Robert Heysham was born on October 13, 1824, in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of William H. and Eliza (Kent) Sayre and a descendant of Thomas Sayre who was in Lynn, Massachussets, as early as 1638. His father was an official of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company.
Robert received his early education in the common schools and then studied civil engineering under James Nowlin, a mathematician of considerable reputation.
In 1840 Sayre was employed on the enlargement of the Morris Canal, and in the following year joined the engineering corps of his father's company for which, in 1843, he was assigned to make surveys and construct the railroad between the coal mines at Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk on the Lehigh Canal.
He also built the switchback railroad and inclined planes into the Panther Creek Valley coal field, exhibiting such ability in this type of work that he was placed in charge of all the railroads and inclined planes of the company and the transportation of coal over them from the mines to Mauch Chunk. At the same time he directed the development of the company's mines and the erection and installation of equipment.
From 1852 until his retirement in 1898, with the exception of three years (1882 - 85) as president and chief engineer of the South Pennsylvania Railroad, he was in the employ of the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill & Susquehannah Railroad and its successor, the Lehigh Valley system. He held successively the positions of chief engineer, general superintendent, second vice-president, assistant to the president, and vice-president.
He became a vice-president of the Bethlehem Iron Company and and of the Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing Company of Alabama. He was chairman of the board of trustees and of the executive committee of Lehigh University, and to that institution presented a fully equipped astronomical observatory.
Sayre died at South Bethlehem.
Robert Heysham Sayre was a pioneer in the introduction of iron bridges to replace wooden structures on the line of the Lehigh Valley Railroad (1857), and in the use of steel rails (1864), the fish-bar track joint, and steel-tired driving wheels and steel fireboxes for locomotives. Beside, he was famous for surveys and construction for the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway, Morris Canal in New Jersey. Apart from his railroad interests he was one of the promoters of the Bethlehem Iron Company, the Pioneer Mining and Manufacturing Company of Alabama, and held directorates in a number of other corporations. The town of Sayre, Pennsylvania was named in his honor.
Sayre was married four times: on April 15, 1845, to Mary Evelyn Smith, who died in 1869; on January 12, 1871, to Mary (Bradford), widow of Richard Brodhead, who died in 1877; on April 15, 1879, to Helen Augusta (Packer), widow of Rollin H. Rathbun; and on May 3, 1882, to Martha Finley Nevin, daughter of the Rev. John W. Nevin, of Mercersburg. Nine children were born to the first marriage and three to the fourth.
