MC 654

Inventory to the Roebling Family Collection, 1824-1971

By Vivian Thiele and Fernanda Perrone

November 2003

Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries

Finding aid encoded in EAD, version 2002 by Tara Maharjan, December 2021

Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State.

Historical Sketch: The Roebling Family

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.

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Scope and Content Note

The Roebling Family Collection spans the period 1824 to 1971, with individual items dating from as early as 1594. The collection is approximately 28 cubic feet in size, comprising 34 manuscript boxes, 9 phase boxes, 12 photograph boxes, 7 oversize boxes and 45 oversize map folders or containers. The Roebling Family Collection is one of two sub-groups of the Roebling Collection, the other being the records of John A. Roebling's Sons Company.

This collection documents the personal lives and accomplishments of four generations of the Roebling family of Trenton, New Jersey, engineers and manufacturers of steel products. Subjects covered include engineering education and work in Prussia in the 1820s; the experience of German immigrants in Pennsylvania in the 1830s; early methods of making wire rope cable; suspension bridge and railroad aqueduct construction; the design and building of the Brooklyn Bridge, including the building of the towers, cable-making, industrial and political issues; the building of various other nineteenth and early twentieth century suspension bridges, including the Niagara Falls Railway Suspension Bridge, Covington and Cincinnati Bridge, the Kentucky River Bridge, and the Hudson River (George Washington) Bridge; the Union Army experience during the Civil War, particularly the battles of Bull Run (2nd), Antietam, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg (including the creation of the Gettysburg Battlefield Park), Petersburg, and the Wilderness; and late nineteenth century commerce and industry, particularly steel and transportation.

Additional subjects are farm life in early nineteenth century Prussia; several generations of engineering education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York; late nineteenth and early twentieth century social life in Brooklyn, New York and Trenton, New Jersey; the role of women in the late nineteenth century; travel in the late nineteenth century including France, Germany, Russia and the United States; world events including the Spanish-American and First World Wars, and developments in international trade and industry; economic conditions in Germany after the First and Second World Wars; and late nineteenth century family life.

The collection includes items in many different, although primarily paper formats: correspondence, writings, journals, scrapbooks, account books, receipts, legal documents, photographs, maps, drawings, reports, genealogies, publications, newspaper clippings, miscellaneous items such as programs, invitations, certificates and cards, and memorabilia. Some material is written in German, all of which has been translated or summarized. Many letters include transcripts. Newspaper clippings have been copied onto acid-neutral paper.

The collection comprises 24 series, the most important of which are: JOHN AUGUSTUS ROEBLING, WASHINGTON A. ROEBLING, EMILY W. ROEBLING, JOHN A. ROEBLING II, FERDINAND W. ROEBLING, and CHARLES SWAN. The most significant materials documenting the design and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge are in the correspondence received by Ferdinand W. Roebling, John A. Roebling's correspondence and engineering documents, and Washington A. Roebling's engineering documents. The most important Civil War materials are in Washington A. Roebling's Civil War Maps and Civil War Materials sub-series, in Emily Warren Roebling's correspondence, and in correspondence received by Charles Swan, the supervisor of the Trenton wire rope business and family friend.

Some material overlaps several series, such as the TRANSCRIPT BOOKS, which contain annotated letters from several series.

The COLLECTED HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS series, rather than documenting the Roebling family, consists of historical material collected by John A. Roebling II.

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Arrangement Note

The Roebling Family Collection includes 24 series, most of which represent material received by or belonging to individual family members, beginning with John Augustus Roebling, and listed in roughly generational order. Larger series are divided into sub-series. Material which pertains to more than one family member or to the family as a whole is filed in the ROEBLING FAMILY series, which includes the Charles Swan, News Clippings, Scrapbooks, Collected Publications & Miscellany, Genealogies, Photographs, Collected Historical Documents, Transcript Books, and Memorabilia sub-series.

Bound items are filed with their respective series, although listed separately in the container list with cross-references. Oversize items are stored separately by size, listed separately, and cross-referenced in the main container list. Oversize materials are stored in 7 boxes (1.aa, 2.aa, 1.a, 2.a, 1.b, 2.b, and 3.b), map drawers (c and d) and non-standard containers (e).

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Related Collections Note

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York also holds a large Roebling Collection comprising correspondence, technical notes and drawings, notebooks, newspaper and magazine clippings, published items, photographs, and artifacts, including records of the planning and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Rensselaer also holds the Roeblings' library of nineteenth century books and pamphlets on engineering, science, business and other subjects. The collection is described in Guide to the Roebling Collections at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rutgers University. Edited by Elizabeth C. Stewart. Troy, New York: Friends of the Folsom Library, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1983.

Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries holds records of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company (JARSCO). These records include minutes of JARSCO (1876-1952) and the Roebling Securities Corporation (1953-1960); letter books of Ferdinand W. Roebling in his capacity as secretary/treasurer of JARSCO; financial records; scrapbooks; company publications; and engineering drawings and work orders pertaining to the Roebling "Kinkora" Works in Roebling, New Jersey. Material relating to JARSCO in the Family Papers generally refers to the Roebling brothers' positions as stockholders, rather than as managers of the company. Additional records of JARSCO, particularly pertaining to "Kinkora" Works are held by the Roebling Museum in Roebling, New Jersey.

Rutgers also holds the papers of Mary G. Roebling, the wife of Siegfried Roebling, Washington A. 's grandson; and the records of the Trenton Trust Company, the family business of which Mary Roebling took over the management upon her husband's death in 1936. Her papers include some historical and genealogical material about the Roebling family and the Brooklyn Bridge. Finally, Rutgers holds the papers of Clarence E. Case, the executor of John A. Roebling II's estate, which include letters received from John A. Roebling II, particularly concerning the two men's investigation of a local shooting in Bernardsville, New Jersey, and documents concerning the settlement of the estate.

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Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Roebling Family Collection, MC 654, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries.

Provenance

The bulk of the Roebling Family Collection was received from the estate of John A. Roebling II in 1958. Roebling divided the collection between Rutgers and his alma mater, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, giving Rensselaer the more technical material (see below). Additional material was received in later donations and purchases.

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Selected Bibliography

Billington, David P. The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering. New York: Basic Books, 1983.

Booth, Malcolm A. "Roebling's Sixth Bridge 'Neversink'," Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries30(1). December 1966.

Guide to the Roebling Collections at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Edited by Elizabeth C. Stewart with an Introduction by Robert M. Vogel. Troy, NY: Friends of the Folsom Library, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1983.

McCullough, David G. The Great Bridge . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.

Roebling, Emily Warren. The Journal of the Reverend Silas Constant. With records and Notes by Emily Warren Roebling. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1903.

Schuyler, Hamilton. The Roeblings: A Century of Engineers, Bridge-builders and Industrialists . Princeton University Press, 1931.

Steinman, D.B. The Builders of the Bridge: The Story of John Roebling and his Son. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1945.

Vogel, Robert M. Building Brooklyn Bridge: The Design and Construction, 1867-1883. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1983.

Vogel, Robert M. Roebling's Delaware & Hudson Canal Aqueducts. Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology. No. 10. City of Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971.

Weigold, Marilyn E. Silent Builder: Emily Warren Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge . Port Washington, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1984.

Zink, Clifford and Dorothy White Hartman. Spanning the Industrial Age: The John A. Roebling's Sons Company Trenton, New Jersey, 1848-1974. Trenton Roebling Community Development Corporation, 1992.

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Detailed Description of the Collection/Container List

This section provides descriptions of the materials found within each series. Each series description is followed by a container list, which gives the titles of the "containers" (for example, folders, volumes, or cassettes) and their locations in the numbered boxes that comprise the collection. The availability of any digital items from a container is indicated with a hyperlink.