Charles Augustus Stone

Charles Augustus Stone

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/134961246/charles_augustus_stone

Associated Press story in the Richmond Times Dispatch, 26 February 1941, p. 20

C.A. Stone, Engineer, Dies at 74

New York. Charles Augustus Stone, 74, whose construction and engineering firm of Stone & Webster, (now a division of Westinghouse), built the Hog Island, Pennsylvania shipyards of World War fame, died of pneumonia yesterday at his home.

In addition to the shipyard, which served as an assembly plant that during the war turned out 122 vessels averaging 8,000 tons, the firm, of which Stone was Chairman of the Board and Co-founder, built the aviation camp, barracks and balloon school at Kelly Field, Texas; enlarged several arsenals and built a large ordnance base of the American Expeditionary Force in France.

Stone, a native of West Newton, Mass., was a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the First National Bank of Boston, the Union Pacific Railroad and other large concerns.

The Virginia Electric and Power Company is a Stone and Webster utility.

Construction Extensive

Stone & Webster began financing utilities about 1900, and since 1927 has functioned in the investment field through Stone & Webster and Blodget, Inc.

Its construction jobs include the Southern California Edison's Big Creek hydroelectric stations, the Mississippi River Power Company plant at Keokuk, Iowa; the Niagara Hudson station at Oswego, New York; and the hydroelectric plant and dam at Conowingo, Pennsylvania.

Stone, a member of the Class of 1888 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was for many years a member of the institute's executive committee and worked for its transfer from Boston to Cambridge across the Charles River.

Stone's interests included improvement of breeds of horses and cattle on his New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Virginia farms. He was one of the first to import the Welsh pony into this country.

His wife, the former Mary Adams Leonard of Boston, died last fall. Survivors are two sons and two daughters.

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Stone met his lifelong friend and business partner, Edwin S. Webster (1867-1950), while they were studying electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Upon graduation, they adhered to the advice of a professor and rather than set up shop together, Stone worked for welding and manufacturing companies while Webster took up with Kidder, Peabody, & Company. Their parents provided seed money in 1889, and they formed a consulting firm, the Massachusetts Electrical Engineering Company, whose first client was a paper mill in Maine in need of a hydroelectric plant for its power. Public utilities seemed a logical niche for the firm, and they began managing them in 1895, financing them in 1902 through an in-house securities department, and constructing them throughout the firm's history. The firm had 600 consultants house in an 8-story building by 1912, yet Stone and Webster retained adjoining desks and jointly signed their letters. Notable projects included the Los Angeles Big Creek System (1913), and by 1920 they incorporated.