Washington Roebling's Father: A Memoir of John A. Roebling
(The Roeblings are arguably the most legendary engineering...)
The Roeblings are arguably the most legendary engineering family in the United States. John A. Roebling was trained as an engineer in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1831. His early engineering work involved the design and construction of aqueducts for the expanding canal system. He went on to achieve renown as a bridge designer and inventor of wire rope - a technology that makes possible modern suspension bridges, high-rise elevators, construction cranes, and cable cars. While all four of John's sons followed him into the family business, it was the eldest, Washington, who staked his own claim to fame for work on bridges, most notably the classic Brooklyn Bridge.Between 1893 and 1907, Washington Roebling wrote the story of his father's life and career. Part biography, part memoir, Washington Roebling's "Father" makes available, for the first time, the text of Washington's handwritten manuscript. Washington describes his father's life, character, career, and achievements with candor and intimate details. Donald Sayenga, an internationally recognized authority on the history of wire rope, has pain-stakingly transcribed the original manuscript and tracked down annotations for hundreds of people, places, events, and technologies.Washington Roebling's "Father: A Memoir of John A. Roebling" is both an accurate and complete biography of John and a frank narrative recounting Washington's memories and inner life. As a rare glimpse into the genius and failings of two towering figures, this book is a must-read for civil engineers, bridge enthusiasts, and industrial historians.
Washington Augustus Roebling was an American civil engineer, mostly involved in constructing bridges born on 26 May 1837 in Saxonburg, Butler County, Pennsylvania. During the Civil War he served in the Army of the United States as an engineer officer.
Background
Washington Augustus Roebling was born on 26 May 1837 in Saxonburg, Butler County, Pennsylvania. He was eldest of the nine children of John Augustus Roebling and Johanna (Herting) Roebling. His father was the leader of a group of German colonists who settled Saxonburg in 1831. Washington spent his boyhood in that town under stern paternal discipline, sharing the privations and limitations of pioneer life until his thirteenth year. At that time the family moved to Trenton, New Jersey, where John A. Roebling established a new factory for the production of wire rope.
Education
Washington all his life used English and German with equal facility. As a little child he had a tutor; he now entered the Trenton Academy, and after four years of preparation, matriculated at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, then the leading school of professional engineering in the country.
The Rensselaer curriculum of the day he described as "that terrible treadmill of forcing an avalanche of figures and facts into young brains not qualified to assimilate them as yet" (Schuyler, post, p. 173); his class numbered sixty-five on entering but only twelve were graduated three years later.
Career
Immediately after receiving his degree as civil engineer, young Roebling started to work in his father's wire-rope mill, in which he had already had some experience, and apparently for considerable periods of time he was in charge during his father's prolonged absences.
After a year in the mill he joined his father at Pittsburgh to assist in building the Alleghany River Bridge, and remained on that job until its completion in the summer of 1860, when he returned to Trenton.
On April16, 1861, four days after the attack on Fort Sumter, he enlisted as a private in the National Guard of New Jersey, in June joined the 83rd New York Infantry, and in January 1862 became a second lieutenant in the 6th New York Battery, from which he was discharged in April 1864 to accept a commission as major of volunteers. On December 2, 1864, he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel for gallant service before Richmond and on March 13, 1865, he was brevetted colonel of volunteers, "for gallant and meritorious service during the War. " His duties were mainly those of an engineer officer and included a considerable amount of bridge building, notably the construction of suspension bridges across the Rappahannock and Shenandoah rivers.
He served on the staff of General Irvin McDowell and later on that of General John Pope.
He took part in the campaign which ended in the second battle of Bull Run and was also at Antietam and South Mountain.
At one time, after Chancellorsville, it was his daily task to ascend in a captive balloon to observe and report on Confederate movements.
He was on the staff of General Gouverneur K. Warren at the battle of Gettysburg and throughout the fierce campaign around Richmond.
The war over, he returned to his profession of civil engineering. He then spent a year abroad conferring with the leading engineers in England, France, and Germany and studying especially the principles and practice of caisson foundations, with a view to helping his father in the newly projected Brooklyn Bridge, of which the elder Roebling had been appointed chief engineer.
Immediately on his return from Europe, he entered his father's office as principal assistant and prepared the detailed plans and specifications for the great bridge. The elder Roebling died just as the field work was beginning and his son succeeded him as chief engineer.
For the next three years Roebling's work was continuous and unusually severe.
The Brooklyn Bridge project was unprecedented in many ways and the details of procedure needed constant watching and direction.
Caisson disease, the dreaded "bends, " attacked the laborers; at that time little was known of methods of treatment and much had to be learned by costly experience.
One afternoon in the spring of 1872, Roebling was taken almost unconscious from the caisson on the New York side, but in a few days he was back on the work. By the end of the year, however, his health had been seriously and permanently affected, and he did not visit the bridge site again. From that time until the bridge was finished in 1883, except for six months abroad in a vain attempt to regain his health, he directed the work from his house in Brooklyn, too sick to leave it. During much of this time he maintained an active part in conducting the business of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company, of which he became president upon its incorporation in 1876. After opening the bridge, Roebling took no further active part in professional engineering work, owing to his seriously impaired health, although for a short time, at the age of eighty-three, after the death of his nephew, Karl G. Roebling, he resumed the presidency of the Roebling company, and during his brief administration took and filled the contract for the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson.
For the most part, however, he lived quietly in Trenton, untill his death in 1926.
Achievements
The Brooklyn Bridge project was unprecedented in many ways and the details of procedure needed constant watching and direction. The foundations of the great towers were built by the caisson method, under compressed air, and the chief engineer spent long hours in the damp high-pressure of the caisson chambers. From the end of 1872 until the bridge was finished in 1883, except for six months abroad in a vain attempt to regain his health, Roebling directed the work from his house in Brooklyn, too sick to leave it. Such a record, a decade of exacting work, is a rare tribute to the man's mental alertness, minute knowledge of technical detail, and gift for effective organization.
(The Roeblings are arguably the most legendary engineering...)
Interests
For the most part after his leaving active engineering he lived quietly in Trenton, read widely, and indulged his hobby of collecting rare minerals, of which he had some fifteen thousand specimens. His remarkable collection is now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
In 1924 he wrote a paper on the early history of Saxonburg for the Butler County Historical Society.
Connections
Washington Augustus Roebling was twice married.
His first wife, whom he married January 18, 1865, was Emily Warren, of Cold Spring, New York, daughter of Sylvanus Warren and sister of Major-General G. K. Warren on whose staff Roebling served during the Civil War. By her he had one son, born in Mühlhausen, Germany, the birthplace of his ancestors.
Shortly after the Brooklyn Bridge was completed and opened to traffic, he moved with his wife to Troy, New York, where they lived from 1884 to 1888 while their son, John A. Roebling II, was a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They then removed to Trenton and established a permanent home.
Mrs. Roebling died February 28, 1903, and five years later, April 21, 1908, Roebling married Mrs. Cornelia Witsell Farrow, of Charleston, South Carolina.
He died at his home in Trenton a few weeks after his eighty-ninth birthday.
