Background
Wiiliam Black was born on December 8, 1855, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States, son of James Black, lawyer and reformer, and Eliza (Murray) Black. His paternal grandfather, an engineer, was the son of a Scottish emigrant.
Wiiliam Black was born on December 8, 1855, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States, son of James Black, lawyer and reformer, and Eliza (Murray) Black. His paternal grandfather, an engineer, was the son of a Scottish emigrant.
In his junior year at Franklin and Marshall College William won an appointment to West Point by competitive examination. He stood first in his class for four years and graduated first, June 14, 1877. On the following day he was promoted second lieutenant, Corps of Engineers. From 1877 to 1880 he was with the Engineer Battalion at Willets Point, New York, and was graduated there in the Engineering School of Application.
Black was instructor in practical military engineering at West Point, 1882-1886, and instructor in civil engineering at Willets Point, 1891-1895. In the meantime he had engaged in practical construction work on the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, at Philadelphia, and particularly in Florida, where he had a far-reaching influence on the development of the state. He was assistant in charge of fortifications, Office of Chief of Engineers, Washington, D. C. , 1895-1897. As engineer commissioner of the District of Columbia, 1897-1898, he solved several complicated problems relating to local transportation. Black was promoted first lieutenant, 1880; captain, 1887; major, and lieutenant-colonel of volunteers, 1898. As chief engineer he served in the Puerto Rico campaign and commanded a landing party at Guanica, 1898. From 1899 to 1901 he was chief engineer, first in the Department of Habana, and later in the Department of Cuba. He established a public works department, which "cleaned up" Habana, and started projects for sewers, paving, and an improved ocean front. He supervised engineering work in other parts of Cuba and made a military survey of the island.
From 1901 to 1903 Black commanded the 3rd Battalion, and the Engineering School, which he moved to Washington Barracks, D. C. He was with the Isthmian Canal Commission, in Panama, 1903-1904; and in charge of rivers, harbors, and fortifications, in Maine, 1904-1906. He was again in Cuba during the second occupation, 1906-1909, where he continued his earlier work. From 1909 to 1916 he was stationed in New York in charge of the improvement of East River and Hell Gate and Hudson River and its tributaries, a work of great and lasting utility. To this period also belongs his removal of the wreck of the Maine from Habana Harbor, his plan for an intracoastal waterway, and the construction of memorials of the victory of Commodore Macdonough on Lake Champlain. In 1905 Black was promoted lieutenant-colonel; in 1908, colonel; and March 1916, brigadier-general and chief of engineers, with headquarters in Washington, D. C.
His first duties at the capital were in connection with the Mexican border and the incorporation into the army of a large number of practical railroad men. On the entry of the United States into the World War he mobilized and shipped ten regiments of railroad engineers to France, which were among the first troops to arrive there. He enlarged the Engineer Corps more than one hundred times, organized the Engineer Officers' Reserve Corps, and established Fort Humphreys (later Belvoir), Virginia, as a replacement center and site for the Army Engineer School. He supervised the work of the director general of the United States Military Railways, and served as a member of the National Research Council and as a member of a committee on engineering and education, Council of National Defense.
In 1918 Black accompanied Secretary Baker on an inspection of the army in France, and when his transfer to the army was requested by General Pershing he was bitterly disappointed on learning that he could not be spared from Washington. On October 31, 1919, he was retired with the rank of major-general. Black was consulting engineer of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, 1919-1920, of the International Whangpoo Conservancy Commission, Shanghai, 1921, and of his own firm, Black, Mckenney & Stewart, 1920-1929.
William Black was noted for his ability to organize and train some 300, 000 young engineer officers during World War I. For planning and administering the engineer and military railway services, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. Black was also a profound writer and public speaker, usually on engineering problems. In 1893 he was awarded the Thomas Fitch Rowland prize for his paper, The Improvement of Harbors on the South Atlantic Coast of the United States; and in 1925, the Arthur M. Wellington prize for his paper, Waterways and Railway Equivalents.
William Black was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
In 1877 William Black was married to Daisy Peyton Derby, and after her death, in 1891 to Gertrude Totten Gamble.
