Benjamin Wright: Father of American Civil Engineering

Benjamin Wright was the chief engineer on America’s first great public works project, the Erie Canal, which helped America to transition from colonialism into the age of Manifest Destiny and then into the Industrial Revolution through better flow of commerce. This chapter explores the direction of Wright’s career, including his mentorship of many civil engineers; his service on an organizational committee during early efforts to create a professional civil engineering society some ten years before the formal creation of the American Society of Civil Engineers; and the projects that took him in varied directions and led to his eventual declaration as the father of the civil engineering profession.

This chapter traces Benjamin Wright’s ancestry and relationships of his ancestral lines. The discussion begins with a short account of the Mayflower voyage in which groups fearing religious intolerance in Elizabethan and Jacobean England culminated with a voyage to America in September 1620. Benjamin Wright was a sixth-generation descendant of one of these passengers. Biographical details of the descendants of the Wright lineage are provided: their personal and professional lives, how they migrated, and the relationships among them.

In seventeenth-century English standardized measure, the furlong was established at 660 ft; Gunter’s chain was established at 66 ft, a suitable means for measuring the field of ten chains in length; and the resulting area was established as ten square chains, or one acre. Optical surveying instruments for astronomical and geodetic work in Benjamin Wright’s era are explored and include Zenith sectors and theodolites for fixed use to determine astronomic position or in triangulation. A background is given on Wright’s surveying career, which began about twenty years after the work of Mason and Dixon, with particular focus on how expected potential opportunities for a trained surveyor on the frontier drove his career.

Jesse Hawley, a merchant in western New York, was outspoken in early efforts to build public and political interest in what became the Erie Canal. Following its completion in 1825, he lobbied political and civic leaders, including Benjamin Wright and other engineers, to position himself as the sole originator of the germinal idea for the waterway. History is somewhat cloudy as to the exact point of its origin, but Wright, for one, never considered himself in that role. This chapter is an account of the work of a selection of engineers, surveyors, and policy makers who were associated with various canal construction projects in America in the era of the Erie Canal.

Trans-oceanic sailors referred to those who worked on canal boats as “horse ocean sailors” and when the first portion of the Erie Canal opened in 1820, the “horse ocean era” was in full swing. Benjamin Wright was still engaged with the yet unfinished Erie Canal when representatives from a variety of locations approached him about constructing one canal that followed the valley of the Housatonic River with a tidewater terminus at Derby; one through the Farmington River valley with a terminus at New Haven; and one across the slender neck of land between the northern end of Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River. This chapter summarizes the work of Wright and the people who worked with him on these projects, their relationships, feasibility studies that were conducted, and the benefits and construction details of each project.

Recognizing the successful progress of New York’s Erie Canal, William and Maurice Wurtz, Philadelphia merchants, approached Benjamin Wright in 1823 to conduct a feasibility study for a canal between the mines near Carbondale and the Hudson River. Wright felt that his presence in New York was necessary when his continued relationship with the canal would provide stability to the value of stock shares. He felt that his course of conduct had, from the beginning, verified his full confidence in John Jervis' good judgment. This chapter presents the feasibility studies conducted by Wright and Jervis, the cost details of the project, and the later confrontation between them during the course of this project, which led to Wright’s resignation in March 1827.

A grand flotilla of canal boats commemorated the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. During that same year, Benjamin Wright moved his family to New York City and established a presence for both himself and his engineering services. This chapter examines Wright’s accomplishments during his tenure as New York City street commissioner, including his introduction of public sewage systems to the island and development of a macadamizing process to pave Third Avenue. William Weston’s arrival in February 1799, while Wright and Abraham Hardenburgh were conducting exploratory surveys for improving navigation in the Mohawk River valley, is highlighted. Focusing on the Bronx watershed, Weston conducted surveys to determine capacity and prepared calculations of potential demand; these surveys of the Bronx made him confident that the expected need to take advantage of the Rye Ponds could be addressed by a dam.

Just as Benjamin Wright’s surveying career was getting underway in upstate New York, Alexander Hamilton’s industrialization concept became a reality as the “Society for Useful Manufactures (SUM).” In reaching out to Wright, the Trenton Delaware Falls Company extended an opportunity for his professional services in the position as chief engineer for the development of a waterpower canal. Completing the Trenton waterpower canal faced the two common hurdles for public works projects in the period: financing and labor. Company reorganization helped strengthen finances, and Wright’s management of the construction and engineering proved successful. Wright was adamant in his argument that the Mohawk route was the most cost-effective when compared to the anticipated cost of earthwork, and that John Randal’s report was flawed. The Board of Canal Commissioners, with Stephen van Rensselaer a member, had the final say in the matter and concurred with Wright’s recommendations, selecting his original alignment as the proper choice.

This chapter focuses on the increased demand for the development of internal improvements, whether canals, roads, or railroads, which began around 1830. Specific consideration is given to the unwillingness of the federal government to cooperate in such improvements and to the private sector’s consequent jurisdiction over the development of railroads, leading to railroad “mania,” such as in John Jervis’ successful completion of the Delaware and Hudson Canal and his further railway work with the Albany and Schenectady Railroad. Benjamin Wright’s observations on the impact of railroads on society are discussed, along with the railway wars that followed completion of the New York and Erie Railroad after his death.

In the years following the Revolutionary War, Americans found themselves among neighbors, all of whom had territorial motivations. The British presence in Canada, the French presence to the west, and the Spanish presence to the south, made state unification necessary. Key to the success of any unification effort, however, was improvement in the flow of commerce between states. Progress with proposed river improvements in the United States was falling behind schedule; political conflict over which projects should be undertaken coupled with labor issues created a less than desirable situation for success. This chapter identifies the series of events in the attempt to succeed in connecting with the territory beyond the mountains to the west, the engineers who were involved in these projects, the rivalry between them, and the obstacles that hindered progress with proposed river improvements.

Benjamin Wright was sensitive to society’s view of the engineering profession. Although for much of his career, he managed more than one project at a time, he made the effort to contribute to his profession by mentoring younger men. Drawing from the words of Thomas Telford, this chapter considers Wright’s legacy as it evolved, not so much from his work for which he received compensation but from these contributions to his profession, which were manifested through the engineers with whom he worked; those who he mentored; and indirectly, those who followed in the succeeding generations.. Wright’s final years are also examined, including a tradition that holds that there was “a highly respectable meeting of members of the profession in Augusta, Georgia” in late in 1838, from which Wright was apparently absent. Events and efforts after his death are explored, particularly efforts on the part of ASCE, which eventually led to his being named the Father of American Civil Engineering.

In many respects, Benjamin Wright’s character was shaped by his actions and reactions to challenges confronting him, both in business and in his personal life. While Wright was working in Richmond during August 1831, the ugliness of slavery turned from harsh reality to unspeakable violence. This chapter summarizes the private life of Wright, his social and political endeavors, professional life, business engagements, and his relationship with his colleagues. Wright may have been a man of high morals and integrity, but he was human and did what he could to manage both the business and personal sides of his career.