Roebling Family Collection

John A. Roebling: Early Life

John Augustus Roebling was born in Mühlhausen, Saxony in Prussia on June 12, 1806. He was the third son and fifth child of Christoph Polycarpus Roebling, a tobacconist, and his wife Friederike Dorothea Mueller. John showed academic promise at the Mühlhausen Gymnasium and at a private institute in Erfurt, where he studied higher mathematics with Dr. Ephraim Solomon Unger. He went on to study at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Berlin, at the time the foremost school of engineering in the world. Among his professors was J. F. W. Dietleyn, who taught foundation construction and bridge building, and Johann Albert Eytelwein, who taught hydraulics and dike construction. In Berlin, John was also exposed to the ideas of the renowned philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose lectures he attended, and whose ideas would have a profound impact on his thinking and world view. Roebling completed his education in 1826, immediately finding work as an apprentice engineer with the Prussian government building roads and small bridges in Westphalia.

John Roebling soon became frustrated with the political repression and bureaucracy of the Prussian state. Together with his brother Carl, he organized a group of colonists bound for the United States. The brothers left Mühlhausen in May 1831, arriving in Philadelphia on August 6. After a brief stay in that city, they headed west, eventually settling in Butler County, Pennsylvania, about 25 miles from Pittsburgh where they established a farming community christened Saxonburg. In spite of the demands of clearing land and setting up a new community, John continued to read and study on his own, and even took out patents for various devices including a "steam-plough," an underwater propeller, and a "spark-arrester" to prevent fires in locomotives. In 1836, John married Johanna Herting, the daughter of a fellow settler. The following year, 1837, was a momentous one: the couple's first child, Washington A. was born, John became a naturalized American citizen, and his brother Carl, who had not been well for some years, died of sunstroke. In this year, John himself, discouraged and weary of the hardships of farm life, secured a job as an engineer with the state of Pennsylvania.

John was initially engaged as an aide on the proposed Sandy and Beaver Canal, and continued to work on surveying projects, including the design of the Allegheny and Portage Railroad, and a new railroad across the Allegheny Mountains from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. The portage railroad was an early method of transporting canal boats over mountains through a series of inclined planes. The boats were placed on railway truck beds, which were pulled by ropes. Witnessing an accident in which two men were crushed by an railway truck as a result of a broken rope led Roebling to contemplate the possibility of substituting rope made out of hemp with rope made of twisted wire, a process about which he had read years before in a German periodical. In 1841, John set up a crude "walk" for twisting wire into rope on his Saxonburg farm. This humble beginning would be the foundation of a major industry and the Roeblings family fortune.

The Foundation of the Wire Rope Industry

John Roebling's new wire-rope manufacturing business expanded quickly. As well as making cables for the portage railroads, he made rope for the rigging of ships, ferries, tow lines and dredges. In 1844-1845, Roebling designed and built his first structure, a wire cable suspension aqueduct to carry the Pennsylvania Canal across the Allegheny River. The wooden structure stood until 1861 when the canal was abandoned. Roebling wrote that his work on the aqueduct gave him the idea of using wire rope for railroad bridges. In 1845-46, Roebling built his first bridge, the Smithfield Street Suspension Bridge over the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, on the foundations of a covered bridge destroyed in the great fire of 1844. This bridge, using the towers and roadway suspended on massive wire rope cables which would become so characteristic of John Roebling's bridges, was in use for over 35 years. This project was followed by the Delaware and Lackawaxen aqueducts on the Delaware and Hudson Canal (1847-48), and the Neversink and Rondout (High Falls) aqueducts on the Delaware & Hudson Canal (1848-49). The Neversink Aqueduct, near Port Jervis, New York, is still being used today as a highway bridge.

In 1848, John Roebling moved his family and business to Trenton, New Jersey, in order to be closer to transportation, suppliers and markets. At this point, Washington had been joined by four siblings, Laura, Ferdinand William, Elvira, and Josephine. In August, John purchased 25 acres of land in Chambersburg, one mile south of the center of Trenton, and placed one of his assistants, Charles Swan, in charge of the construction, while keeping in close touch with the process from the aqueduct site. In 1849, Johanna Roebling gave birth to a third son, Charles Gustavus. In 1851, John Roebling began construction on perhaps his most spectacular accomplishment, a railway suspension bridge over the Niagara river. Although in the future suspension bridges would not be used much for railroads, the two-level Niagara bridge was noteworthy because of its dramatic setting, single span, and the weight it was able to support: in many respects it was the first modern suspension bridge.

In the 1850s, John Roebling worked on several other bridges, including the Kentucky River railroad bridge, which was discontinued in 1857 when the finances of the railroad company collapsed; the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge over the Ohio River, commenced 1856; and the Allegheny Bridge at Sixth Street, Pittsburgh (1857-1860). Roebling's fame had grown to the point where the Sixth Street bridge was a commission rather than a competitive bid. During this period, he also upgraded the plant and expanded the family home on the plant site into a grand mansion. In the early 1860s, he became involved in several other projects, including the manufacture of wire for elevator cables: his early investment in the Otis Elevator Company would prove to be one of his most lucrative. He also produced wire for the transatlantic telegraph cable laid by Cyrus W. Field in the late 1860s, a project for which John himself had published a proposal as early as 1850.

Meanwhile, Washington A. Roebling, who had excelled as a teenager at the Trenton Academy, entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Rensselaer was the foremost school of engineering in the United States, although Washington was later highly critical of its punishing, rigorous curriculum. Following his graduation in 1857, Washington A. started to work at the Roebling wire rope mill in Trenton. The following year, he joined his father as an assistant on the Allegheny Bridge in Pittsburgh, his first field engineering. During this period, the Roebling family continued to increase: a daughter, Hannah, who died in infancy, a fourth son, Edmund, who was born in 1854, and another son, William, who died in 1860 at the age of four. The eldest daughter, Laura, married a German immigrant named Anton Gottleib Methfessel. The couple had five children and together ran a boarding school on Staten Island, which was attended by Charles and Edmund Roebling.

Washington A. Roebling and the Civil War

In 1861, the Civil War broke out, initially causing the suspension of many projects, and a slowdown of production at the Roebling factory. Washington A. enlisted in the Union Army, eventually reaching the rank of Colonel by brevet. During the war, Washington was primarily engaged in engineering duties, notably building military suspension bridges over the Rappahannock River and over the Shenandoah River at Harper's Ferry. He was also present at the Second Battle of Bull Run, Antietam, and Chancellorsville, where he observed and reported on enemy movements from a hot air balloon. At Gettysburg, Roebling was instrumental in helping to secure Little Round Top. In 1864, Roebling met the sister of his commander at Gettysburg, General Gouverneur Kemble Warren. Emily Warren, the daughter of Sylvanus Warren and Phoebe Lickley of Cold Spring on the Hudson River in Putnam County, New York, was 21 when she married Washington Roebling in 1865.

John A. Roebling refused to let his second son, Ferdinand, enlist in the war, keeping him in Trenton to manage the wire rope factory. After the initial slump, orders increased and the company secured a contract to supply wire rope for the rigging of U.S. Navy ships. Work also resumed on the Covington and Cincinnati Bridge, which was completed in 1865. After a protracted illness, Johanna Roebling died in 1864. She never learned to speak English well, and according to Washington A., his father preferred to leave her at home when he attended social and business gatherings. John A. Roebling married again, to Lucia W. Cooper, in 1867.

The Brooklyn Bridge:

For years, building a bridge to connect the then separate cities of New York and Brooklyn had been discussed, as bad weather and freezing temperatures frequently disrupted ferry traffic. In 1867, a group of investors chartered the New York Bridge Company, and John A. Roebling, who had proposed a plan for a bridge as early as 1857, was selected as Chief Engineer, assisted by his son Washington. John A. 's first task was to send Washington abroad to study pneumatic caissons, the chambers deep under the river used in sinking the foundations of the bridge towers. Although a few months pregnant, Emily Warren accompanied her husband, and their son, John A. Roebling II, was born in the ancestral town of Mühlhausen. Emily suffered severe bleeding after the her son's birth, possibly caused by an earlier fall, and would have no more children.

By 1869, John A. Roebling had designed the overall layout of the bridge and towers, when, while surveying at the water's edge, his foot was crushed accidentally by an incoming ferry June 28. Refusing doctors' advice that the foot be amputated, Roebling would only allow the injury to be treated by hydropathy. Tetanus developed, and Roebling died an excruciating death from lockjaw on July 22. Shortly thereafter, Washington A. Roebling was appointed Chief Engineer in his father's place.

Washington would be responsible for designing the details of the bridge and supervising the construction based on his father's plans. The construction of the bridge had four basic stages: 1) sinking the caissons and building the masonry towers 2) spinning the four massive cables which connected the two towers 3) hanging the suspension ropes; and 4) laying the roadway. The first stage was by far the most challenging, as it involved performing heavy labor in extreme conditions deep under the surface. At this time, little was known of caisson disease, popularly known as the bends, caused by a too rapid decrease in air pressure after a stay in compressed atmosphere. Caisson sickness was characterized by extreme pain, vomiting, paralysis, and in some cases, death. Several men died from working in the caissons: the overall death toll during the course of the bridge project, including falls and other accidents, was estimated at 20. Washington A. first developed symptoms of the disease himself in 1871 after an extended stay fighting a fire in the Brooklyn caisson. He was afflicted again, more severely, and nearly died while supervising work on the deeper New York caisson the following year. In the summer of 1873, Washington A. and Emily went abroad to the spas of Wiesbaden, Germany, trying to no avail to find a cure. The lingering effects of the disease, combined with the financial, political, and psychological strain of the bridge project, would make Roebling a virtual invalid for the next ten years.

The building of the Brooklyn Bridge, from its inception in 1867 to its completion in 1883 was fraught with scandals, cost overruns, and delays. The prominence of the project led to extensive coverage in the press, rumors and exaggerations. To ensure the initial cooperation of the New York and Brooklyn politicians-the infamous William M. (Boss) Tweed was an original member of the Bridge Committee-thousands of dollars changed hands. Washington A. 's debility added fodder to the rumor mills. For years, Emily Roebling would act as Washington emissary to the outside world, copying and transmitting his instructions from the family's home in Brooklyn, where Washington could famously see the construction through a telescope, to the bridge site. Her actual influence on the design and construction of the bridge is unknown. Key to the project was certainly the engineering staff: Francis Collingwood, Jr., E. F. Farrington, Wilhelm Hildenbrand, C.C. Martin, George McNulty, Col. William H. Paine, Samuel Probasco, and others. Emily Warren, however, skillfully served as her husband's spokeswoman and public face; together they weathered accusations that Roebling was using his influence to have his family business manufacture the wire for the bridge cables (in the event the major contract went to a Brooklyn firm which did indeed prove to be corrupt); and a nearly successful attempt to remove Roebling as Chief Engineer in 1876-1877.

After the bridge was dedicated with much fanfare in 1883-Emily Roebling was the first person to drive across it-her husband, whose health was gradually improving, remained in semi-retirement. He had been made president of the Roebling business upon its incorporation in 1876, but because of his absorption with the bridge construction, his brother Charles assumed the position the following year. After the completion of the bridge, Washington and Emily moved for four years to Troy, New York, where their son was attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 1888, the family moved back to Trenton, where John A. began to work at the mill. Emily worked closely with New York architect G.E. Hamey to design a Tudor-style mansion, with a Tiffany stain-glassed window depicting the Brooklyn Bridge, at 191 West State Street. The mansion, completed in 1892 and torn down after the Second World War, is now the site of the New Jersey State Library. Emily because a prominent Trenton hostess; indeed Washington often complained about her expenditures. She also traveled to Europe twice, visiting Moscow in 1896 where she was one of the few Americans present at the coronation of Czar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra. She also completed the special one-year New York University Women's Law Course, and edited the diary of a Putnam County preacher, Silas Constant, writing an additional chapter about her family. Emily died of stomach cancer in 1903 and is buried in Cold Spring. In 1908, Washington A. married Cornelia Witsell Farrow, a young widow from Charleston, South Carolina.

John A. Roebling's Sons Company

While Washington A. Roebling was at work on the Brooklyn Bridge, the Roebling family business had developed into a major corporation. Upon his death, John A., who had been sole proprietor, left the business to his four sons and requested that they associate with Charles Swan as business partner. John A. had invested minimally in the plant, viewing himself more as a field engineer. Three-quarters of his wealth was in securities: as was customary at the time, he received part of his fee in stocks in the railroad companies for whom he worked, and also purchased bonds in the municipalities where the projects were located. Friction soon developed between the brothers over accepting Swan as a partner. Charles Swan eventually resigned from the company without a pension. There was also conflict over the role and treatment of the youngest brother, Edmund, who may have suffered from mental or emotional problems. After working for a few years as assistant bookkeeper at the company, Edmund moved to New York City, where he remained for the rest of his life living off his stock in the company (10 percent as opposed to his brothers' 30 percent each). He never married and died in 1930, leaving his estate of 14 million dollars to his twelve nieces and nephews.

Ferdinand W. Roebling

Under the leadership of the second two Roebling brothers, Ferdinand W. and Charles G., the family business developed into a major national corporation. Ferdinand, who like Washington had studied at the Trenton Academy, went on to the Philadelphia Polytechnic Institute, specializing in chemistry, and then studied at Columbian College, now George Washington University from 1858 to 1859. Ferdinand W.'s skills lay in the financial rather than the engineering side of the business. He took over the investing and marketing, for example taking advantage of the fact that his brother was Chief Engineer of the famed Brooklyn Bridge, he reproduced images of the bridge on company publications. Upon incorporation in 1876, Ferdinand W. assumed the position of Secretary-Treasurer, which he would hold until his death in 1917. Ferdinand established the company's first sales office in New York in 1870, followed by offices in major cities throughout the country such as San Francisco and Chicago. In the face of growing competition, he also diversified operations, producing more of the materials the company needed and increasing the variety of finished products.

Ferdinand W. invested widely, both for himself and family members, and held directorships in numerous corporations such as the Universal Paper Bag Company, the Otis Elevator Company, Inter-state Railways, Public Services Corporation of New Jersey, and several banks and railroads. While his investments were generally successful, he did lose substantial amounts of money in ventures such as Vitrite and Luminoid, an early electric lighting company, which faced competition from Thomas Edison's enterprises. Ferdinand was also active in the Trenton community where he lived, like Washington, on West State Street. He served as original trustee and first president of the board of the Trenton Public Library, and as chairman of the building commission for the new Trenton City Hall, completed in 1910. Ferdinand's hobbies were hunting, fishing, and farming, which he pursued at Oaklands, a farm that he purchased outside of Trenton. In 1867, Ferdinand W. married Margaret G. Allison, the daughter of Thomas S. Allison, Secretary of State of New Jersey from 1851 to 1861. The couple had four children: Karl G., Ferdinand W., Jr., Margaret (Perrine), and Augusta Henrietta (White). Ferdinand enjoyed politics, preferring to serve as a behind-the-scenes power broker, although he was chosen several times as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. He was reportedly instrumental in helping his brother-in-law, Frank O. Briggs, be elected U.S. Senator in 1907.

Charles Gustavus Roebling

Ferdinand's younger brother Charles followed Washington A. to Rensselaer, graduating in 1871. He immediately entered the business, in the engineering and manufacturing department, gradually taking over the engineering work from Charles Swan. Reportedly the most like his father of all the brothers, Charles A. would serve as president of John A. Roebling's Sons from 1877 until his death in 1918. During this period he expanded the main plant in Chambersburg, and developed another facility on the old site of the Buckthom Fence Company on Jersey Avenue in Trenton, which became known as the Lower Works. The decision by the Roeblings to manufacture their own open-hearth steel rather than relying on suppliers led to Charles G.'s greatest accomplishment, the creation of a steel plant and company town at Kinkora, in Burlington County about ten miles south of Trenton, which was renamed Roebling, New Jersey, and hailed as a model industrial town.

During his tenure, Charles G. designed and built all the factories and machinery at the Roebling works, coping with frequent fires (some reputedly set deliberately) which necessitated frequent rebuilding. He expanded into the areas of electrical wire making, flay wire making, and continue his father's early interest in the manufacture of telegraph and elevator cables. He also designed and built the Oil City Suspension Bridge at Oil City, Pennsylvania and oversaw the manufacturing and placing of cables on the Williamsburg Suspension Bridge in Brooklyn, and the Parkersburg Bridge over the Ohio River in West Virginia (1916). In a more exotic vein, in 1880, Roebling was responsible for the transportation and erection in Central Park of "Cleopatra's Needle," an obelisk which was a gift from the khedive of Egypt.

More reserved that Ferdinand, Charles G. was elected to the State Legislature in 1893, but after one term declined to run for re-election. He preferred to pursue his interests in music and the cultivation of orchids in the conservatory of his mansion on State Street, near those of his brothers. In 1877, Carl G. married Sarah Mahon Ormsby of Pittsburgh. The couple had five children, including one dying in infancy. Sadly, Sarah herself only lived until 1887. The couple's oldest son, Harrison, died at age five, while their second son, Washington Augustus III, died in 1912 in the wreck of the Titanic. Of their daughters, Emily married into the prominent Cadwalader family of Philadelphia, while Helen married Carrol Sargent Tyson, Jr.

The Third Generation and Beyond

The family business would be carried into the third generation by Ferdinand W.'s sons, Karl Gustavus and Ferdinand William Roebling, Jr. Born in Trenton in 1873, Karl G. studied at Lawrenceville School and Princeton University. He went into the mill upon graduation, and became associated with the sales department, frequently visiting the branch stores in other parts of the country. Upon the death of his father in 1917, Karl G. became second vice-president, and in 1918, president following the death of his uncle Charles. G. Roebling. Karl G. led the company during the First World War, when the demands of war production put tremendous strain on the Roebling plants, although to their ultimate economic advantage. When the U.S. government assumed control over the production of iron and steel as part of the war effort, Karl G. was chosen as Chairman of the Committee of the Iron and Steel Institute. This period of stress may have contributed to Karl G. 's sudden collapse and death from a stroke in 1921. He left a widow, Blanche Estabrook, and three children. Upon his death, Washington Roebling, now aged 84, came out of retirement to take over the reins of the company. Because of the demands of the growing highway system, Washington A. was able to supply cable wires for several new structures during his tenure, including the Rondout Creek Bridge in Kingston, New York (1922) and the Bear Mountain Bridge on the Hudson near West Point (1924).

Karl G. Roebling's brother, Ferdinand William, Jr., born in 1878, studied engineering at Lehigh University. He went into the company in 1901, where he worked on plans for the Williamsburg Bridge and other structures. Following the death of his brother Karl, Ferdinand W., Jr. became vice-president of the company, and president after his uncle Washington's death in 1926. Ferdinand was succeeded as president by his first cousin William A. Anderson, who had been general manager of the company. Ferdinand W., Jr. married Ruth Metcalf in 1905, and had two children, Joseph Metcalf Roebling and Ferdinand William Roebling III. Along with Charles Roebling Tyson, the son of Charles G.'s daughter Helen, both of Ferdinand W. Roebling, Jr.'s sons entered the company. Charles Tyson became president in 1944 at the age of 29.

Washington and Emily Roebling's son, John Augustus Roebling II took a very different path. After working briefly at the company, he devoted himself to the role of gentleman amateur scientist, performing chemical experiments in his private laboratory. He also inherited his father's immense mineral collection, which he eventually left to the Smithsonian. John A. II married Margaret Shippen McIlvaine of Trenton, a grand-daughter of Commander William Edgar Hunt of the U.S. Navy, and had three sons: Siegfried, Donald, and Paul. Paul and Siegfried would both die prematurely, in 1918 and 1936 respectively. The family lived for some years in Asheville, North Carolina, and later lived in "Boulderwood," an estate in Bernardsville, New Jersey. Margaret McIlvaine Roebling died in 1930; John remarried, to Helen Price of England in 1931. A wealthy man, he received several awards for philanthropy and maintained a keen interest in his family's legacy.

In 1952, faced with escalating costs, competition and labor demands, Charles Tyson was instructed by the board to sell John A. Roebling's Sons Company. The manufacturing plants were sold to Colorado Fuel & Iron on January 1, 1953. The company's investment account continued as a family holding company called the Roebling Securities Company until it was liquidated in 1960.

1806

John A. Roebling (JAR) born (Johann August Röbling) in Mühlhausen, Thuringia, Prussia, 12 June.

1826

Graduated Royal Polytechnic Institute, Berlin.

1831

Emigrated to U.S.A., leading party of relatives and others; founded farming community of Saxonburg northeast of Pittsburgh.

1836

Married Johanna Herting.

1837

Washington A. Roebling (WAR) born in Saxonburg, 26, May. JAR naturalized U.S. citizen, 30 September.

1837

JAR first engineering work in U.S.: canal surveying.

1840

Laura Roebling born 24 June.

1841

JAR made first wire rope at Saxonburg, for haulage on canal inclined planes, launching an industry.

1842

Ferdinand W. Roebling born 27 February.

1844

Elvira Roebling born 22 May.

1844-1845

JAR designed, received contract for, and built suspension canal aqueduct over Allegheny at Pittsburgh, his first structure.

1845-1846

JAR built Smithfield St. Suspension Bridge over Monongahela at Pittsburgh.

1847

Josephine Roebling born 22 March.

1847-1848

JAR built Delaware and Lackawaxen aqueducts, Delaware & Hudson Canal.

1848

JAR removed wire rope works and home to Trenton, New Jersey.

1848-1849

JAR built Neversink and Rondout (High Falls) aqueducts, Delaware & Hudson Canal.

1849

Charles Gustavus Roebling born 9 December.

1851-1855

JAR works on construction of Niagara railway-highway suspension bridge.

1854

Edmund Roebling born 1 January.

1854-1857

JAR works on aborted Kentucky River railroad bridge.

1856

Covington and Cincinnati Bridge commenced.

1857-1860

JAR works on construction of Allegheny Bridge at Sixth Street, Pittsburgh.

1858

WAR joins JAR as assistant on above, his first field engineering.

1858

Work on Covington and Cincinnati Bridge suspended.

1863-1867

Covington and Cincinnati Bridge recommenced, completed.

1864

Johanna Herting Roebling dies in Trenton 22 November.

1865

WAR joins JAR on Covington and Cincinnati Bridge as assistant chief engineer.

1867

JAR appointed chief engineer of the New York Bridge Company (Brooklyn Bridge).

1867

JAR marries Lucia W. Cooper.

1869

JAR's foot is crushed during survey of Brooklyn Bridge's center line, 28 June.

1869

JAR dies of lockjaw resulting from above incident, 22 July, age 63.

1869

WAR appointed chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, succeeding JAR, August.

1908

JAR memorial statue unveiled, Trenton.

1837

Born Washington Augustus Roebling in Saxonburg, Butler County, Pennsylvania, on May 26th, eldest child of John Augustus and Johanna (Herting) Roebling

1849

Moves to Trenton, New Jersey, where father has recently constructed a factory to make wire rope

1850s

Attends Trenton Academy

1854-1857

Attends Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York; graduates with degree in civil engineering

1857-1860

Works with father on Allegheny Suspension Bridge, Pittsburgh

1861

Enlists as a private in the National Guard of New Jersey, Company A, on April 16th; discharged in order to enlist as a private in 6th New York Independent Battery on July 16th(?)

1862

Breveted Second Lieutenant in the 6th New York Independent Battery on January 23rd; serves on the staff of General Irvin McDowell and later on the staff of General John Pope; constructs suspension bridges across the Rappahannock River and across the Shenandoah River at Harper's Ferry; present at the Second Battle of Bull Run and at the battles of South Mountain and Antietam

1863

Present at the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg; serves under General Gouverneur K. Warren, commander of the 5th Corps, during the Overland Campaign

1864

Present at the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House and the Crater; breveted Lieutenant Colonel on December 6th for gallant service before Richmond

1865

Resigns from commission in army on January 1st; marries Emily Warren, of Cold Spring, New York, sister of former commander General Warren, on January 18th; breveted Colonel of volunteers on March 13th for gallant service during the war

1865-1867

Travels to Cincinnati, Ohio, and works with father on Cincinnati-Covington Bridge

1867-1868

Travels through England, France and Germany to learn about pneumatic caisson foundations (used later in constructing the Brooklyn Bridge)

1867

Only child, John Augustus Roebling II, is born to Washington Augustus and Emily (Warren) Roebling on November 21st, in Mühlhausen, Germany

1869

John A. Roebling, Washington's father, dies on July 22nd from tetanus; inherits, along with his three brothers, father's wire rope business (which then becomes known as John A. Roebling's Sons); succeeds father as chief engineer for the New York Bridge Company on the Brooklyn Bridge project

1872

Contracts caisson disease while working on the tower foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge

1876

Incorporates wire rope business with brothers to form John A. Roebling's Sons Company; serves as the company's first president

1877

Resigns from presidency of the wire rope company

1883

Brooklyn Bridge formally opened to public and dedicated on May 24th

1884-1888

Resides in Troy, New York, while son John attends Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

1888

Returns to Trenton; elected vice president of John A. Roebling's Sons Company

1903

Emily Warren Roebling, Washington's wife, dies on February 28th

1908

Marries Mrs. Cornelia Witsell Farrow, of Charleston, South Carolina, on April 21st

1921

Resigns as vice president to become president of John A. Roebling's Sons Company on May 29th, upon the death of company president (and nephew) Karl G. Roebling

1926

Dies in Trenton on July 21st

1843

Born Emily Warren in Cold Spring, Putnam County, New York, to Sylvanus and Phoebe (Hickley) Warren, on September 23rd

1858-1860

Studies at Georgetown Visitation Convent, Washington, D.C.

1865

Marries Washington Augustus Roebling, of Trenton, New Jersey, on January 18th

1867-1868

Travels through England, France and Germany

1867

Her only child, John Augustus Roebling II, is born in Mühlhausen, Germany, on November 21st

1872-1883

Assists her stricken husband in directing construction of the East River ("Brooklyn") Bridge

1873

Travels to Germany with her husband in April, returning in the fall; moves into new home at 110 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, New York

1873-1876

Resides in Trenton with her husband and son

1876?

Moves back to Columbia Heights residence in Brooklyn with family

1882

Brother, Civil War general Gouverneur Kemble Warren, dies

1883

East River (New York and Brooklyn) Bridge opens on May 24th; is the first person to ride across the bridge

1884-1888

Resides with family in Troy, New York, while son John attends Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

1884

Travels in Europe

1888

Moves back to Trenton, New Jersey

1892

Moves into new Trenton mansion on West State Street, on the banks of the Delaware River

1893

Serves as secretary-treasurer of the New Jersey Board of Lady Managers for the Columbian Exposition of 1893

1894

Elected to Sorosis, a women's organization in New York City

1895-1896

Serves as president of the board of trustees of Evelyn College, a short-lived women's college in or near Princeton, New Jersey

1896

Travels to Europe alone; is presented to Queen Victoria; witnesses the coronation of Czar Nicholas II of Russia

1896-1897

Travels in the United States, lecturing on her European experiences

1899

Attends the women's law class at New York University and at her graduation ceremony on March 30th delivers speech entitled, "A Wife's Disabilities" for which she received a 50 dollar prize; the essay subsequently published in the Albany Law Journal

1899-1901?

Serves as vice president general of the Daughters of the American Revolution, but subsequently declines nomination for president general due to poor health

1903

Dies in Trenton on February 28th, 1903

1867

Born in Mûhlhausen, Germany, the only child of Washington Augustus and Emily (Warren) Roebling, on November 21st

1884-1888

Attends Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York, and graduates (as president of his class), with a degree in civil engineering

1888

Moves to Trenton, New Jersey

1889

Marries Margaret Shippen McIlvaine ("Rita") of Trenton on June 12th

1889-1897

Resides in Oracle, Arizona

1897 or 1898-circa 1909

Lives in Asheville, North Carolina

1890

First child, Siegfried, is born to John Augustus and Margaret McIlvaine Roebling on December 29th (two later children: Paul, born May 1, 1893, and Donald, born November 15, 1908)

1898

Serves in the First Regimental U.S. Volunteer Engineers during the Spanish American War.

1909-1952

Resides at "Boulderwood" in Bernardsville, New Jersey

1930

Margaret, John's wife, dies in Bernardsville on October 23rd

1931

Marries Helen Price of Shropshire, England, on December 30th

1952

Dies in Bernardsville on February 2nd

1842

Born Ferdinand William Roebling in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, second son of John Augustus and Johanna (Herting) Roebling, on February 27th

1850s

Attends the Trenton Academy; studies chemistry at the Philadelphia Polytechnic Institute

1858-1859

Attends Columbian College (later George Washington University) in Washington, D.C.

1859

Begins work as secretary in wire rope department of father's wire rope factory

1867

Marries Margaret Gatzmer Allison, daughter of Thomas S. Allison (former Secretary of State of New Jersey) on March 14th

1869

Inherits one quarter of father's wire rope business and forms John A. Roebling's Sons with brothers Washington, Charles and Edmund; first child, Margaret Johanna Roebling, born on July 22nd (three later children: Karl Gustavus, born July 7, 1873; Augusta Henrietta, born September 19, 1875; and Ferdinand William, Jr., born September 29, 1878)

1876

Incorporates wire rope business (with his three brothers) to form John A. Roebling's Sons Company, and is elected secretary and treasurer

1878

Forms New Jersey Wire Cloth Company (with his brothers), serving as treasurer

1914

Margaret (Allison) Roebling, Ferdinand's wife, dies on October 2nd

1917

Dies in Trenton on March 16th

1849

Born Charles Gustavus Roebling on December 9th in Trenton, New Jersey, the third son of John Augustus and Johanna (Herting) Roebling

1869

Inherits one quarter of his father's wire rope business and with his brothers, Washington, Ferdinand and Edmund, forms John A. Roebling's Sons

1869-1871

Attends Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York; graduates with a degree in civil engineering

1871

Begins to work in John A. Roebling's Sons with brother, Ferdinand, and Charles Swan

1876

Incorporates wire rope business with his three brothers to form John A. Roebling's Sons Company, and is elected vice president

1877

Elected president of John A. Roebling's Sons Company and serves in office until his death; marries Sarah Mahon Ormsby, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 25th; first child, Harrison Ormsby Roebling, is born on November 7th (four later children: Emily Margaretta, born September 9, 1879; Washington Augustus III born March 25, 1881; Helen, born December 15, 1884; plus one child that died in infancy)

1878

Forms New Jersey Wire Cloth Company (with his brothers), serving as president

1880

Designs machinery for the moving of Cleopatra's Needle (obelisk) from Egypt to Central Park in New York

1893

Serves as a member of the New Jersey state legislature

1903

Produces cables for the Williamsburg Suspension Bridge across the East River in New York City

1918

Dies in Trenton on October 5th (as a result of Bright's disease?)