MARGARET SHIPPEN MCILVAINE ROEBLING

The Roebling Family Collection spans the period 1824 to 1971, with individual items dating from as early as 1594. The collection is approximately 28 cubic feet in size, comprising 34 manuscript boxes, 9 phase boxes, 12 photograph boxes, 7 oversize boxes and 45 oversize map folders or containers. The Roebling Family Collection is one of two sub-groups of the Roebling Collection, the other being the records of John A. Roebling's Sons Company.

This collection documents the personal lives and accomplishments of four generations of the Roebling family of Trenton, New Jersey, engineers and manufacturers of steel products. Subjects covered include engineering education and work in Prussia in the 1820s; the experience of German immigrants in Pennsylvania in the 1830s; early methods of making wire rope cable; suspension bridge and railroad aqueduct construction; the design and building of the Brooklyn Bridge, including the building of the towers, cable-making, industrial and political issues; the building of various other nineteenth and early twentieth century suspension bridges, including the Niagara Falls Railway Suspension Bridge, Covington and Cincinnati Bridge, the Kentucky River Bridge, and the Hudson River (George Washington) Bridge; the Union Army experience during the Civil War, particularly the battles of Bull Run (2nd), Antietam, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg (including the creation of the Gettysburg Battlefield Park), Petersburg, and the Wilderness; and late nineteenth century commerce and industry, particularly steel and transportation.

Additional subjects are farm life in early nineteenth century Prussia; several generations of engineering education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York; late nineteenth and early twentieth century social life in Brooklyn, New York and Trenton, New Jersey; the role of women in the late nineteenth century; travel in the late nineteenth century including France, Germany, Russia and the United States; world events including the Spanish-American and First World Wars, and developments in international trade and industry; economic conditions in Germany after the First and Second World Wars; and late nineteenth century family life.

The collection includes items in many different, although primarily paper formats: correspondence, writings, journals, scrapbooks, account books, receipts, legal documents, photographs, maps, drawings, reports, genealogies, publications, newspaper clippings, miscellaneous items such as programs, invitations, certificates and cards, and memorabilia. Some material is written in German, all of which has been translated or summarized. Many letters include transcripts. Newspaper clippings have been copied onto acid-neutral paper.

The collection comprises 24 series, the most important of which are: JOHN AUGUSTUS ROEBLING, WASHINGTON A. ROEBLING, EMILY W. ROEBLING, JOHN A. ROEBLING II, FERDINAND W. ROEBLING, and CHARLES SWAN. The most significant materials documenting the design and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge are in the correspondence received by Ferdinand W. Roebling, John A. Roebling's correspondence and engineering documents, and Washington A. Roebling's engineering documents. The most important Civil War materials are in Washington A. Roebling's Civil War Maps and Civil War Materials sub-series, in Emily Warren Roebling's correspondence, and in correspondence received by Charles Swan, the supervisor of the Trenton wire rope business and family friend.

Some material overlaps several series, such as the TRANSCRIPT BOOKS, which contain annotated letters from several series.

The COLLECTED HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS series, rather than documenting the Roebling family, consists of historical material collected by John A. Roebling II.