Isaac Munroe St. John was an American commissary-general of the Confederate States Army and engineer. He made the first topographical map of Louisville and planned the first complete sewerage system of that city.
Background
Isaac was born on November 19, 1827 in Augusta, Georgia, United States, where his father was then in business. His parents were Isaac Richards and Abigail Richardson Munroe St. John. He was a descendant of Matthias St. John who came to Dorchester, Massachusetts, before 1632. A few years after the child's birth the family removed to New York City.
Education
In New York, Isaac St. John attended Poughkeepsie Collegiate School.
Isaac entered Yale University in 1841 and was graduated in 1845, the youngest member of his class. He began the study of law in New York City but gave up these studies to become assistant editor of the Baltimore Patriot, Baltimore, Maryland.
Isaac Munroe St. John became editor of the Baltimore Patriot in 1847.
Until 1855 St. John was on the engineering staff of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, and then moved to Georgia, where, for five years, he was in charge of construction divisions of the Blue Ridge Railroad Company. When the Civil War began, St. John was in South Carolina, and he at once entered the Confederate service as a private of the Fort Hill guards of that state.
He was soon transferred, however, to Magruder's army of the peninsula for engineering duty, became chief engineer of that army, and, in February 1862, was commissioned captain of engineers. The energy and ability which he displayed in Magruder's army attracted the attention of the Confederate war department, and he was promoted to major on April 18, 1862, and assigned to duty in Richmond as chief of the Nitre and Mining Bureau.
He efficiently performed the difficult task of supplying the Confederacy, which was blockaded on all sides, with niter for the manufacture of gunpowder, and with metals for the construction of implements of war. His accomplishments were recognized by his successive promotions to lieutenant-colonel and colonel. Near the end of the war, when the problem of feeding the Confederate armies had become acute, St. John was selected to direct this important activity.
On February 16, 1865, Isaac was appointed commissary-general with the rank of brigadier-general, and at once organized an efficient system for collecting and storing supplies and for forwarding them to the armies. He continued on this duty after the evacuation of Richmond and until the final collapse of the Confederacy. An article on the "Resources of the Confederacy" appeared under his name in the Southern Historical Society Papers, March 1877.
After the war, he returned to his profession of civil engineering. From 1866 to 1869 he was chief engineer of Louisville, Cincinnati & Lexington Railroad and then for the next two years he was the city engineer of Louisville, Kentucky.
At the time of his death, he was in charge of the mining and engineering department of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad.
Achievements
Connections
Isaac Munroe St. John had six children by his marriage to Eleanor J. Carrington on February 28, 1865.