George Washington Whistler

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George Washington Whistler
St. Petersburg, Russia
Burial placeStonington, Connecticut[1]
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUnited States Military Academy
OccupationCivil engineer
Spouses
Mary Roberdeau Swift
​
​
(m. 1821; died 1827)​
​
​
(m. 1831)​
Children8; including James McNeill Whistler
Parent(s)John Whistler and Anna Bishop

George Washington Whistler (May 19, 1800 – April 7, 1849) was a prominent American civil engineer best known for building steam locomotives and railroads.[2] He is credited with introducing the steam whistle to American locomotives.[3]

In 1842, Tsar

Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway, Russia's first large-scale railroad.[4] One of Whistler's important influences was the introduction of the Howe truss for the Russian railroad's bridges. This inspired the renowned Russian engineer Dmitrii Ivanovich Zhuravskii (1821–1891) to perform studies and develop structural analysis techniques for Howe truss
bridges.

He was the father of American artist James McNeill Whistler, whose painting Whistler's Mother (of his second wife Anna Whistler) is among the most famous paintings in American art.[3]

Early life and family

George Washington Whistler was born on May 19, 1800, at the military outpost of

Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Major John Whistler (1756–1829) and his wife Anna Bishop.[2] Ft. Wayne at that time was a part of the great Northwest Territory. His father had been a British soldier under General Burgoyne at the Battles of Saratoga
in the Revolutionary War, later to enlist in American service.

Whistler had three children with his first wife, Mary Roberdeau Swift, who died at a young age in 1827.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, William McNeill Whistler (1836–1900), Kirk Boott (1838–1842) named after Kirk Boott, Charles Donald Whistler (1841–1843), and John Bouttatz Whistler (1845–1846), named after Whistler's Russian engineer friend Major Ivan F. Bouttatz.[5][7] Whistler and William Gibbs McNeil lived in Fisher Ames' house while working on the Boston and Providence Railroad.[8]

Education and career

Whistler graduated from the

Fort Columbus, New York, from 1819 to 1821.[10] When the Army was reorganized in 1821, he became a Second Lieutenant in the First Artillery. From 1821 to 1822, Whistler was an Assistant Professor of Drawing at West Point.[10]

Whistler was reassigned back to artillery corps duty as a topographical engineer in 1822, his first assignment was supporting the Commission tracing the international boundary between

Topographic Bureau.[10]

Baltimore and Ohio railroad

In 1827, Whistler's brother-in-law and fellow engineer

Stockton and Darlington,[12] the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives
. As one observer wrote:

Apparently there was nothing to keep American engineers with adequate credentials from seeing all they wanted to see and from asking about all that they wanted to learn. As a result the American engineers developed knowledge of railroads in three areas –

(1) (Steam) locomotives and inclined planes, the two "new" elements in railroads,
(2) the uses of materials- especially stone, wood and iron- in construction, and


(3) the principles of laying out routes feasible for railroad travel.[12]

Whistler supervised construction of the first rails on the railroad in October 1829, consisting of wood and iron from Pratt Street to the Carrollton Viaduct. The railroad's future road master, Wendel Bollman, helped with the construction layout as a fifteen-year-old carpenter.[13]

Other railroads

In 1830, McNeill and Whistler entered the service of the Baltimore and Susquehanna railroad, Whistler remaining on the project for the first 20 miles of main and branch track had been completed.[10] In 1831‑32, Whistler provided engineering services for the Paterson and Hudson River railroad (now southern terminus of Erie) Railroad; and in 1833‑34, upon the Providence and Stonington Railroad.[10] Whistler resigned his army engineer commission in December 1833.

Boston & Providence Railroad, which included the famous Canton Viaduct
which has been in continuous service for 174 years.

Locomotive designer and builder

In 1834, Whistler became chief engineer at the

Boston & Lowell Railroad.[15]

Whistler's first locomotive, the Patrick, was produced for the

Latrobe surveyed steam locomotives for their management, some of which included machines built in Whistler's Lowell shops.[18]

The (Long Island railroad) engine burns one cord of wood in each circular trip of 48 miles, conveying an average load of twenty tons of freight, in four cars, each weighing two tons – the weight of engine being 8.5 tons, with its fuel and water in the boiler, and having six tons on the two driving wheels; the tender weighs 4.5 tons with fuel and water, the additional quantity of wood consumed in getting up steam, being about one-fifth of a cord.

— Knight, Latrobe, [18]

Whistler built three machines for the

James B Francis.[19] The Lowell Machine Shop's locomotive production continued until 1854.[16]

Western railroad (Massachusetts)

Western railroad again with McNeill from 1836 to 1842.[20] In October 1839, the road's Board of Directors hired Whistler as its Chief engineer.[21]

The main problem in locating the railroad were the steep grades west of the Westfield River, a major tributary of the Connecticut River, which were in excess of 80 feet to the mile, (actually 1.65%. west of Chester, Massachusetts). At that time in 1842, there was no known locomotive that could deliver the tractive effort to climb that grade. The first locomotives purchased for the road in 1842 were Ross Winan's "crabs" or 0-8-0s which could not handle the grade. Whistler substituted Stephenson Planet types (2-2-0s) which delivered satisfactory service.[20]

Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway

A bridge model of similar design to the Canton Viaduct at the October Railroad Museum in St. Petersburg
Msta River
Howe truss railroad bridge

Tsar

Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway, which would be Russia
's first major railroad.

Although the Tsarskoye Selo Railway, built by Germany's Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner in 1837, was Russia's first public railway line, the cost overruns led Tsar Nicholas I and his advisors to doubt Gerstner's ability to execute the planned St. Petersburg–Moscow line.[4] So two professors from St. Petersburg's Institute of the Corps of Transportation Engineers, Pavel Petrovich Melnikov and Nikolai Osipovich Kraft, traveled to the United States in 1839 to study railroad technology.[22] Melnikov and Kraft spoke with Whistler and recommended that the Russian government retain Whistler as a consulting engineer on the Saint Petersburg – Moscow Railway, and Whistler was given a seven-year contract.[4]

Whistler left for Russia in June 1842, accompanied by imperial engineer Major Ivan F. Bouttatz, who would become Whistler's friend.[4][7] He received the Order of Saint Anna by the Russian Emperor in 1847 but contracted cholera and died on April 7, 1849, in Saint Petersburg, Russia, two years before the line was completed.

Professional associations

Whistler was part of the first efforts to form a national engineering association in the United States, although unsuccessful, it was thirteen years ahead of the

J. Edgar Thomson then in Georgia, later in Pennsylvania.[23]

Legacy

Whistler's stone arch railroad bridges built in 1841 are still in freight and passenger service on the

CSX mainline in western Massachusetts. He was the first civil engineer in America to use contour lines to show elevation and relief on maps.[citation needed
]

Works

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "George Washington Whistler". American Society of Civil Engineers. Archived from the original on 13 May 2019. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  2. ^
    S2CID 154969863
    .
  3. ^ a b c MacGregor, Jeff (June 2014). "Getting to Know Whistler's Father". Smithsonian. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  4. ^ a b c d Gasparini, D. A., K. Nizamiev, and C. Tardini. "GW Whistler and the Howe Bridges on the Nikolaev Railway, 1842–1851", American Society of Civil Engineers, Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities 30.3 (2015): DOI link:04015046.https://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CF.1943-5509.0000791
  5. ^ a b , Anon., George Washington Whistler (1800–1849), University of Glasgow, accessed at Biographical sketch of G. W. Whistler at the Center for Whistler Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland on June 20, 2016.
  6. ^ Hanson, Robert Brand (1976). Dedham, Massachusetts, 1635-1890. Dedham Historical Society. p. 227.
  7. ^ a b "The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler :: The Correspondence". whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk. Retrieved August 2, 2016.
  8. ^ Hanson 1976, p. 227.
  9. ^ Anon., Smithsonian Museum of American History, accessed at [1] on June 20, 2016
  10. ^ a b c d e f g "Register of Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy, Class of 1819", Cullum's Register, created by W. Thayer.
  11. ^ a b "Register of Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy, Class of 1819", Cullum's Register, created by W. Thayer.
  12. ^ a b Stapleton, Darwin H. "The Origin of American Railroad Technology, 1825–1840", Railroad History 139 (1978): 65–77. Web.
  13. ^ James D. Dilts. The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Nation's First Railroad. p. 128.
  14. ISBN 0-486-23818-0
    ., pages 457
  15. ^ "Lowell Notes: Patrick Tracy Jackson" (PDF). Lowell National Historical Park. Retrieved May 30, 2009.
  16. ^ a b Anon., "Histories of the Individual Firms", (2007). Railroad History, (197), page 56, 24–85.
  17. ^ Baer, Christopher T. "A General Chronology of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company Predecessors and Successors and its Historical Context", 1835–1836, June 2015 Edition.
  18. ^ a b c d e Knight, Jonathan. Report Upon the Locomotive Engines: And the Police and Management of Several of the Principal Rail Roads in the Northern and Middle States, Being a Sequel to the Report... Upon Railway Structures. Lucas & Deaver., 1838.
  19. ^ "Lowell Notes: James B Francis" (PDF). Lowell National Historical Park. Retrieved May 30, 2009.
  20. ^ a b Vose, George Leonard. A Sketch of the Life and Works of George W. Whistler: Civil Engineer. Boston: Lee and Shepard; New York: CT Dillingham, 1887.
  21. ^ Smith, Merritt Roe. Military enterprise and technological change: Perspectives on the American experience. MIT Press, 1985. Accessed at [2]
  22. ^ Decker, John C., "Early American Railroad History: A New Source Within Grasp" Archived 2020-08-04 at the Wayback Machine, and [3] Archived 2020-08-04 at the Wayback Machine on July 24, 2016.
  23. ^ Merritt, Raymond H. Engineering in American Society: 1850–1875, page 99, University Press of Kentucky, 2015.

Further reading

External links
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