His mother was Elizabeth Waugh Jones, born 14 May 1764 in Baltimore, Maryland On March 25, 1814, at age thirteen years and five months, Ben was admitted to West Point.
Beall described his new cadet uniform as consisting of an "embroidered coat, tights, high top boots with tassels, cocked hat & sword" and mentioned how he almost got into a fist-fight in New York with a street urchin who had taunted him by "singing out 'there goes a middy on half pay.'"
See also George Stammerjohan and Will Gorenfeld, '”Dropped from the Rolls: The West Point Years of Benjamin Beall: 1814–1818”, Military Collector & Historian, Spring 2002, vol.
[2] Shortly afterward the U.S. 2nd Dragoon Regiment, was formed to fight the Seminole Indians, with Company I, under Captain Benjamin L. Beall, who entered the army from civil life on June 8, 1836.
The foe overcome, the tedious trail retraced, horses and men cared for, and where was the man who made social history more racy or gave entertainment more varied than "Old Ben"?
[4] In April 1846 Beall was stationed in San Antonio, where he was ordered to escort German immigrants to Fredericksburg and the Pedernales River.
(Will Gorenfeld, “The Cowpens Slaughter: Was There a Massacre of Mexican Troops at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Rosales?” 81 New Mexico Historical Review, 413 (Fall 2006).)
During November and December 1861, the First Regiment of Cavalry, except Companies D and G which were still stationed in New Mexico Territory, was transferred by steamship from the Pacific Coast through Panama and then to Washington, D.C., arriving by the end of January 1862.