George Derbyshire was born on August 1, 1840, in England to Thomas Derbyshire. The family immigrated to America in the 1840s and settled in Massachusetts. His mother died on April 20, 1849. By 1860, Derbyshire was working as a mill hand in Lowell, Massachusetts.
He enlisted in the United States Marines on April 19, 1861, and he served aboard the USS Colorado. He died in Pensacola, Florida, on October 4, 1863. As his father later noted, “a comrade wrote as that [Derbyshire] was on guard in the rain had a chill and went to the hospital and after a little, he was crazy as a loon, got away from his nurse and ran away and ran a mile and died right-off after it.”