Joseph Smith Harris

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Joseph Smith Harris
An illustration of Harris at about age 65
Born(1836-04-29)April 29, 1836
East Whiteland Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedJune 1, 1910(1910-06-01) (aged 74)
Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation(s)surveyor, civil engineer, railroad executive
Notes
Great-grandson of Persifor Frazer.

Joseph Smith Harris (April 29, 1836 – June 1, 1910) was an American

Reading Railroad
, which he brought back from its 1893 bankruptcy.

Family and early life

Harris was born on his family's farm in

John Harris, who became career military officers. Joseph's paternal grandfather, William Harris (1757 – 1812), had been an Continental Army officer in the American Revolutionary War and thereafter, as well as a member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. A great-grandfather (on his mother's side) was Persifor Frazer, a figure in the American Revolution who had some prominence in Chester County.[3]

When Joseph was a youth, his father, Stephen, realized that he was dying and that his untimely death would likely leave his family destitute. Looking to prolong his life and also leave his wife with a means of supporting herself, in 1850 Stephen Harris sold his farm and moved his family to

Central High School, graduating in 1853, as did his older brother, also named Stephen.[6] Their younger brother, John Campbell (Cam) Harris, also graduated from Central.[2]
: 3 

Marriages

Harris married Delia Silliman Brodhead, daughter of George Hamilton Brodhead, later president of the New York Stock Exchange, in 1865. They had five children. After the death of his first wife, Harris married Emily Eliza Potts in 1882, and in 1896, after Emily's death, he married her sister, Anna Zelia Potts. His last two marriages were childless.[3]: 73–74  He died "of apoplexy"[7] at home in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1910.[8]

U.S. Coast Survey

In 1853, even before graduating from Central High School, Harris took a job as a

topographer for the Easton and Water Gap Railroad (which became the North Pennsylvania Rail Road Company later that year), then under construction. He took time off from this job to return to Philadelphia to take his final examinations.[2]: 3  He left this job after a year, becoming an astronomer for the United States Coast Survey, whose superintendent, Alexander Dallas Bache, had been president of Central High School.[2]: 3  Upon joining the Coast Survey, Harris worked in the late fall of 1854 at Station Yard, Philadelphia, where he was engaged in checking earlier triangulation and astronomic work. By mid-November 1854, this work was completed; Harris was assigned to the Coast Survey vessel USCS Phoenix in the Mississippi Sound. His older brother Stephen was a sub-assistant in the Coast Survey, and it seems that sibling rivalry played a significant role in his work. Although he displayed many quirks of personality, Joseph Harris was meticulous in his work; his autobiography provides, among other things, an idea of U.S. Coast Survey shipboard life in the 1850s.[9]

The trip south was not without its hardships: Harris suffered from

hurricanes, all of which are described in Harris's autobiography.[citation needed
]

During his year on the Phoenix, Harris and his crew performed triangulation along the coast from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain, a distance of about sixty miles (97 km). With the arrival of winter, the commanders[clarification needed] left the Phoenix; when the weather turned colder, Harris was required to lay up the vessel for the remainder of the winter. He returned to U.S. Coast Survey headquarters to complete some drafting and other engineering work, and resigned from the Survey in the spring of 1856.[10]

Harris took a similar position with the Kentucky Geological Survey, but he resigned after one month in July 1856 and returned to the Gulf of Mexico to complete his earlier work. In March 1857, Harris was hired as an astronomer for the Northwest Boundary Survey.[11]

Northwest Boundary Survey

In 1846, the United Kingdom and the United States signed the Oregon Treaty, agreeing to settle the Oregon boundary dispute by drawing the western Canadian–American border along the 49th parallel, which was largely mountainous wilderness at the time. After some delays, British and American Boundary Commissions were established in 1856 and formed a joint commission.[2]: 13  Harris and G. Clinton Gardner were hired as assistant astronomers.[2]: 15  The commissions began to survey and mark the boundary in 1857, beginning at the Pacific coast of North America.[2]: 66 ff. 

The American survey team sailed from

Panama Railway and were able to cross the Isthmus of Panama in four hours. At Panama City, they boarded the vessel John L. Stephens and sailed for San Francisco, California, with several stops in Mexico along the way before arriving on May 15, 1857.[2]
: 34–40 

In his autobiography, Harris describes the survey teams, the work, the land, and the local Native Americans. The British survey team, using the latest instruments, had a significant rivalry with the Americans, whom they considered uneducated and using inferior instruments. The two parties would sometimes differ on where the 49th parallel was, occasionally by as much as a mile (1.6 km).

American Civil War

The men of the U.S. Coast Survey were overwhelmingly pro-

United States Gulf Coast.[12]

Uncas, under Harris′s command, left New York City for the U.S. Gulf Coast on February 28, 1862. Damage from a

Ship Island, Mississippi, and report to Commodore David Farragut. Only through the personal intervention of Commodore Samuel Francis Du Pont was Sachem finally coaled and allowed to depart Port Royal. Following another coaling stop at Key West, Florida (during which four men mutinied
and refused orders to pass coal to the vessel), Harris continued on to Ship Island, where he arrived on April 9, 1862, to discover that the fleet had left the day before and gone to the mouth of the Mississippi River. Sachem proceeded to the Mississippi River and arrived on April 10, 1862, when Harris turned over command of the small steamer to Ferdinand Gerdes, who had arrived a few days earlier.

capture New Orleans. The effectiveness of the bombardment of Fort Jackson has been disputed (Commander David Dixon Porter
, in command of the mortar boats, had a reputation for bragging, exaggeration, and embellishment of facts in his reports and correspondence), but the Confederate casualties and the subsequent mutiny of the troops manning the forts are well documented.

The original U.S. Coast Survey map of the damage done to Fort Jackson by the mortar and gunboat bombardment of 1862. This document is in the possession of the Library of Congress, but scanned in lower resolution than the "Official Records" version.

Commander Porter wrote to Alexander Dallas Bache, superintendent of the Coast Survey, concerning the battle of Forts St. Philip and Jackson:

The results of our mortar practice here have exceeded anything I ever dreamed of; and for my success I am mainly indebted to the accuracy of positions marked down, under Mr. Gerdes' direction, by Mr. Harris and Mr. Oltmanns. They made a minute and complete survey from the 'jump' to the forts, most of the time exposed to fire from shot and shell, and from sharpshooters from the bushes.... The position that every vessel was to occupy was marked by a white flag, and we knew to a yard the exact distance of the hole in the mortar from the forts.... Mr. Oltmanns and Mr. Harris remained constantly on board to put the vessels in position again when they had to haul off for repairs, or on account of the severity of the enemy's fire. ...I assure you that I shall never undertake a bombardment unless I have them at my side.[17]

Following the fall of New Orleans, Harris participated in further surveys along the Gulf Coast, leading up to the Battle of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864. By mid-1864, his usefulness to the war effort had been exhausted, as the portion of the coastline with which he was familiar was in Union hands. He again left the Survey and returned north, where he re-joined the Northwest Boundary Survey, which was then performing its office work.[18]

Railroad career

Harris returned to railroad work around 1864, entering private practice as a

Morris & Essex Railroad from 1868 to 1870. He was an engineer at the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company from 1870 to 1877, and served as superintendent and engineer for the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company from 1877 to 1880. He became general manager of the Central Railroad of New Jersey in 1880, serving in that capacity until 1882; the Central of New Jersey came under the control of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. He returned to the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company as president from 1883 to 1893, also serving as receiver and then vice president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey from 1886 to 1890. He became vice president of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Company in 1892.[19]

At the outset of the Panic of 1893, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad went bankrupt and its president, Archibald A. McLeod, resigned. J. P. Morgan, who owned or controlled a considerable portion of the P&R's stock and debt, chose Harris, known to be a fiscal conservative, as one of the company's receivers, and later its president. At the time, he was president of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, and it took some persuasion to get him to assume control of his bankrupt rival.[21]: 325–326  He oversaw the reorganization of the shattered company, beginning by stabilizing the railroad and its Coal and Iron Company. A new corporation, the Reading Company, was formed to buy the assets of its bankrupt predecessor, and Harris was its first president.[21]: 329  A period of much consolidation of the track networks followed, and by the end of the decade, the company reported a combined annual profit of nearly US$2 million.

A down-to-earth civil engineer, Harris foresaw looming difficulties for the Reading that his senior lieutenants could not or would not see. These included shifts in transportation patterns and the rise of

organized labor. When he resigned as president in 1901, he noted, among other things, growing factionalism among the company's officers.[22]

Harris was a member of the

Germantown in 1910.[25]

Descendants

Joseph and Delia Harris had five children:[3]: 154, 196–97 

  • Marian Frazer Harris (1866–1960). She married James deWolf Perry and was known for her long-lasting friendship with Beatrix Potter.[26]
  • George Brodhead Harris (1868–1952). He married Elizabeth Holbert.
  • Frances Brodhead Harris (1870–1925). She married Reynolds Driver Brown.
  • Clinton Gardner Harris (1872–1910). He did not marry.
  • Madeline Vaughan ("Sally") Harris (1873–1966). She married Henry Ingersoll Brown, brother of Reynolds D. Brown.

Notes

Abbreviations used in these notes
Official atlas: Atlas to accompany the official records of the Union and Confederate armies.
ORA (Official records, armies): War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies.
ORN (Official records, navies): Official records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion.

References

  1. ^ Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris, p. 1.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Anne P. Streeter, Joseph S. Harris and The U.S. Northwest Boundary Survey, 1857–1861, Trafford Publishing, 2012.
  3. ^ a b c Joseph S. Harris, Record of the Harris Family descended from John Harris born 1680 in Wiltshire, England, 1903. Joseph S. Harris, Record of the Smith Family descended from John Smith, born 1655 in County Monaghan, Ireland. George F. Lasher, Philadelphia, 1906.
  4. ^ a b Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris, pp. 24-25.
  5. ^ J. Smith Futhey & Gilbert Cope, History of Chester County, Pennsylvania: With Genealogical and Biographical Sketches, Louis H. Everts, Philadelphia, 1881, p. 671.
  6. ^ John W. Leonard and Albert Nelson Marquis, eds. Who's Who in America. A.N. Marquis Company, Chicago. 4th ed. 1906.
  7. ^ "Joseph S. Harris Dead: Former President of Reading Railroad Expires Suddenly", New York Tribune, June 3, 1910, p. 7.
  8. ^ Background note, Joseph Smith Harris Correspondence, Collection 3107, p. 2. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 2008.
  9. ^ Albert E. Theberge, The Coast Survey 1807–1867, pp. 307–312; Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris, pp. 31–65.
  10. ^ Albert E. Theberge, The Coast Survey 1807–1867, pp. 307–312.
  11. ^ See Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris.
  12. ^ Albert E. Theberge, The Coast Survey in the Civil War 1861–1865, pp. 498–500.
  13. ^ ORN I, v. 18, p.362.
  14. ^ See Albert E. Theberge,The Coast Survey 1807–1867, pp. 500–505; Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris.
  15. ^ Albert E. Theberge, The Coast Survey 1807–1867, pp. 500–505; Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris, p. 164.
  16. ^ ORN I, v. 18, p.373.
  17. ^ This account is based on the Gerdes-to-Porter letter of May 16, 1862, in: Bache, Alexander D. Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, Showing the Progress of the Survey During the Year 1862, Appendix No 35. "Report of Assistant F. H. Gerdes, U.S. Coast Survey, to Commander D.D. Porter, U.S.N., Commanding Mortar Flotilla in the Gulf of Mexico." p. 263.
  18. ^ Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, Showing the Progress of the Survey During the Year 1862, p. 57.
  19. ^ a b c Leonard & Marquis, Who's Who in America, 4th ed. 1906, p. 783.
  20. ^ a b Coast Survey.
  21. ^ a b James L. Holton, The Reading Railroad: History of a Coal Age Empire, Vol. I: The Nineteenth Century, 1990.
  22. ^ James L. Holton, The Reading Railroad: History of a Coal Age Empire, Vol. II: The Twentieth Century, 1992. pp. 4–18.
  23. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-05-24.
  24. ^ Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris, Preface.
  25. ^ Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Abstract and Background Note, Collection 3107, Joseph Smith Harris Correspondence, 2008.
  26. ^ Jane Crowell Morse (ed.), Beatrix Potter's Americans: Selected Letters, Horn Book, Inc., 1982.

Bibliography

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Smith_Harris&oldid=1215433203"