-America called Sunwaptan) of Wisconsin.

Beckwithia was previously placed in a separate family, the Beckwithiidae, but it has now been established that the defining character (that the terminal segments appeared to be fused) is actually an artifact.

The dorsal shield covering the cephalothorax (or prosoma) is semi-circular, with the margin curving smoothly from the front to an acute, but rather small genal spine at the outside and the back.

Two distinctly raised eyes that are circular to oval are located at the outer rim of what could be compared to a trilobite glabella, with a strongly effaced outline and lobes.