Joshua Beede was born September 14, 1871 in Raymond, New Hampshire, the son of Hirman Pratt and Lydia Marie (Brown) Beede. The family moved to Kansas when Beede was still a child. Beede received his bachelors in science from Washburn College in Topeka, KS in 1896 and went on to receive his masters and doctorate in geology from the University of Kansas (KU) in 1899.

During his graduate studies, Beede worked as an assistant in paleontology and geology at KU. From 1899-1901 he taught science at the Atchison County High School in Effingham, KS before going to Indiana University (IU) to become an instructor of geology. By 1909 he was an associate professor at IU, and in 1917 he left to join the Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology for the State of Texas. In 1922 he joined Empire Gas and Fuel Company as its geologist before returning to IU in 1928 as a professor of geology. He left in 1931 to move to Oklahoma.

Beede served on geological surveys in Kansas and Oklahoma in the late 1890s-early 1900s, as well as serving in the U.S. Geological Survey. He published several papers on the upper Paleozoic formations of Texas and was instrumental in determining the lower boundary of the Permian system in Kansas. He also published several papers on the geology of Indiana.

Beede was a Geological Society of America Fellow and held memberships in several professional societies, including the Paleontological Society, Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Kansas Academy of Science. He was a founding member of the Indiana chapter of Sigma Xi and was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Gamma Epsilon.

Joshua William Beede married Clara Frances McKee (1875-1965) in 1899. She had been born in Beloit, Mitchell County, KS, the daughter of Lewis Parker and Martha E. McKee and had attended the University of Kansas at the same time as Beede, pursuing a liberal arts degree. They had four daughters: Genevieve, Lydia May, Lucile Prosser, and Clara Frances. Beede died on February 27, 1940 at home in Tulsa, OK. Clara Beede died February 7, 1965.

[Information retrived from Cumings, E.R., "Memorial," American Association of Petroleum Geologists; and from findagrave.com.]