Andrews, George Leonard (31 August 1828–04 April 1899), soldier, engineer, and educator, was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, the son of Manasseh Andrews and Harriet Leonard. After attending the state normal school at Bridgewater, he was accepted as a candidate at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated at the head of the class of 1851 and was appointed second lieutenant of engineers. His first duty after graduation was in his home state, participating in the construction of Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. He then returned to the academy as an assistant professor....
12
Article
Andrews, George Leonard (1828-1899), soldier, engineer, and educator
Rod Paschall
Image
Curtis, Samuel Ryan (1805-1866)
In
Samuel R. Curtis. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-B8172-2075).
Article
Curtis, Samuel Ryan (1805-1866), soldier and engineer
William L. Shea
Curtis, Samuel Ryan (03 February 1805–26 December 1866), soldier and engineer, was born near Champlain, New York, the son of Zarah Curtis and Phalley Yale, farmers. In 1809 the family moved to Licking County, Ohio. Curtis obtained an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy and graduated in 1831. Later that year he married Belinda Buckingham; the couple had six children. Curtis served briefly with the Seventh Infantry at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), but resigned his commission in 1832 and returned to Ohio. During the next decade he worked as an engineer on the National Road and was the chief engineer of the Muskingum River improvement project. He also studied law and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1841. Curtis was active in the Ohio militia and was named adjutant general of the state when the Mexican War began, but he resigned in order to command the Third Ohio Infantry in the field. Much to his disappointment, he saw no action in Mexico but served as military governor of Matamoras, Camargo, Monterrey, and Saltillo....
Image
Dodge, Grenville Mellen (1831-1916)
In
Grenville M. Dodge. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-B8172-1672).
Article
Dodge, Grenville Mellen (1831-1916), civil engineer and army officer
Michael L. Tate
Dodge, Grenville Mellen (12 April 1831–03 January 1916), civil engineer and army officer, was born in Danvers, Massachusetts, the son of Sylvanus Dodge, a peddler, and Julia Theresa Phillips. Despite a nearly impoverished childhood and the need to find employment at an early age, Dodge demonstrated a strong desire for a formal education. Following one semester of preparatory study at New Hampshire’s Durham Academy, he entered in 1848 Norwich University in Vermont, where he learned the scientific and engineering skills that would serve him well in life. After his graduation in 1851, he lived briefly at nearby Captain ...
Article
Eastman, William Reed (1835-1925), engineer, clergyman, and librarian
Kathleen Molz
Eastman, William Reed (19 October 1835–25 March 1925), engineer, clergyman, and librarian, was born in New York City, the son of the Reverend Ornan Eastman, an ordained evangelist, and Mary Reed. Eastman descended from an old New England family. Like his father, Eastman attended Yale University, where he achieved election to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated in 1854 with honors. During the first of his three distinctive professional endeavors, he worked as a civil engineer, initially on the enlargement of the Erie Canal, subsequently on the construction of the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad, and finally on the survey of the first railroad from Vera Cruz to Mexico City....
Image
Goethals, George Washington (1858-1928)
Maker: Arnold Genthe
In
George Washington Goethals Photograph by Arnold Genthe, 1913. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-G432-0358-A).
Article
Goethals, George Washington (1858-1928), engineer and military officer
Jeffrey K. Stine
Goethals, George Washington (29 June 1858–21 January 1928), engineer and military officer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of John Louis Goethals, a carpenter, and Marie Le Barron. At the age of fourteen he entered the College of the City of New York. In April 1876, after three years of college, Goethals won a cadetship to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated second in his class in 1880, a distinction that won for him a commission as second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers....
Article
Gorrell, Edgar Staley (1891-1945), aviator and industrialist
James J. Cooke
Gorrell, Edgar Staley (03 February 1891–05 March 1945), aviator and industrialist, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Charles Edgar Gorrell, a carpenter, and Pamelia Smith. He entered the U.S. Military Academy in 1908, graduating in 1912 with a commission as a second lieutenant of infantry. In 1915 he attended the army’s Signal Corps Aviation School in Coronado, California, where he became a pilot. While serving with the First Aero Squadron during the Mexican Punitive Operation in 1916, he came to the attention of Brigadier General ...
Article
Greene, George Sears (1801-1899), civil engineer and soldier
Jon C. Teaford
Greene, George Sears (06 May 1801–28 January 1899), civil engineer and soldier, was born in Apponaug, Rhode Island, the son of Caleb Greene, a shipowner, and Sarah Robinson. Greene attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from 1819 to 1823 and upon graduation became assistant professor of mathematics and engineering there. After four years of teaching, he served nine years in the artillery at posts in Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In 1828 he married Elizabeth Vinton, who died four years later....
Article
Haupt, Herman (1817-1905), railway engineer, inventor, author, and administrator
Keir B. Sterling
Haupt, Herman (26 March 1817–14 December 1905), railway engineer, inventor, author, and administrator, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Jacob Haupt, a businessman of modest attainments, and Anna Margaretta Wiall, the proprietor of a small dry goods store. Herman attended several private schools in Philadelphia, but in 1827 his father, suffering from poor health, gave up the grocery store he then owned and moved to Woodville, New Jersey. Jacob Haupt died the next year, leaving his widow in straitened circumstances; Herman, the eldest of six children, was only eleven years of age. Two years later Herman Haupt’s congressman, John B. Sterigere, offered to help the boy gain admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He received a presidential appointment in 1830, but his entry was deferred for a year because of his youth. Unhappy with the strict upbringing he had received from his father, he was very uncertain about subjecting himself to the hard discipline of the academy, but his mother prevailed....
Article
Herron, Leander Taylor (29 Dec. 1846–5 Apr. 1937), soldier and civil engineer
Jean A. Lukesh
Herron, Leander Taylor (29 Dec. 1846–5 Apr. 1937), soldier and civil engineer, was born at Fallsington, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Lee (as he preferred to be called) was the second son of physician and shoemaker George Herron, formerly of Philadelphia, and Mary Herron (maiden name unknown). When Lee was about two, his mother died, and he went to live with his aunt Kate, his mother’s sister in Fallsington, where Lee went to public school. Sometime in the late 1840s his father started a second family with his new wife, Mary Merrick, and before long, the family moved to northwestern Pennsylvania and later to Hannasville (or Canal) in Venango County, near western Pennsylvania’s Erie Extension Canal. Lee went to public school there, too, but at age twelve he was already working between school terms as a boat-boy and possibly as a pilot on the canal’s packet (passenger) boats....
Image
Lovell, Mansfield (1822-1884)
In
Mansfield Lovell. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-B8172-2010).
Article
Lovell, Mansfield (1822-1884), soldier and civil engineer
Albert Castel
Lovell, Mansfield (20 October 1822–01 June 1884), soldier and civil engineer, was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Dr. Joseph Lovell, surgeon general of the U.S. Army from 1818 to 1836, and Margaret Mansfield. Having entered West Point at the age of sixteen, he graduated in 1842 and was assigned to the Fourth Artillery Regiment as a second lieutenant. During the Mexican War he was wounded at the battle of Monterrey (18–21 Sept. 1846) and in the storming of Mexico City (13–14 Sept. 1847), in the process winning promotion to first lieutenant and being brevetted captain for gallantry in action. In 1849 he married Emily Plympton, the daughter of an army officer. In 1854, tiring of garrison duty along the frontier, he resigned from the army to take a position with the Cooper & Hewitt’s Iron Works in Trenton, New Jersey. In 1858 he moved to New York City, where he was at first superintendent of street improvement, then deputy street commissioner under another future Confederate general, ...
Article
Mullan, John (1830-1909), army explorer, road builder, and lawyer
Kent D. Richards
Mullan, John (31 July 1830–28 December 1909), army explorer, road builder, and lawyer, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of John Mullan, a civil servant, and Mary Bright. The eldest of ten children, Mullan grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, where his father was postmaster at the U.S. Naval Academy. He received his education, beginning at the age of nine, at St. John’s College in Annapolis, from which he received a B.A. in 1847 and an M.A. in 1855. Family tradition holds that Mullan sought a personal interview with President ...
Article
Rickover, Hyman George (1900-1986), nuclear engineer and naval officer
Francis Duncan
Rickover, Hyman George (27 January 1900–08 July 1986), nuclear engineer and naval officer, was born in Makow, Russian Poland, the son of Abraham Rickover, a tailor, and Rachel Unger. Because of poverty and the persecution of Jews, Abraham Rickover fled to the United States. His wife, son, and daughter followed in 1906. They lived in Brooklyn, New York, in straitened circumstances. The family moved to Chicago in 1909 or 1910....
Article
Roberdeau, Isaac (1763-1829), civil and military engineer
Pamela Scott
Roberdeau, Isaac (11 September 1763–15 January 1829), civil and military engineer, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Daniel Roberdeau, a revolutionary war general, and Mary Bostwick. He was educated in Philadelphia and by 1783 was one of four clerks under Joseph Nourse, registrar of the Treasury Department. The same year Roberdeau visited the West Indies with his father before embarking for London, where he studied engineering until 1787. In 1792 Roberdeau married Susan Shippen Blair; they had three daughters....
Article
Squier, George Owen (21 March 1865–24 March 1934), soldier and electrical engineer
Stuart W. Leslie
Squier, George Owen (21 March 1865–24 March 1934), soldier and electrical engineer, was born in Dryden, Michigan, the son of Almon Justice Squier and Emily Gardner, occupations unknown. The family split up after his mother’s death when Squier was seven. He went to live with his grandfather, while his only sister Mary was sent to live with family friends. Squier never married, and he remained devoted to his sister throughout his life. He won admission to West Point by competitive examination and graduated in 1887, seventh in his class (first in merit of discipline), with a commission in the Artillery Corps....
Article
St. John, Isaac Munroe (1827-1880), soldier and engineer
Edward Hagerman
St. John, Isaac Munroe (19 November 1827–07 April 1880), soldier and engineer, was born in Augusta, Georgia, the son of Isaac Richards St. John, a businessman, and Abigail Richardson Munroe. St. John graduated from Yale in 1845, the youngest member of his class. He briefly studied law and worked as assistant editor of the ...
Article
Stone, Charles Pomeroy (1824-1887), soldier and civil engineer
Edward G. Longacre
Stone, Charles Pomeroy (30 September 1824–24 January 1887), soldier and civil engineer, was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, the son of Alpheus Fletcher Stone, a physician, and Fanny Cushing. An 1845 graduate of West Point, he served as an ordnance officer throughout the Mexican War, winning brevets for “gallant and meritorious conduct” at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. In 1853 he married Maria Louisa Clary, with whom he had one child....
12
