|
Last
month's trivia question drew a response from Mrs. Coley
of West Memphis, Arkansas, who generously provided us with
this very personal and poignant account of the life and
career of her eminent ancestor.
 Ellet
was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, January 1, 1810, the
son of shopkeeper Charles Ellet and Mary Israel Ellet, a highly
educated woman for her day. They soon moved to a farm 25 miles
from Philadelphia. This proved to be a hardship for Mary, but
it instilled in her a determination to do the best she could
for her children. This was especially true for Charles, as it
was abundantly clear that he was not cut out to be a farmer.
With little formal schooling, Ellet was a voracious reader and
showed an early aptitude for math. Mary encouraged those abilities
and supported him as he followed his dreams into a world far
different from the one where he had spent his childhood.
Ellet's career and the timing of the Erie Canal in 1825 were fortuitous. The
completion of the canal launched a national mania for more inland waterways.
Until then, Americans had only read about the infrastructure that already crisscrossed
Europe. It was at this time that Ellet left the family farm at age 17 and immediately
found work surveying the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. Work on the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal followed, where Judge Benjamin Wright of Erie Canal fame was appointed
chief engineer.
Ellet soon began to realize that getting off the riverbank, literally and figuratively,
would require something beyond his ingenuity. In 1830, with a letter of introduction
to the Marquis de Lafayette, Ellet sailed to Paris. Lafayette and the American
Ambassador to France pulled strings for Ellet to attend lectures at the Ecole
des Ponts et Chausses with other French engineering students. He also took
the opportunity to examine public works in the vicinity. While touring southern
France the next spring, Ellet observed reservoir and suspension bridge construction
with special interest. By observing a suspension bridge under construction over
the Loire River, he grasped the concepts behind how the wire cables for these
bridges were utilized. His application of these techniques became two of his
most outstanding contributions to American civil engineering.
When Ellet returned to the United States, he made several suspension bridge proposals
but was repeatedly turned down. His youth, inexperience, and his novel ideas
were the rational reasons. Instead, Judge Wright put him to work surveying the
western end of the New York and Erie Railroad. In 1835, Wright was appointed
chief engineer of the James River and Kanawha Canal Company (JRKCC) in Lynchburg,
Virginia. The project was intended to connect the Tidewater to the Ohio River.
Wright hired his son and Ellet as assistants. Ellet was put in charge of the
segment between Lynchburg and the Tye River.
The move to Lynchburg brought romance into the life of the engineer,
who had previously never sought it. Ellet was not a sociable man
and small talk bored him. However, he was forced to attend a formal
occasion with JRKCC president Joseph Carrington Cabell, Judge
William Daniel, Sr., and other Lynchburg elite. Daniel's youngest
daughter Elvira, known as Ellie, observed Ellet standing in the
foyer. The frail, but lovely, dark-eyed brunette whispered to
her sister that the six foot two, slender framed engineer, with
dark, thick hair and discerning eyes was the handsomest man she
had ever seen. He was smitten with her as well. Ellet and Ellie
married October 31, 1837 at Point of Honor, her childhood home.
Their first child, Mary Virginia, was born there two years later.
During the next decade, Ellet concentrated on building the first important wire
suspension bridges in the United States. The first over the Schuylkill River
at Fairmount, in Philadelphia, 1842; another at Niagara Falls, 1848; and a third
over the Ohio River at Wheeling, in 1849. The bridge at Wheeling, which connected
the National Road, was his crown jewel. At 1,010 feet, it was then the longest
suspension bridge in the world. The town turned out for a grand celebration and
the builder was revered. Ellet and his family lived in Wheeling longer than at
any other location during his career.
Ellet's work was often plagued with controversy and the Wheeling Bridge project
was no exception. Four months before the structure was completed, the Commonwealth
of Pennsylvania sued the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company on behalf of steamboat
interests in Pittsburgh. The litigation introduced Ellet to the opposition's
counsel, Edwin M. Stanton. In the final analysis, Congress sided with the bridge
company, and the President signed into law a bill that declared the bridge a
portion of a post road and therefore not subject to the decree of the Supreme
Court. Nevertheless, bitter seeds had been sown between the bridge engineer and
the future Secretary of War.
At this point, Ellet's attention turned to the extensive overflows of the Mississippi
and Ohio Rivers. No better example exists of his fascination with the nation's
waterways than when he changed his oldest son's name to Charles (Charlie) Rivers
Ellet. In 1850, Congress commissioned a survey of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers
that would lead to a practical plan to combat inundation. Ellet conducted his
work simultaneously and independently of topographical engineers Colonel Stephen
H. Long and Captain Andrew A. Humphreys. Ellet finished first, on October 31,
1851. He argued for stronger and higher levees and recommended the creation of
artificial reservoirs on tributary streams in order to control discharge into
the Mississippi. His plan was considered controversial and the Corps of Engineers
rejected it.
This study was originally published as a Senate document in 1852, and later elaborated
in Ellet's Report on the Overflows of the Delta of the Mississippi (Washington,
1852) and The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers (Philadelphia, 1853); Physical
Geography of the Mississippi Valley was published by the Smithsonian Institution
in1849. Not until 1928 would a comparably comprehensive flood control plan be
published by the federal government.
From 1850 to 1853 Ellet was chief engineer of the Hempfield Railroad and the
Virginia Central Railroad, in addition to other mentioned projects. A second
daughter, Nina, had been born in1849, and son Willie was born in the summer of
1854. Ellie was spending winters in Washington DC. Although a growing family
and Ellet's mounting list of projects and responsibilities were taking their
toll, he could not refuse a third trip to Europe when the ailing railroad companies
asked him to go in an effort to secure credit and supplies.
In Europe, eleven-year-old Charlie was sent to a boarding school in Paris. Ellie
remained in Frankfurt with Mary Virginia, Nina, and Willie, while Ellet crossed
the continent taking care of business. The Crimean War was in progress, and it
was during this time that the engineer conceived the idea of a steam battering
ram. It was not a complicated design. Simply put, he wanted to strengthen the
boat's hull and send them with "force against the sides of other vessels." In
1855 he wrote a pamphlet outlining his ram ideas, which marked the beginning
of a seven-year campaign to convince the United States government to use them
for national defense.
On their return from Europe, the family settled for good in the Washington DC
area on a small farm they called Clifton, in what is now Georgetown. Children
Nina and Willie were still young and remained at home, but Charlie was the rambunctious
one. He was soon enrolled in Georgetown College and later Virginia Military Institute,
from which he was expelled for getting into mischief. Charlie was then sent to
live with Uncle Edward Ellet in Illinois where he began to train for the medical
profession and was introduced to the 1860's version of "tough love."
Daughter Mary Virginia was never a problem. She, like her father, was largely
self-taught. She learned French on her own while in Europe. She read a great
deal. She helped her mother with the younger children. She made occasional trips
to Virginia to spend time with her relatives. She wrote more letters to her father
during the war years than anyone else.
Life changed drastically after Fort Sumter, when Ellet offered his services as
an engineer to the President and the Secretary of the Navy. He was prepared to
argue, persuade, and harangue for a position to assist the war effort. After
all, no one knew the topography of Virginia better than he did. He had strategies
to cut off Confederate supplies by rail, build floating bridges on the Potomac,
and he was even willing to lead a Pennsylvania infantry. Additionally, he had
never let up on his steam ram plan for national defense. His offers were ignored
with an insulting silence, even by General George B. McClellan.
Initially, Ellet thought his overtures to "Little Mac" would be well received.
Both men were engineers, both had held high positions with railroad companies,
both were from Pennsylvania, and both had observed war strategies during the
Crimean War. Ellet's efforts to contribute to the war effort were to no avail.
The General's disregard of a senior engineer sent Ellet into a tailspin. He wrote
a highly critical letter to the editor of the New York Times about McClellan's
procrastination. Ellet's views were later published in a pamphlet titled, The
Army of the Potomac and Its Mismanagement.
Ellet observed that the Army of the Potomac enjoyed being a daily parade brigade
while the Southern troops regularly received food, ammunition, and additional
troops from the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. He simply proposed that a strategic
destruction of Virginia's rail lines would stop the war and save lives. But he
determined the General was apparently "unconscious" about where the enemy was
and what they were doing, especially after they stole the Baltimore and Ohio
engines away, within view of Federal campfires.
McClellan's dawdling included the consistent call for more men. Ellet wrote "You
have more men and equipment here now than Napoleon had when he prostrated Prussia
in a three weeks campaign. You have more men here on the Potomac than he moved
when he marched to the heart of Austria, occupied Vienna, and dictated laws to
the sovereigns of Europe." The New York Times eventually cast its approval for
Ellet's critique, but the federal government continued to ignore him until March
9, 1862. The overture from the politicians had nothing to do with McClellan.
The ironclad ram Merrimac had destroyed a fleet of Union boats at the Battle
of Hampton Roads. This battle did more for Ellet's ram proposal than anything
he said or could have said.
Strategically, Stanton decided that the Union must take control of the Mississippi
River. If the North hoped to put down the rebellion, it must cut off the Confederate
source of trade and transportation. Putting together a fleet of steam battering
rams became an emergency and Charles Ellet, Jr. was their man. Stanton told his
cohorts that he didn't know of anyone else to whom he could entrust the mission.
Obviously, at this point, Stanton was over their Wheeling discord.
Ellet oversaw the conversion of nine steamboats into speedier, less cumbersome
ramming vessels than the ironclads. Stanton commissioned the engineer a colonel,
so that he could command the fleet. Ellet requested that his youngest brother,
Lieutenant Colonel Alfred W. Ellet, be allowed to join him as second in command.
The crew consisted of fifty soldiers from Alfred's Illinois unit, ordinary river
boatmen, and other Ellet relatives, including son Charlie.
On the Mississippi River at Memphis, June 6, 1862, Colonel Ellet, aboard Queen
of the West, and Alfred, aboard Monarch, joined forces with Captain Charles H.
Davis's gunboats. Union ram Switzerland ran aground and the others coming from
behind, obeying orders, did not get out of formation, thus leaving the ramming
to Charles and Alfred. Nevertheless, all the Rebel rams but one were sunk, burned,
or run into the Arkansas side. The Battle of Memphis barely lasted an hour.
Ellet was shot in the knee. The wound was not considered life threatening at
first. He penned a letter to Mary Virginia saying little about the battle, but
giving accolades to Charlie for removing the Confederate flag from atop the Memphis
Post Office and raising the National banner. "One man drew a pistol and proclaimed
himself an officer of the Confederate Army, and would tear that flag down. Charles
told him that if he advanced his foot to the steps he would kill him... The whole
bearing of the boy was manly in extreme... I enclose you a piece of the cord
from the wounded leg side of my pantaloons for Nina... My dear daughter you have
no need to be ashamed of your kindred today."
Writing to Ellie, Ellet said, "after the doctor removed the ball from near my
knee, my anxiety is now for you, and Mary and our dear little ones. Join me here
my dear Wife and let us study out the future and talk over the past... Forever
yours, Charles Ellet, Jr."
Stanton sent the "thanks of the Department" to Ellet and his men. But as the
days went by, Ellet's condition deteriorated. Stanton soon had the heartbreaking
task of informing Ellie that her seriously ill husband was being brought to Cairo.
She and daughter Mary Virginia rushed to meet him there. But when the boat docked
on June 21, Ellet was dead.
His body was taken to Independence Hall where he lay in state until he was interred
June 27 at Laurel Hill Cemetery. Ellie died the next day from exhaustion and
a broken heart. Charlie had remained to serve with Uncle Alfred and they ran
reconnaissance missions during the months preceding the Battle at Vicksburg.
Charlie became sick and went home to Uncle Edward in Illinois. Within a few days,
Charlie died at the age of 21.
Their oldest daughter, Mary Virginia, was left to raise her two young siblings,
Nina and Willie. Willie later died of unknown causes at age 20. Nina died in
childbirth at 24. Mary Virginia had married her widowed cousin, William Daniel
Cabell, in 1867. He ran a school for boys, initially those returning home from
war, out of his Norwood, Virginia, estate until about 1880.
The couple and their children moved to Washington DC and opened another school
called the Norwood Institute. In 1890, Mary Virginia became an organizing member
of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She spent her later years perpetuating
the memory of her father, until her death in 1930.
Charles Ellet, Jr., was like a one-man American band when it came to introducing
public works to an infant nation in the mid-19th Century. Building canals, bridges,
railroads, surveying rivers to control inundation, commanding a steam ram fleet
of his design, and writing pamphlets about all of his enterprises was what he
did from 1832-1862. As his story shows, he did it with style and impeccable courtesy,
but often became impatient with those who did not agree with him. Still, he was
highly acclaimed during his lifetime. And, he always demonstrated love and tenderness
towards his wife and children. Although Ellet's mass applause has grown silent,
notable engineers sing his praises, and descendants beat the drum. The eminent
engineer made history in his day. He deserves this page today. |
Learning Links
Visit
the Civil
Engineer Portal for a technical view of the life
and work of Charles Ellet, Jr.
Visit
the Library of Congress HABS/HAER site to read about
Charles Ellet and the construction of the Wheeling
Suspension Bridge.
Visit
the Civil
Engineer Portal a knowledge portal especially designed
for civil engineering professionals and students.
|
|
