Thomas Lincoln Casey and the Washington Monument

As head of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, Washington, DC, from 1877 to 1888, Brigadier General Thomas Lincoln Casey (Fig. 1) was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ most visible and celebrated builder of public buildings, monuments, and other significant works in the latter part of the 19th century. According to Abbott (1897), a historian of the time, “There are but few of the more modern public works in Washington [DC] and its vicinity which have not come under General Casey’s skillful administration.”

Among Casey’s crowning accomplishments were the construction of the State, War, and Navy Department Building (Fig. 2), the Library of Congress Building (Fig. 3), the Washington Aqueduct, and the Federal Medical Museum and Library. Today, the State, War, and Navy edifice is known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and the main Library of Congress structure has been named the Jefferson Building in honor of the Library’s founder, Thomas Jefferson.

Casey, however, is best known and recognized for being the determined civil engineer who completed the Washington Monument (Fig. 4). In redesigning and streamlining it, he saved the monument from collapse and from becoming America’s very own “Leaning Tower of Pisa” and a national embarrassment. A small memento of this achievement, hidden away 555 feet in the air at the monument’s uppermost tip, is a small but unique 100-ounce aluminum pyramid on which is inscribed, “Chief Engineer and Architect, Col. Thomas Lincoln Casey, Corps of Engineers.”

In 1888, four years after the Monument was completed, Casey was appointed by President Grover Cleveland as Brigadier General and Chief of Engineers of the U.S. Army, a position he held until 1895:

“During the seven years in which he was at the head of the Engineer Department of the Army, appropriations for works of river and harbor improvement were liberal and much progress was made, a good beginning was had in renovating the nation’s antiquated system of coast defense, and the administration of these public works.” (Abbot 1897)

The New York Times (1895) reported,

“During his term as chief of engineers, Casey has expended for the Government nearly $500 million [$12 billion in today’s dollars]. In the expenditure of the appropriations secured for projects of which he has been in charge there has never been a question as to the honest and economical disbursement of the public funds.”

After retirement from the Corps in 1895, Casey stayed active as a consultant on public projects, in particular for the completion of the Library of Congress Building. It was nearing completion in March 1896 when the tireless 65-year-old general suffered a massive and fatal heart attack: “He died, as he would have wished, in harness, the fatal summons coming as he was proceeding to the Congressional Library to attend to his duties as the engineer in charge of its construction” (Abbot 1897).

Why was Casey so driven? How did he come to do all the things he did, and what were the influences, events, and people that affected him most? Here is his story.

A seventh-generation descendant of the Casey family of Rhode Island, Thomas was born May 10, 1831, in Madison Barracks, Sackets Harbor, New York, the oldest child of Silas and Abby (Pearce) Casey. At the time, his father Silas, a 24-year-old second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was an up-and-coming 1826 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Thomas’s mother Abby was 18 and the daughter of Dutee Jerauld Pearce (1789–1849), a prominent Rhode Island attorney general and a long-time member of Congress.

During his youth, beginning with his birth on an Army base, Thomas’s exposure to the things around him and what life was about was tempered by military circumstances and surroundings and by being the eldest son of a high-ranking Army officer, with all the accompanying privileges and disruptions that brought. When he was only six, his father Silas, by then a first lieutenant, was sent to Florida with the 2nd Infantry to engage in America’s second war against the Seminole Indians (1835–1842). During that campaign, because of his daring and leadership successes, the elder Casey was advanced to full captain.

As the Seminole War was wrapping up and Silas was returning from the Florida battlefields, his father (and Thomas’s paternal grandfather) Wanton Casey died. He was 82. (Thomas was 11 at the time.) Both of Thomas’s grandmothers were deceased when he was born, but he had the opportunity to know and learn from his two grandfathers while growing up. Even though his grandfather Wanton did not live to see it happen, Thomas’s maternal grandfather, Dutee Pearce, was still alive when Thomas entered college. He passed away one year later, in 1849, at age 60.

Once back from southern Florida, Thomas’s father Casey was garrisoned first at Buffalo, New York, then at Fort Mackinac, Michigan, where Thomas and his siblings spent several of their early formative years. Then, when the Mexico War (1846–1848) broke out, Captain Casey was ordered to the field of action, where he fought in all the principal battles. In August 1847, when Thomas was 16 and making plans for college, Silas was advanced to major for gallantry and meritorious conduct in the battles of Contreras and Cherubusco. He was severely wounded in the storming of Chapultepec while leading the assaulting column under his command. His promotion to brevet lieutenant colonel thereafter was cause for much family pride, especially for Thomas and his brothers, who were leaning toward military careers.

After recovering from his battle injuries, Thomas’s father was assigned to frontier duty on the Pacific Coast at Benicia, California, where he was when his eldest son entered West Point, following in his footsteps. Thomas, though, would concentrate more on engineering and building and less on soldiering than did his father. Later Silas became a general and a hero in the Civil War (1861–1866). In 1862, he wrote a popular three-volume set of military books titled Infantry Tactics, published by Van Nostrand (New York). All in all, the elder Casey proved an inspiring role model for his sons and daughters.

However, well before Silas’s many personal accomplishments, members of the Casey lineage had a long and noteworthy involvement with America’s military establishment, one of their more prominent early members being Silas Casey (1734–1814)—the namesake of Thomas’s father and a celebrated Newport, Rhode Island, privateer during the Revolutionary War (1775–1783). In that conflict, private ship owners, under authorization of “Letters of Marque” making them sanctioned privateers and commissioned officers of the government, outfitted their own vessels as warships to supplement the country’s meager navy to prey on, destroy, and capture enemy (British) ships. Casey, a successful New England merchant and land and ship owner, was among the best of the lot at this activity. Anecdotes of his exploits were recounted at Casey family gatherings for generations.

In addition to Thomas, Silas and Abby had five other children—Frederick, who died as an infant in 1834, Abby (1838–1886), Silas III (1841–1913), Elizabeth (1844–1912), and Edward (1850–1891). Abby married a career officer in the U.S. Army, General Lewis Hunt, and Silas III became a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy in 1899.

Thomas’s 19-year-younger brother Edward, who spent most of his military career in the American West during the latter stages of the Plains Indians Wars (1865–1891), distinguished himself in numerous frontier encounters and as leader of Troop L of the 8th Cavalry, a choice group of Cheyenne Indian scouts hand picked and trained by Casey. Proudly known as “Casey Scouts,” this elite group was a major factor in all the battles and skirmishes engaged in by the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, stationed at Fort Keogh, Montana.

Because of Edward’s daring and bravery—and his diplomacy in dealing with the Plains Indians tribes, especially the Cheyenne—he was befriended by the famous western painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer Frederic Remington (1861–1909), who created a greatly admired painting of Casey in action on horseback. (It is prominently displayed in the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York.) Remington also sometimes rode with Casey on his excursions and wrote a number of glowing articles about him for Harper’s Weekly.

When it came time for college, Thomas’s choice of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, surprised no one. With his father being a respected alumnus of the Academy and a Mexican War hero, a family ancestry going back to the early settlers of Rhode Island, and his own excellent qualifications and capabilities, getting an appointment by President James Polk, on July 1, 1848, to enter West Point seemed quite natural and expected.

Young Casey, though, was no prima donna. Working hard, accomplishing the difficult, and earning the respect of others were in his makeup naturally; so were studying diligently and adhering to the Rules and Regulations. Appreciating the influence a high standing at the Academy would have on his future career, Thomas immediately set out to earn a prominent position in his class: “In the Corps of Cadets, his soldierly figure and military tastes and bearing won for him successively the appointment of first sergeant of his company in his second class year and of senior captain in his last year” (Abbot 1897).

At the completion of his four years at the Academy, Casey graduated first in his class in 1852 and was immediately assigned to the Corps of Engineers as brevet second lieutenant. He was sent, as an assistant engineer, to work on the construction of Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island and on other harbor works along the Delaware River. When completed in 1859, Fort Delaware was the largest fort in the United States. During the Civil War, it was the dreaded prison for Confederate prisoners of war.

In 1854, Casey returned to West Point as an instructor of engineering. While there, he seriously dated the vivacious 20-year-old Emma Weir, the second oldest daughter of Robert Weir (1803–1889), professor of drawing at the Academy. In addition to his teaching duties at the institution—which he did for 42 years, from 1834 to 1876—Weir was an eminent and prolific artist. One of his better known works, The Embarkation of the Pilgrims, hangs in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. The professor was also a very prolific producer of offspring, fathering 16 children with two wives. His first wife (and the mother of Emma) Louisa Ferguson died in 1845 shortly after giving birth to her ninth baby. Louisa was the daughter of John Ferguson, the 1815 mayor of New York City and an official with the New York Port Authority.

On May 3, 1856, two years after Casey returned to the Academy, his and Emma’s romance peaked, and they were married in a fancy, formal West Point affair. He was 25, and she was 22. The happy couple would have four sons. Their first, Thomas, Jr. (1857–1925), followed in his father’s footsteps and became a career officer in the U.S. military. Their second, Robert (1859–1860), died as an infant, while their third son, Harry (1861–1880), also died suddenly and early, the victim of a drowning accident when he was 19. Edward “Ned” (1864–1940), their youngest, also pursued a military career and became a noted engineer and architect. Educated in architecture at the prestigious École des Beaux Arts in France, Ned was working closely with his father building the Library of Congress complex when Thomas was stricken with his fatal heart attack in 1896.

During 1857, a year after his marriage, Casey was made first lieutenant and elevated to principal assistant professor of engineering at his alma mater. In 1859, he left New York and took command of a detachment of engineer troops in Washington Territory on the Pacific Coast, where he engaged in blazing new paths in the Northwest. Of particular note was the building of a serviceable road from Vancouver, Canada, to the Cowlitz River in Oregon and surveying for military reservations on Puget Sound, Washington.

In the spring of 1861, with the antislavery Abraham Lincoln newly elected president, there was much national unrest and serious rumblings that a civil rebellion was imminent. Casey was ordered back East in preparation for the conflict.

Around the time the Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, beginning the Civil War, Casey (now a captain) was serving on General Benjamin Butler’s staff at Fort Monroe, Hampton, Virginia. From there he was transferred to Portland, Maine, where he was put in charge of constructing defensive works along the coast of Maine. Forts he was responsible for included the massive Fort Knox on the Penobscot River and the six-sided Fort Gorges (Fig. 5) in Casco Bay, similar in design to Fort Sumter but built of solid granite instead of brick.

Casey’s mother Abby died suddenly in 1862. She was only 49. Two years later, in 1864, Thomas’s 57-year-old father Silas was married a second time, to Florida White Morgan, a young woman 24 years his junior and near the age of his eldest son’s wife Emma. Silas and Florida had two children; the oldest, Frederick (1866–1867), died young, and Julia (1865–1894), Thomas’s half-sister and the step-aunt to his boys, lived only to age 29. His sons were several years older than their aunt Julia, a curious but not totally unusual situation.

During his war assignments, Casey advanced first from lieutenant to major, then to lieutenant colonel and colonel. Two years after the conclusion of the war, which came on April 9, 1865, with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, Casey was transferred to Washington, DC, as an assistant to General Andrew Humphreys (1810–1883), then chief of engineers of the Army Corps of Engineers. Washington, DC, remained Casey’s permanent residence for the rest of his life, most of his time spent in an unpretentious home at 1419 K Street, NW.

It was while assistant to Humphreys that Casey came in contact (and became well acquainted) with one of America’s most celebrated, dynamic, and wealthy civilian engineers, James Eads, the builder of the world-renowned Eads Bridge spanning the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri. The feud between the self-educated Eads and college-educated Humphreys was not a pleasant one, by any stretch of the imagination. It began when a federal board, headed by Humphreys, was convened to hear complaints from steamboat interests about Eads’s recently completed bridge. The board, with Humphreys as its spokesman, ordered that an expensive canal be built around Eads’s bridge to appease the ship owners.

Eads immediately rushed to Washington to confer with President Grant about the justification for the canal. He convinced Grant that such a project was totally unnecessary, and the president overruled Humphreys’s order. From that day forward, Humphreys and Eads were bitter adversaries. Casey, no doubt, was aware of and affected by this dispute and by another, even more influential clash.

As the Mississippi River approaches, spreads out, and gradually slows at the Gulf of Mexico, enormous amounts of sediment were regularly deposited, creating huge sandbars perilous to ship travel. These sandbars often blockaded the port of New Orleans for weeks at a time, disrupting travel and leaving food and produce to rot on the docks. Beginning during the Civil War, numerous schemes were attempted to create a workable year-round navigation channel at the mouth of the Mississippi near New Orleans.

The Corps of Engineers had tried for years to maintain a clear channel through the sandbar area, but its efforts were less than successful. In 1869, the exasperation of Louisianans was expressed by a New Orleans Picayune reporter who wrote, “It is idle for us to rely upon the Government dredge machine, for experience has proved that the most she can accomplish is to occasionally break her propeller and steam up to the city for another” (quoted in Weingardt 2005).

In 1874, under tremendous public pressure, once and for all, to do something about the problem, Humphreys proposed building a costly permanent deep canal from below New Orleans to the Gulf. Based on his years of experience dealing with the Mississippi’s erratic lower currents, and actually “walking” much of its riverbed as a scavenger of sunken ships and treasure, Eads thought the scheme ludicrous. He suggested instead that jetties be built, creating underwater channels running parallel to the current of the river.

According to his jetties scheme, Eads held that water speeding through these below-the-surface pathways would carry off more than enough sediment to create the necessary ship lanes being sought, and at a cost considerably less than the Army’s canal plan. In essence, Eads claimed that the force of his jetties would cleverly carve through the sandbars and carry troublesome sediment into the Gulf. To make his offer irresistible, Eads proposed building the jetties without any advance payment; the government would pay him only if the jetties worked.

In January 1875, by a vote of 6 to 1, a board composed of Army and civilian engineers handed Eads a second victory over Humphreys, voting for the construction of jetties rather than a canal. Congress agreed to pay Eads certain amounts of money as he reached certain depths, so that by the time he reached the final required 30-foot depth he would be paid $4.25 million (around $95 million in today’s dollars). Already one of the wealthiest men in the Midwest from years of raising sunken ships and scavenging on the Mississippi—and from the success of his Mississippi River bridge—the lucrative profit built into his $4.25 million proposal would make Eads even richer.

Once Eads won the contract, Humphreys repeatedly tried to sabotage the project. On several occasions, vicious debate between Eads and Humphreys played out in the media, with the public taking sides, usually Eads’s. What added to Humphreys’s overall dislike for Eads was the amount of favorable press the informally educated, private-sector engineer consistently garnered. An 1876 article in Scientific American, as an example, allowed that Eads, with his “commanding talents and remarkable sagacity,” was “a man of genius, of industry, and of incorruptible honor,” and it called on him to seek the presidency of the United States (quoted in Weingardt 2005).

In the end, Eads proved his point over Humphreys. When the jetties were finally completed in 1879, they created the necessary 30-foot-deep underwater pathway, ensuring ships could travel unencumbered into and out of the mouth of the Mississippi. New Orleans went from being the ninth largest to the second largest port in the nation, after New York. As observed firsthand by Casey, the epic Eads–Humphreys encounters were important lessons learned concerning how public and private ventures and cooperation, or lack of cooperation, between government and civilian engineers could greatly affect the outcome and success of nationally prominent projects.

One year after 46-year-old Casey was appointed to the powerful position head of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds in 1877, he was faced with the daunting task of fixing and finishing the controversial Washington Monument. At the same time, he was challenged with building several history-altering federal buildings with limited budgets and schedules. The Monument assignment alone would consume six years of his life.

In 1832, a year after Casey was born, on the 100th anniversary of George Washington’s birthday, an influential group of concerned citizens led by James Madison and John Marshall formed the Washington National Monument Society to fund and erect an appropriate memorial in honor of the great man. By the middle of the 1830s, the society had raised enough money to hold a design competition. The winning entry was submitted by American-educated engineer/architect Robert Mills (1781–1855), well known for his work on government facilities and for his recent selection as the Architect of Public Buildings for Washington.

Mills’s design called for an upright, four-sided, 600-foot-tall masonry pillar (shaft) with a nearly flat top, surrounded by a massive circular colonnade at its base (Fig. 6). At the top of the base colonnade was proposed an imposing sculpture of Washington in a chariot, while inside the colonnade were large statues of 30 prominent Revolutionary War heroes. The pillar’s weight, including its foundations, was estimated at a little over 70,000 tons, which would have placed—with no allowance for wind or seismic forces—a dead load of approximately 18,000 pounds per square foot on the fine sand-clay soils supporting the monument, an alarming force for that type of compressible ground.

The price tag for Mills’s entry was $1 million ($22 million in today’s dollars). That projected cost, along with the design’s gaudy colonnade sprouting a tall skinny shaft (chopped off at the top) from its center, brought forth many critics. The society, however, pushed forward with its plans and fundraising efforts. Finally, in 1848, with only a fraction of the needed money on hand, it was decided to start construction on the central pillar, hoping that the appearance of the monument’s main shaft would spur further donations and allow completion of the project.

By 1854, though, public and private support for the monument waned, and construction came to an abrupt halt. A few spurts of limited activity transpired over succeeding years, but mostly the memorial to the nation’s first president and Revolutionary War hero stood ignored and incomplete—at less than a third of its proposed height. The stoppage, though disappointing at the time, would prove a blessing in disguise. It avoided an enormous structural calamity. By the late 1850s, serious rumors were circulating concerning the adequacy of the project’s foundations, which had been greatly compromised because of limited funds.

The demands of the Civil War further delayed the project, and for nearly a quarter of a century no substantive work was done. Then, following the celebration of the Centennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1876, President Grant signed a bill appropriating federal funds to complete the monument without its base colonnade and sculptures, which were forever eliminated. Before the allocated monies would be released, however, Congress wanted confirmation that the monument’s foundations were sufficient.

The responsibility of doing this and redesigning Washington’s memorial as an unadorned obelisk was assigned to one of the country’s most seasoned Civil War fort builders: “Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, a career soldier with the Corps of Engineers, was given complete control over construction. His background and experience made him an excellent choice” (Torres 1984).

Casey’s first charge was to examine the monument’s base soils and as-built foundations and to rectify any deficiencies. His second was to redesign and streamline the monument to replicate the dimensions and sleek shape of the classic marble obelisks of ancient Egypt, which meant the structure’s height had to be 10 times its base width, with a pyramidal top tapering to a distinctive point. Since the sides of monument’s existing base as built were 55 feet, 1.5 inches in width, a final height for the finished monument was, then and there, established at 555 feet, plus a few inches (Fig. 7).

What Casey found was a deteriorating masonry pillar (shaft) approximately 156 feet in height, leaning 1.7 inches out of plumb; buckling of marble face panels at lower levels; and cracking, chipping, and fracturing in the structural masonry courses near the base. His observations of what existed and his review of calculations left no doubt that concerns about the structural stability of the monument were well founded.

Soil borings, excavations, and investigations revealed that the shaft’s existing masonry foundation, only 80 feet square in area, rested on a fragile fine sand-clay layer 8 feet below the surface. Below that level, however, was a well-graded layer of gravel, sand, and clay, changing gradually, at a depth of 15 feet, to a mixture of gravel, pebbles, and boulders, forming a solid stratum of good resistance. Water was present at 13 feet.

Since the partially built shaft was already exerting 10,000 pounds per square foot of pressure on the weak upper soils, it was imperative that additional spread be given to the as-built footings and that they be carried down to a stronger underlying gravel bed. In accomplishing this, noted Casey,

“First, the earth from around and beneath the outer portions of the old foundation was dug away and replaced with Portland-cement concrete masonry. Then, a portion of the old masonry foundation itself was removed from beneath the walls of the shaft and in its place was placed a continuous Portland-cement enlargement extending out over the new sub-foundation.” (Abbot 1897)

Completed in May 1880, at a cost of a little over $94,000, Casey’s buttressed foundation system (Fig. 8) extended 13.5 feet deeper and covered 2.5 times as much area as the old one. Although the monument’s foundation underpinning and improvements were by no means a novelty at the time, never before had the delicate operation been undertaken on this magnitude. The successful method of replacing and strengthening the shaft’s defective foundations won for Casey the Cross of an Officer in the Legion of Honor of France, conferred by the French government in recognition of professional merit.

With Casey—and a handful of other dignitaries—standing on flimsy, high-in-the-sky wooden scaffolding (Fig. 9), the monument’s uniquely crafted aluminum tip was officially and ceremoniously placed on December 6, 1884 (Fig. 10). It brought the structure’s final height to 555 feet 5 1/8 inches, making it the world’s tallest masonry monument. Officially dedicated February 21, 1885, and opened October 9, 1888, the soaring marble-faced obelisk towered over everything in the national’s capital, a reminder of Washington’s immense contribution to the republic (Table 1).

Casey’s elevation to his career’s highest position—Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—came as no surprise to him:

“The story is told that the then Secretary of War, W. C. Endicott, met Col. Casey one day and spoke of the coming vacancy at the head of the Corps. Col. Casey expressed the belief that he would be promoted. ‘What right have you to think you will get the place,’ retorted Mr. Endicott. ‘The position is one filled by selection and is a matter for the President [Grover Cleveland] to decide.’ Replied Col. Casey, ‘I know it is and I believe he will select me.’ And he was selected, taking the oath of office as Chief of Engineers, July 23, 1888.” (New York Times 1895)

A May 14, 1895, New York Times article “An Able Officer Retired” about Casey described him thus:

“Gen. Casey is one of the most industrious officers of the Government. In personal appearance he suggests an abridged Grover Cleveland. He is larger than the average man, with no indication in carriage or conversation or work of the sixty-four years, which now compels retirement. He walks almost entirely, save when using the cable cars, the Government not providing him with a carriage. On the streets he walks with a deliberation, which does not mean either leisure or laziness, usually with his head bowed, indicative of the man of studious habits. His personality suggests the ‘hale-and-hearty’ character of earlier fiction. In manner, he is direct and positive.”

An idyllic 330-acre working farm, stretching from Narragansett Bay to the Pettaquamscutt River near Saunderstown (Boston Neck), Rhode Island, was in the Casey family for generations, from 1702 to 1955. In his youth, Thomas spent many vacations with his parents and siblings (and other Casey family members) on the place, which was cared for and worked by tenant farmers. Once married and raising his own family, Casey continued the tradition of summering on the farm with his own children. Said Casey, “Having a most agreeable climate during the latter portions of the summer and the early fall, the farm has at those seasons been the favorite resort for a few weeks every year for the families of its owners” (Casey 1881).

Who especially liked the farm was Casey’s next-to-youngest son Harry. Included in the Casey family papers are scores of letters by him to his father telling of his summer-day experiences at the farm. When he was 11, Harry wrote on August 10, 1872, “Dear Papa. I have just come from feeding some little chickens that have to be fed three times a day because they have just been hatched a day or two ago.” Later, 18-year-old Harry, now addressing his father more formally, wrote on September 7, 1879, “My Dear father. If anyone wants news, this is the worst place I know of to get it, but I will try to scrape up a little to write you.” Tragically, one year later correspondence from the farm did include major news; Harry lost his life in freak swimming accident just off Narragansett Pier.

Casey’s youngest son Ned was the last member of the family to own Casey Farm, and it was through his will that SPNEA (Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) received the property in 1955. Ned stressed that the property always remain a working farm. And it has. (SPNEA is now called “Historic New England.”)

On the farm is a small private cemetery where many Casey family members are buried, among them Casey’s father Silas, who died in 1882 at age 75. The first of Thomas’s adult brothers to be laid to rest in the family plot was Edward, who was shot in the back by a young Sioux warrior named Plenty Horses at the close of the Indian Wars. The well-admired Casey was officially considered the last white man killed in the Indian Wars. A January 17, 1891, Yellowstone Journal article reported, “It was not only his troops that took his death hard, but most of the Cheyenne nation felt the loss” (Warhank 1984).

Thomas Lincoln Casey was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the privileged Society of the Cincinnati. He was an officer of the Legion of Honor of France, president of Fortifications and Public Works in New York City, a director in the American Society of Civil Engineers, and a member of the U.S. Lighthouse Board, Commission on Suburban Highways in Washington, Rock Creek Park Commission of DC, and New England Historic Genealogical Society. Well versed in America’s early colonial history, Casey was a frequent contributor to several genealogical publications. He was also instrumental in establishing the Washington Philosophical Society.

Numerous citations from Congress and other organizations were awarded to Casey throughout his career for his achievements militarily and for his accomplishments as head of Public Buildings and as chief engineer of the Army Corps. Among several significant places named in his honor is the 467-acre Fort Casey State Park in the State of Washington.

When Casey passed away on March 25, 1896, he was survived by his wife of 40 years (Emma); sons Thomas, Jr., and Ned; and several grandchildren. He was buried alongside his father and brothers—and his grandfather and other Casey ancestors—in the family plot on the Casey Farm.