Nicholas Jacobus Roosevelt was an American engineer, inventor, a major investor, and a member of the Roosevelt family.
Background
Nicholas Jacobus Roosevelt was born in New York City, New York, United States. He was the youngest child of Jacobus and Annetje (Bogard) Roosevelt. His father, a shopkeeper in New York, had been admitted as a freeman of that city on February 22, 1748, and was a private in the New York colonial troops.
Education
Nicholas was educated in New York and developed a great love for mechanics.
Career
As early as 1782, when he was living on the farm of Joseph Oosterhaudt, near Esopus, New York he built a model boat, propelled by paddle wheels over the sides. The wheels were turned by hickory and whalebone springs which unwound a cord wrapped around the wheel axles. After the evacuation of New York by the British, Roosevelt returned there to pursue his mechanical interests. In 1793 he became a director of the New Jersey Copper Mine Association, organized to rework the abandoned Schuyler copper mine, an enterprise which was given up eighteen months later. Meanwhile he had become much interested in steam engines and their manufacture and succeeded in inducing his associates to purchase some land on Second River, now Belleville, New Jersey, and erect a metal foundry and shop. Following the completion of these works, called Soho after the establishment of Boulton and Watt in England, Roosevelt's associates retired and left him to carry on the enterprise alone. Sanguine and ambitious, he at first had some success, building engines for various purposes, including those for the Philadelphia water works. He also contracted to erect a rolling mill and supply the federal government with copper drawn and rolled for six 74-gun ships which were to be built. After he had gone to great expense to complete this contract, a change in federal administration caused the abandonment of ship construction and a consequent great financial loss to Roosevelt. About 1797 he entered into an agreement with Robert R. Livingston and John Stevens to build a steamboat on joint account, the engines for which were to be constructed at his foundry. The work of building this experimental boat was slow and tedious and it was not until the middle of 1798 that steam was applied to the machinery. At first the boat was not successful, but on a trial trip, October 21, 1798, after improvements had been made, the Polacca, as it was named, attained a speed equivalent to three miles an hour in still water. During the construction of this vessel Roosevelt tried to induce Livingston to use paddle wheels over the sides, but Livingston would have nothing to do with such a plan. In 1801 Livingston was appointed United States minister to France and the whole undertaking was dropped. By this time Roosevelt's business was in such chaotic condition that he was compelled to abandon his works entirely. In 1809, however, he became associated with Robert Fulton in the introduction of steamboats on Western rivers, and in 1811 built at Pittsburgh the steamboat New Orleans. In this he descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in fourteen days. In the belief that he was entitled to a patent for use of vertical paddle wheels, he now applied for such a patent which was granted him on December 1, 1814. The following January he applied to the New Jersey legislature for protection as the inventor of such paddle wheels, but the legislature decided, primarily because of the objections of Fulton and Livingston, that "it was inexpedient to make any special provision in connection with the matter in controversy before the body" (Latrobe, post, p. 31), and there the matter rested. Roosevelt soon retired from active work and resided for the remainder of his life with his family in Skaneateles, Onondaga County, New York
Connections
He married Lydia Latrobe, daughter of the elder Benjamin Henry Latrobe of Baltimore, Maryland, November 15, 1808, by whom he had nine children, six of whom died in their early youth.