Category Archives: Roeblings

Robert Roosevelt’s Brooklyn Bridge

09 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in Roeblings

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484px-Robert_Roosevelt_-_Brady-HandyThe Roeblings and the Roosevelts are two of the most prestigious families in American history. There was also a connection between the two clans: Robert Roosevelt, Teddy’s uncle, was a trustee in the Brooklyn Bridge Company. Today Robert is less well-known than other Roosevelts, but he was a very prominent figure in Gilded Age America . He was a U.S. Congressman in the early 1870s and later an alderman and diplomat. Roosevelt was a Tammany Democrat, but also a reformer. He helped take down Boss Tweed’s infamous Ring.

Roosevelt joined the trustees in June 1879 when the construction of the bridge was already very much underway. He was an active member of the board who attended meetings and read financial documents with a lawyer’s care. Roosevelt was involved in a very public dispute with the Edgemoor Iron Company over the business’s inability to provide material in a timely manner. He even challenged Washington A. Roebling’s abilities as Chief Engineer, insisting that he file regular reports to the trustees. Roebling dutifully complied. Roosevelt was occasionally too clever for his own good. He once innocently wondered if the extra steel in the bridge might make it more susceptible to collapse. Roebling explained that the added weight provided additional, not less, stability. The Brooklyn Bridge opened to great fanfare in May 1883. When it did however, Robert Roosevelt was not involved in any official capacity; he had very resigned at a trustee’s meeting on June 12, 1882.

(Matthew Brady image/Theodore Roosevelt’s uncle Robert was an important lawyer, politician, and reformer. Roosevelt was a conscientious trustee, but his passion for weeding out municipal corruption sometimes led him to challenge the Roeblings unfairly.)

Washington Roebling’s wars

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in Roeblings, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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Major General Joseph Hooker's headquarters at the Chancellorsville house, where Washington A. Roebling served during that battle

Major General Joseph Hooker’s headquarters at the Chancellor House, where Washington A. Roebling served during that battle

Last night I finished Ernest B. Furgurson’s Chancellorsville 1863: The Souls of the Brave. My interest in reading the book was two-fold. First, I am trying to get a better sense of what the New York regiments dealt with during the Civil War. One of my objectives in the Roosevelt Sr. book is to explain how the homefront and the battlefront intertwined. Also, I am trying to nail down my Roebling history a little tighter for my volunteer work at the museum. I was always aware of Gouvernor K. Warren and Washington A. Roebling’s place on Joseph Hooker’s staff. Furgurson’s book fleshed that out a little more. Warren was Roebling’s immediate superior and eventual brother-in-law. After the war Roebling was the younger half of the father-son team that built the Brooklyn Bridge.

Less than a year after Chancellorsville and Gettysburg Warren was placed in command of the V Corps after Meade’s restructuring of the Army of the Potomac. Roebling followed. Until the Overland Campaign the battles in the East were primarily campaigns of movement. The trench warfare of 1864 was closer to what took place on Europe’s Western Front a half century later. Roebling lived until 1926 and would have been conscious of the parallels between the two. We know he didn’t think too much of Ulysses S. Grant, whom he called Useless Grant. The Roebling business was active in helping the Allied cause during the Great War, primarily in the making of submarine netting. Roebling knew war intimately. I cannot help but wonder what he thought about the carnage in Europe after having gone through it himself all those decades earlier.

(sketch by Edwin Forbes, courtesy Library of Congress)