Col. Charles Ellet, (USA)

Colonel Charles Ellet, USA

• Find A Grave Memorial ID # 5772
• Colonel Ellet's Wikipedia Page

ELLET was a civil engineer, born at Penn's Manor, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, January 1, 1810, son of Charles and Mary (Israel) Ellet, and grandson of Charles and Hannah (Carpenter) Ellet. His father, a farmer, was a member of a well-known Quaker family and his mother, daughter of Israel Israel of Philadelphia was one of the most remarkable women of her time, being alluded to by a Philadelphia journal as the "American Cornelia."

The son was brought up on his father's farm and attended school at Bristol, Pennsylvania. From his earliest years he had shown an unusual talent and fondness for mathematics and at the age of sixteen had far outgrown the scope of the school's mathematical curriculum.

After a course of study at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France, he secured employment on various engineering works becoming first assistant and soon afterward chief engineer of the James river and Kanawha canal. His attention at this time was devoted chiefly to the study of methods of inland communication, more particularly suspension bridges, and in 1841-42, he constructed the wire suspension bridge across the Shuylkill river at Fairmont, the first of its kind in America.

He prepared plans for many other bridges including one across the Mississippi at St. Louis, one across the Connecticut at Middletown, and one across the Potomac at Georgetown. After a period as chief engineer and president of the Schuylkill Navigation Co., he designed and built the first suspension bridge across the Niagara river below the falls and what was then the longest single span bridge in the world, over the Ohio river at Wheeling.

In 1850 he was called upon by the war department to make surveys and investigation for the preparation of adequate plans for protecting the delta of the Mississippi from inundations and for increasing the depth of the water over the bars at its mouth. Having previously been engaged on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, Mr. Ellet now became chief engineer of the Central Railroad of Virginia and in 1853 built a railroad over the Blue Ridge at Rock Fish Gap, which was probably the most remarkable line then in existence. It crossed the mountain at a height of 1,845 feet, was eight miles long, and had a maximum grading of 296 feet per mile and minimum radius of curvature of 234 feet.

In the following year he submitted to the Russian government his plan of using steamships as battering rams in time of war. The project was favorably considered, but the sudden death of Czar Nicholas put an end to the negotiations. Mr. Ellet then brought his ideas to the notice of the American government. Convinced of their value he worked with unabated energy and determination to have them tried by the government, but, owing to the lethargy which pervaded the naval department before the civil war or owing to the inability of the authorities to recognize the advantages of his scheme, the proposed rams found no favor with the government.

It was not until the Confederate ram Merrimac, built according to suggestions contained in Mr. Ellet's memorial to the Virginia legislature before the war, had demonstrated the efficiency of that means of defense that the secretary of war appointed him colonel of engineers and commissioned him to buy vessels and convert them into rams.

Accordingly he purchased five heavy tow-boats, at Pittsburg and four side-wheel steamers at Cincinnati, and after strengthening them with heavy timbers and sheathing of iron-bars and bulwarks of oak, took them down the river to join Capt. Davis' squadron above Memphis.

On June 6 a battle was fought, in which, Ellet in command of the Queen of the West rammed the Confederate General Lovell, cutting her nearly in tow, and causing her to sink in a few seconds. At the moment of the collision, Ellet, who was standing on deck in an exposed position, was struck in the knee by a bullet which caused his death. As he was being borne off the steamer he called to his younger brother, Alfred W. Ellet, in command of the ram Monarch, "Stand to your post."

Colonel Ellet was a voluminous writer on professional subjects and a keen controversialist. He left a mass of vigorous, pointed, exhaustive pamphlets and memoirs connected with the public works under his charge, and other matters. Among the most interesting of these are "The Army of the Potomac and its Mismanagement," addressed to the president of the United States (1861); "Military Incapacity and What it Costs the Country," addressed to the congress of the United States (Feb. 1862); pamphlets on the "Location of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad," on "Coast and Harbor Defences," and on the "Mountain Top Track"; a report to congress on the Mississippi; a memoir on the Ohio, published in the Transactions of the Smithsonian Institution; and a report on the improvement of the Great Kanawha.

Col. Ellet was married about 1840 to Elvira Augusta Stuart, daughter of Judge William Daniel of Lynchburg, Va., who died of grief eight days after his death. They had four children: Mary Virginia, Charles Rivers, Cornelia Daniel, and William Ellet. Col. Ellet died at Cairo, Ill., June 21, 1862.

National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. New York, J. J. White, 1897; v. 4. The Smithsonian Associates Civil War E-Mail Newsletter, Volume 5, Number 5

Last month's trivia question drew a response from Mrs. Coley of West Memphis, Arkansas, who generously provided us with this very personal and poignant account of the life and career of her eminent ancestor.

Ellet was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, January 1, 1810, the son of shopkeeper Charles Ellet and Mary Israel Ellet, a highly educated woman for her day. They soon moved to a farm 25 miles from Philadelphia. This proved to be a hardship for Mary, but it instilled in her a determination to do the best she could for her children. This was especially true for Charles, as it was abundantly clear that he was not cut out to be a farmer. With little formal schooling, Ellet was a voracious reader and showed an early aptitude for math. Mary encouraged those abilities and supported him as he followed his dreams into a world far different from the one where he had spent his childhood.

Ellet's career and the timing of the Erie Canal in 1825 were fortuitous. The completion of the canal launched a national mania for more inland waterways. Until then, Americans had only read about the infrastructure that already crisscrossed Europe. It was at this time that Ellet left the family farm at age 17 and immediately found work surveying the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. Work on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal followed, where Judge Benjamin Wright of Erie Canal fame was appointed chief engineer.

Ellet soon began to realize that getting off the riverbank, literally and figuratively, would require something beyond his ingenuity. In 1830, with a letter of introduction to the Marquis de Lafayette, Ellet sailed to Paris. Lafayette and the American Ambassador to France pulled strings for Ellet to attend lectures at the Ecole des Ponts et Chausses with other French engineering students. He also took the opportunity to examine public works in the vicinity. While touring southern France the next spring, Ellet observed reservoir and suspension bridge construction with special interest. By observing a suspension bridge under construction over the Loire River, he grasped the concepts behind how the wire cables for these bridges were utilized. His application of these techniques became two of his most outstanding contributions to American civil engineering.

When Ellet returned to the United States, he made several suspension bridge proposals but was repeatedly turned down. His youth, inexperience, and his novel ideas were the rational reasons. Instead, Judge Wright put him to work surveying the western end of the New York and Erie Railroad. In 1835, Wright was appointed chief engineer of the James River and Kanawha Canal Company (JRKCC) in Lynchburg, Virginia. The project was intended to connect the Tidewater to the Ohio River. Wright hired his son and Ellet as assistants. Ellet was put in charge of the segment between Lynchburg and the Tye River.

The move to Lynchburg brought romance into the life of the engineer, who had previously never sought it. Ellet was not a sociable man and small talk bored him. However, he was forced to attend a formal occasion with JRKCC president Joseph Carrington Cabell, Judge William Daniel, Sr., and other Lynchburg elite. Daniel's youngest daughter Elvira, known as Ellie, observed Ellet standing in the foyer. The frail, but lovely, dark-eyed brunette whispered to her sister that the six foot two, slender framed engineer, with dark, thick hair and discerning eyes was the handsomest man she had ever seen. He was smitten with her as well. Ellet and Ellie married October 31, 1837 at Point of Honor, her childhood home. Their first child, Mary Virginia, was born there two years later.

During the next decade, Ellet concentrated on building the first important wire suspension bridges in the United States. The first over the Schuylkill River at Fairmount, in Philadelphia, 1842; another at Niagara Falls, 1848; and a third over the Ohio River at Wheeling, in 1849. The bridge at Wheeling, which connected the National Road, was his crown jewel. At 1,010 feet, it was then the longest suspension bridge in the world. The town turned out for a grand celebration and the builder was revered. Ellet and his family lived in Wheeling longer than at any other location during his career.

Ellet's work was often plagued with controversy and the Wheeling Bridge project was no exception. Four months before the structure was completed, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sued the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company on behalf of steamboat interests in Pittsburgh. The litigation introduced Ellet to the opposition's counsel, Edwin M. Stanton. In the final analysis, Congress sided with the bridge company, and the President signed into law a bill that declared the bridge a portion of a post road and therefore not subject to the decree of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, bitter seeds had been sown between the bridge engineer and the future Secretary of War.

At this point, Ellet's attention turned to the extensive overflows of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. No better example exists of his fascination with the nation's waterways than when he changed his oldest son's name to Charles (Charlie) Rivers Ellet. In 1850, Congress commissioned a survey of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers that would lead to a practical plan to combat inundation. Ellet conducted his work simultaneously and independently of topographical engineers Colonel Stephen H. Long and Captain Andrew A. Humphreys. Ellet finished first, on October 31, 1851. He argued for stronger and higher levees and recommended the creation of artificial reservoirs on tributary streams in order to control discharge into the Mississippi. His plan was considered controversial and the Corps of Engineers rejected it.

This study was originally published as a Senate document in 1852, and later elaborated in Ellet's Report on the Overflows of the Delta of the Mississippi (Washington, 1852) and The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers (Philadelphia, 1853); Physical Geography of the Mississippi Valley was published by the Smithsonian Institution in1849. Not until 1928 would a comparably comprehensive flood control plan be published by the federal government.

From 1850 to 1853 Ellet was chief engineer of the Hempfield Railroad and the Virginia Central Railroad, in addition to other mentioned projects. A second daughter, Nina, had been born in1849, and son Willie was born in the summer of 1854. Ellie was spending winters in Washington DC. Although a growing family and Ellet's mounting list of projects and responsibilities were taking their toll, he could not refuse a third trip to Europe when the ailing railroad companies asked him to go in an effort to secure credit and supplies.

In Europe, eleven-year-old Charlie was sent to a boarding school in Paris. Ellie remained in Frankfurt with Mary Virginia, Nina, and Willie, while Ellet crossed the continent taking care of business. The Crimean War was in progress, and it was during this time that the engineer conceived the idea of a steam battering ram. It was not a complicated design. Simply put, he wanted to strengthen the boat's hull and send them with "force against the sides of other vessels." In 1855 he wrote a pamphlet outlining his ram ideas, which marked the beginning of a seven-year campaign to convince the United States government to use them for national defense.

On their return from Europe, the family settled for good in the Washington DC area on a small farm they called Clifton, in what is now Georgetown. Children Nina and Willie were still young and remained at home, but Charlie was the rambunctious one. He was soon enrolled in Georgetown College and later Virginia Military Institute, from which he was expelled for getting into mischief. Charlie was then sent to live with Uncle Edward Ellet in Illinois where he began to train for the medical profession and was introduced to the 1860's version of "tough love."

Daughter Mary Virginia was never a problem. She, like her father, was largely self-taught. She learned French on her own while in Europe. She read a great deal. She helped her mother with the younger children. She made occasional trips to Virginia to spend time with her relatives. She wrote more letters to her father during the war years than anyone else.

Life changed drastically after Fort Sumter, when Ellet offered his services as an engineer to the President and the Secretary of the Navy. He was prepared to argue, persuade, and harangue for a position to assist the war effort. After all, no one knew the topography of Virginia better than he did. He had strategies to cut off Confederate supplies by rail, build floating bridges on the Potomac, and he was even willing to lead a Pennsylvania infantry. Additionally, he had never let up on his steam ram plan for national defense. His offers were ignored with an insulting silence, even by General George B. McClellan.

Initially, Ellet thought his overtures to "Little Mac" would be well received. Both men were engineers, both had held high positions with railroad companies, both were from Pennsylvania, and both had observed war strategies during the Crimean War. Ellet's efforts to contribute to the war effort were to no avail. The General's disregard of a senior engineer sent Ellet into a tailspin. He wrote a highly critical letter to the editor of the New York Times about McClellan's procrastination. Ellet's views were later published in a pamphlet titled, The Army of the Potomac and Its Mismanagement.

Ellet observed that the Army of the Potomac enjoyed being a daily parade brigade while the Southern troops regularly received food, ammunition, and additional troops from the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. He simply proposed that a strategic destruction of Virginia's rail lines would stop the war and save lives. But he determined the General was apparently "unconscious" about where the enemy was and what they were doing, especially after they stole the Baltimore and Ohio engines away, within view of Federal campfires.

McClellan's dawdling included the consistent call for more men. Ellet wrote "You have more men and equipment here now than Napoleon had when he prostrated Prussia in a three weeks campaign. You have more men here on the Potomac than he moved when he marched to the heart of Austria, occupied Vienna, and dictated laws to the sovereigns of Europe." The New York Times eventually cast its approval for Ellet's critique, but the federal government continued to ignore him until March 9, 1862. The overture from the politicians had nothing to do with McClellan. The ironclad ram Merrimac had destroyed a fleet of Union boats at the Battle of Hampton Roads. This battle did more for Ellet's ram proposal than anything he said or could have said.

Strategically, Stanton decided that the Union must take control of the Mississippi River. If the North hoped to put down the rebellion, it must cut off the Confederate source of trade and transportation. Putting together a fleet of steam battering rams became an emergency and Charles Ellet, Jr. was their man. Stanton told his cohorts that he didn't know of anyone else to whom he could entrust the mission. Obviously, at this point, Stanton was over their Wheeling discord.

Ellet oversaw the conversion of nine steamboats into speedier, less cumbersome ramming vessels than the ironclads. Stanton commissioned the engineer a colonel, so that he could command the fleet. Ellet requested that his youngest brother, Lieutenant Colonel Alfred W. Ellet, be allowed to join him as second in command. The crew consisted of fifty soldiers from Alfred's Illinois unit, ordinary river boatmen, and other Ellet relatives, including son Charlie.

On the Mississippi River at Memphis, June 6, 1862, Colonel Ellet, aboard Queen of the West, and Alfred, aboard Monarch, joined forces with Captain Charles H. Davis's gunboats. Union ram Switzerland ran aground and the others coming from behind, obeying orders, did not get out of formation, thus leaving the ramming to Charles and Alfred. Nevertheless, all the Rebel rams but one were sunk, burned, or run into the Arkansas side. The Battle of Memphis barely lasted an hour.

Ellet was shot in the knee. The wound was not considered life threatening at first. He penned a letter to Mary Virginia saying little about the battle, but giving accolades to Charlie for removing the Confederate flag from atop the Memphis Post Office and raising the National banner. "One man drew a pistol and proclaimed himself an officer of the Confederate Army, and would tear that flag down. Charles told him that if he advanced his foot to the steps he would kill him... The whole bearing of the boy was manly in extreme... I enclose you a piece of the cord from the wounded leg side of my pantaloons for Nina... My dear daughter you have no need to be ashamed of your kindred today."

Writing to Ellie, Ellet said, "after the doctor removed the ball from near my knee, my anxiety is now for you, and Mary and our dear little ones. Join me here my dear Wife and let us study out the future and talk over the past... Forever yours, Charles Ellet, Jr."

Stanton sent the "thanks of the Department" to Ellet and his men. But as the days went by, Ellet's condition deteriorated. Stanton soon had the heartbreaking task of informing Ellie that her seriously ill husband was being brought to Cairo. She and daughter Mary Virginia rushed to meet him there. But when the boat docked on June 21, Ellet was dead.

His body was taken to Independence Hall where he lay in state until he was interred June 27 at Laurel Hill Cemetery. Ellie died the next day from exhaustion and a broken heart. Charlie had remained to serve with Uncle Alfred and they ran reconnaissance missions during the months preceding the Battle at Vicksburg. Charlie became sick and went home to Uncle Edward in Illinois. Within a few days, Charlie died at the age of 21.

Their oldest daughter, Mary Virginia, was left to raise her two young siblings, Nina and Willie. Willie later died of unknown causes at age 20. Nina died in childbirth at 24. Mary Virginia had married her widowed cousin, William Daniel Cabell, in 1867. He ran a school for boys, initially those returning home from war, out of his Norwood, Virginia, estate until about 1880.

The couple and their children moved to Washington DC and opened another school called the Norwood Institute. In 1890, Mary Virginia became an organizing member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She spent her later years perpetuating the memory of her father, until her death in 1930.

Charles Ellet, Jr., was like a one-man American band when it came to introducing public works to an infant nation in the mid-19th Century. Building canals, bridges, railroads, surveying rivers to control inundation, commanding a steam ram fleet of his design, and writing pamphlets about all of his enterprises was what he did from 1832-1862. As his story shows, he did it with style and impeccable courtesy, but often became impatient with those who did not agree with him. Still, he was highly acclaimed during his lifetime. And, he always demonstrated love and tenderness towards his wife and children. Although Ellet's mass applause has grown silent, notable engineers sing his praises, and descendants beat the drum. The eminent engineer made history in his day. He deserves this page today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ellet,_Jr.

Charles Ellet, Jr. (1 January 1810 – 21 June 1862) was a civil engineer and a colonel during the American Civil War, mortally wounded at the Battle of Memphis.

Biography

Ellet was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, brother of Alfred W. Ellet, also a civil engineer and a brigadier general in the Union Army during the war.

Charles studied civil engineering at École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, France, and in 1832 submitted proposals for a suspension bridge across the Potomac River. In 1842, he designed amd built the first major wire-cable suspension bridge in the United States, spanning 358 feet over the Schuylkill River at Fairmount, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He designed the record-breaking Wheeling suspension bridge over the Ohio River at Wheeling, West Virginia in 1848, and a 770-foot suspension footbridge at Niagara Falls at the same time. His other civil engineering accomplishments include supervising both the James River & Kanawha Canal in Virginia and the Schuylkill Navigation improvements in Pennsylvania, devising theories for improving flood control and navigation of mid-western rivers and constructing railways in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

In March 1861, the Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton appointed him colonel of engineers and tasked him with developing the United States Ram Fleet.

He was mortally wounded during the Battle of Memphis while on board Queen of the West, dying fifteen days later.

Ellet published a Report of the Overflows of the Delta of the Mississippi River, which helped to reshape New Orlean's waterfront. George Perkins Marsh published Man and Nature fourteen years later, but it was Ellet who first noted in writing that the artificial embankments created an overflowing delta. It would be decades later that his assertions were taken seriously and used in flood control decisions.

His son Charles Rivers Ellet was a colonel in the Union Army.

Namesake

USS Ellet (DD-398), which was in service in 1939-46, was named in honor of Charles Ellet, Jr. and other members of his family.

ELLET, Charles, civil engineer, was born at Penn's Manor, Bucks co., Penn., Jan. 1, 1810, son of Charles and Mary (Israel) Ellet, and grandson of Charles and Hannah (Carpenter) Ellet. His father, a farmer, was a member of a well-known Quaker family and his mother, daughter of Israel Israel of Philadelphia was one of the most remarkable women of her time, being alluded to by a Philadelphia journal as the "American Cornelia." The son was brought up on his father's farm and attended school at Bristol, Pa. From his earliest years he had shown an unusual talent and fondness for mathematics and at the age of sixteen had far outgrown the scope of the school's mathematical curriculum. After a course of study at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France, he secured employment on various engineering works becoming first assistant and soon afterward chief engineer of the James river and Kanawha canal. His attention at this time was devoted chiefly to the study of methods of inland communication, more particularly suspension bridges, and in 1841-42, he constructed the wire suspension bridge across the Shuylkill river at Fairmont, the first of its kind in America. He prepared plans for many other bridges including one across the Mississippi at St. Louis, one across the Connecticut at Middletown, and one across the Potomac at Georgetown. After a period as chief engineer and president of the Schuylkill Navigation Co., he designed and built the first suspension bridge across the Niagara river below the falls and what was then the longest single span bridge in the world, over the Ohio river at Wheeling. In 1850 he was called upon by the war department to make surveys and investigation for the preparation of adequate plans for protecting the delta of the Mississippi from inundations and for increasing the depth of the water over the bars at its mouth. Having previously been engaged on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, Mr. Ellet now became chief engineer of the Central Railroad of Virginia and in 1853 built a railroad over the Blue Ridge at Rock Fish Gap, which was probably the most remarkable line then in existence. It crossed the mountain at a height of 1,845 feet, was eight miles long, and had a maximum grading of 296 feet per mile and minimum radius of curvature of 234 feet. In the following year he submitted to the Russian government his plan of using steamships as battering rams in time of war. The project was favorably considered, but the sudden death of Czar Nicholas put an end to the negotiations. Mr. Ellet then brought his ideas to the notice of the American government. Convinced of their value he worked with unabated energy and determination to have them tried by the government, but, owing to the lethargy which pervaded the naval department before the civil war or owing to the inability of the authorities to recognize the advantages of his scheme, the proposed rams found no favor with the government. It was not until the Confederate ram Merrimac, built according to suggestions contained in Mr. Ellet's memorial to the Virginia legislature before the war, had demonstrated the efficiency of that means of defense that the secretary of war appointed him colonel of engineers and commissioned him to buy vessels and convert them into rams. Accordingly he purchased five heavy tow-boats, at Pittsburg and four side-wheel steamers at Cincinnati, and after strengthening them with heavy timbers and sheathing of iron-bars and bulwarks of oak, took them down the river to join Capt. Davis' squadron above Memphis. On June 6 a battle was fought, in which, Ellet in command of the Queen of the West rammed the Confederate General Lovell, cutting her nearly in tow, and causing her to sink in a few seconds. At the moment of the collision, Ellet, who was standing on deck in an exposed position, was struck in the knee by a bullet which caused his death. As he was being borne off the steamer he called to his younger brother, Alfred W. Ellet, in command of the ram Monarch, "Stand to your post." Col. Ellet was a voluminous writer on professional subjects and a keen controversialist. He left a mass of vigorous, pointed, exhaustive pamphlets and memoirs connected with the public works under his charge, and other matters. Among the most interesting of these are "The Army of the Potomac and its Mismanagement," addressed to the president of the United States (1861); "Military Incapacity and What it Costs the Country," addressed to the congress of the United States (Feb. 1862); pamphlets on the "Location of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad," on "Coast and Harbor Defences," and on the "Mountain Top Track"; a report to congress on the Mississippi; a memoir on the Ohio, published in the Transactions of the Smithsonian Institution; and a report on the improvement of the Great Kanawha. Col. Ellet was married about 1840 to Elvira Augusta Stuart, daughter of Judge William Daniel of Lynchburg, Va., who died of grief eight days after his death. They had four children: Mary Virginia, Charles Rivers, Cornelia Daniel, and William Ellet. Col. Ellet died at Cairo, Ill., June 21, 1862.

National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. New York, J. J. White, 1897; v. 4.

The Smithsonian Associates Civil War E-Mail Newsletter, Volume 5, Number 5

Last month's trivia question drew a response from Mrs. Coley of West Memphis, Arkansas, who generously provided us with this very personal and poignant account of the life and career of her eminent ancestor.

Ellet was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, January 1, 1810, the son of shopkeeper Charles Ellet and Mary Israel Ellet, a highly educated woman for her day. They soon moved to a farm 25 miles from Philadelphia. This proved to be a hardship for Mary, but it instilled in her a determination to do the best she could for her children. This was especially true for Charles, as it was abundantly clear that he was not cut out to be a farmer. With little formal schooling, Ellet was a voracious reader and showed an early aptitude for math. Mary encouraged those abilities and supported him as he followed his dreams into a world far different from the one where he had spent his childhood.

Ellet's career and the timing of the Erie Canal in 1825 were fortuitous. The completion of the canal launched a national mania for more inland waterways. Until then, Americans had only read about the infrastructure that already crisscrossed Europe. It was at this time that Ellet left the family farm at age 17 and immediately found work surveying the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. Work on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal followed, where Judge Benjamin Wright of Erie Canal fame was appointed chief engineer.

Ellet soon began to realize that getting off the riverbank, literally and figuratively, would require something beyond his ingenuity. In 1830, with a letter of introduction to the Marquis de Lafayette, Ellet sailed to Paris. Lafayette and the American Ambassador to France pulled strings for Ellet to attend lectures at the Ecole des Ponts et Chausses with other French engineering students. He also took the opportunity to examine public works in the vicinity. While touring southern France the next spring, Ellet observed reservoir and suspension bridge construction with special interest. By observing a suspension bridge under construction over the Loire River, he grasped the concepts behind how the wire cables for these bridges were utilized. His application of these techniques became two of his most outstanding contributions to American civil engineering.

When Ellet returned to the United States, he made several suspension bridge proposals but was repeatedly turned down. His youth, inexperience, and his novel ideas were the rational reasons. Instead, Judge Wright put him to work surveying the western end of the New York and Erie Railroad. In 1835, Wright was appointed chief engineer of the James River and Kanawha Canal Company (JRKCC) in Lynchburg, Virginia. The project was intended to connect the Tidewater to the Ohio River. Wright hired his son and Ellet as assistants. Ellet was put in charge of the segment between Lynchburg and the Tye River.

The move to Lynchburg brought romance into the life of the engineer, who had previously never sought it. Ellet was not a sociable man and small talk bored him. However, he was forced to attend a formal occasion with JRKCC president Joseph Carrington Cabell, Judge William Daniel, Sr., and other Lynchburg elite. Daniel's youngest daughter Elvira, known as Ellie, observed Ellet standing in the foyer. The frail, but lovely, dark-eyed brunette whispered to her sister that the six foot two, slender framed engineer, with dark, thick hair and discerning eyes was the handsomest man she had ever seen. He was smitten with her as well. Ellet and Ellie married October 31, 1837 at Point of Honor, her childhood home. Their first child, Mary Virginia, was born there two years later.

During the next decade, Ellet concentrated on building the first important wire suspension bridges in the United States. The first over the Schuylkill River at Fairmount, in Philadelphia, 1842; another at Niagara Falls, 1848; and a third over the Ohio River at Wheeling, in 1849. The bridge at Wheeling, which connected the National Road, was his crown jewel. At 1,010 feet, it was then the longest suspension bridge in the world. The town turned out for a grand celebration and the builder was revered. Ellet and his family lived in Wheeling longer than at any other location during his career.

Ellet's work was often plagued with controversy and the Wheeling Bridge project was no exception. Four months before the structure was completed, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sued the Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company on behalf of steamboat interests in Pittsburgh. The litigation introduced Ellet to the opposition's counsel, Edwin M. Stanton. In the final analysis, Congress sided with the bridge company, and the President signed into law a bill that declared the bridge a portion of a post road and therefore not subject to the decree of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, bitter seeds had been sown between the bridge engineer and the future Secretary of War.

At this point, Ellet's attention turned to the extensive overflows of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. No better example exists of his fascination with the nation's waterways than when he changed his oldest son's name to Charles (Charlie) Rivers Ellet. In 1850, Congress commissioned a survey of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers that would lead to a practical plan to combat inundation. Ellet conducted his work simultaneously and independently of topographical engineers Colonel Stephen H. Long and Captain Andrew A. Humphreys. Ellet finished first, on October 31, 1851. He argued for stronger and higher levees and recommended the creation of artificial reservoirs on tributary streams in order to control discharge into the Mississippi. His plan was considered controversial and the Corps of Engineers rejected it.

This study was originally published as a Senate document in 1852, and later elaborated in Ellet's Report on the Overflows of the Delta of the Mississippi (Washington, 1852) and The Mississippi and Ohio Rivers (Philadelphia, 1853); Physical Geography of the Mississippi Valley was published by the Smithsonian Institution in1849. Not until 1928 would a comparably comprehensive flood control plan be published by the federal government.

From 1850 to 1853 Ellet was chief engineer of the Hempfield Railroad and the Virginia Central Railroad, in addition to other mentioned projects. A second daughter, Nina, had been born in1849, and son Willie was born in the summer of 1854. Ellie was spending winters in Washington DC. Although a growing family and Ellet's mounting list of projects and responsibilities were taking their toll, he could not refuse a third trip to Europe when the ailing railroad companies asked him to go in an effort to secure credit and supplies.

In Europe, eleven-year-old Charlie was sent to a boarding school in Paris. Ellie remained in Frankfurt with Mary Virginia, Nina, and Willie, while Ellet crossed the continent taking care of business. The Crimean War was in progress, and it was during this time that the engineer conceived the idea of a steam battering ram. It was not a complicated design. Simply put, he wanted to strengthen the boat's hull and send them with "force against the sides of other vessels." In 1855 he wrote a pamphlet outlining his ram ideas, which marked the beginning of a seven-year campaign to convince the United States government to use them for national defense.

On their return from Europe, the family settled for good in the Washington DC area on a small farm they called Clifton, in what is now Georgetown. Children Nina and Willie were still young and remained at home, but Charlie was the rambunctious one. He was soon enrolled in Georgetown College and later Virginia Military Institute, from which he was expelled for getting into mischief. Charlie was then sent to live with Uncle Edward Ellet in Illinois where he began to train for the medical profession and was introduced to the 1860's version of "tough love."

Daughter Mary Virginia was never a problem. She, like her father, was largely self-taught. She learned French on her own while in Europe. She read a great deal. She helped her mother with the younger children. She made occasional trips to Virginia to spend time with her relatives. She wrote more letters to her father during the war years than anyone else.

Life changed drastically after Fort Sumter, when Ellet offered his services as an engineer to the President and the Secretary of the Navy. He was prepared to argue, persuade, and harangue for a position to assist the war effort. After all, no one knew the topography of Virginia better than he did. He had strategies to cut off Confederate supplies by rail, build floating bridges on the Potomac, and he was even willing to lead a Pennsylvania infantry. Additionally, he had never let up on his steam ram plan for national defense. His offers were ignored with an insulting silence, even by General George B. McClellan.

Initially, Ellet thought his overtures to "Little Mac" would be well received. Both men were engineers, both had held high positions with railroad companies, both were from Pennsylvania, and both had observed war strategies during the Crimean War. Ellet's efforts to contribute to the war effort were to no avail. The General's disregard of a senior engineer sent Ellet into a tailspin. He wrote a highly critical letter to the editor of the New York Times about McClellan's procrastination. Ellet's views were later published in a pamphlet titled, The Army of the Potomac and Its Mismanagement.

Ellet observed that the Army of the Potomac enjoyed being a daily parade brigade while the Southern troops regularly received food, ammunition, and additional troops from the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. He simply proposed that a strategic destruction of Virginia's rail lines would stop the war and save lives. But he determined the General was apparently "unconscious" about where the enemy was and what they were doing, especially after they stole the Baltimore and Ohio engines away, within view of Federal campfires.

McClellan's dawdling included the consistent call for more men. Ellet wrote "You have more men and equipment here now than Napoleon had when he prostrated Prussia in a three weeks campaign. You have more men here on the Potomac than he moved when he marched to the heart of Austria, occupied Vienna, and dictated laws to the sovereigns of Europe." The New York Times eventually cast its approval for Ellet's critique, but the federal government continued to ignore him until March 9, 1862. The overture from the politicians had nothing to do with McClellan. The ironclad ram Merrimac had destroyed a fleet of Union boats at the Battle of Hampton Roads. This battle did more for Ellet's ram proposal than anything he said or could have said.

Strategically, Stanton decided that the Union must take control of the Mississippi River. If the North hoped to put down the rebellion, it must cut off the Confederate source of trade and transportation. Putting together a fleet of steam battering rams became an emergency and Charles Ellet, Jr. was their man. Stanton told his cohorts that he didn't know of anyone else to whom he could entrust the mission. Obviously, at this point, Stanton was over their Wheeling discord.

Ellet oversaw the conversion of nine steamboats into speedier, less cumbersome ramming vessels than the ironclads. Stanton commissioned the engineer a colonel, so that he could command the fleet. Ellet requested that his youngest brother, Lieutenant Colonel Alfred W. Ellet, be allowed to join him as second in command. The crew consisted of fifty soldiers from Alfred's Illinois unit, ordinary river boatmen, and other Ellet relatives, including son Charlie.

On the Mississippi River at Memphis, June 6, 1862, Colonel Ellet, aboard Queen of the West, and Alfred, aboard Monarch, joined forces with Captain Charles H. Davis's gunboats. Union ram Switzerland ran aground and the others coming from behind, obeying orders, did not get out of formation, thus leaving the ramming to Charles and Alfred. Nevertheless, all the Rebel rams but one were sunk, burned, or run into the Arkansas side. The Battle of Memphis barely lasted an hour.

Ellet was shot in the knee. The wound was not considered life threatening at first. He penned a letter to Mary Virginia saying little about the battle, but giving accolades to Charlie for removing the Confederate flag from atop the Memphis Post Office and raising the National banner. "One man drew a pistol and proclaimed himself an officer of the Confederate Army, and would tear that flag down. Charles told him that if he advanced his foot to the steps he would kill him... The whole bearing of the boy was manly in extreme... I enclose you a piece of the cord from the wounded leg side of my pantaloons for Nina... My dear daughter you have no need to be ashamed of your kindred today."

Writing to Ellie, Ellet said, "after the doctor removed the ball from near my knee, my anxiety is now for you, and Mary and our dear little ones. Join me here my dear Wife and let us study out the future and talk over the past... Forever yours, Charles Ellet, Jr."

Stanton sent the "thanks of the Department" to Ellet and his men. But as the days went by, Ellet's condition deteriorated. Stanton soon had the heartbreaking task of informing Ellie that her seriously ill husband was being brought to Cairo. She and daughter Mary Virginia rushed to meet him there. But when the boat docked on June 21, Ellet was dead.

His body was taken to Independence Hall where he lay in state until he was interred June 27 at Laurel Hill Cemetery. Ellie died the next day from exhaustion and a broken heart. Charlie had remained to serve with Uncle Alfred and they ran reconnaissance missions during the months preceding the Battle at Vicksburg. Charlie became sick and went home to Uncle Edward in Illinois. Within a few days, Charlie died at the age of 21.

Their oldest daughter, Mary Virginia, was left to raise her two young siblings, Nina and Willie. Willie later died of unknown causes at age 20. Nina died in childbirth at 24. Mary Virginia had married her widowed cousin, William Daniel Cabell, in 1867. He ran a school for boys, initially those returning home from war, out of his Norwood, Virginia, estate until about 1880.

The couple and their children moved to Washington DC and opened another school called the Norwood Institute. In 1890, Mary Virginia became an organizing member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She spent her later years perpetuating the memory of her father, until her death in 1930.

Charles Ellet, Jr., was like a one-man American band when it came to introducing public works to an infant nation in the mid-19th Century. Building canals, bridges, railroads, surveying rivers to control inundation, commanding a steam ram fleet of his design, and writing pamphlets about all of his enterprises was what he did from 1832-1862. As his story shows, he did it with style and impeccable courtesy, but often became impatient with those who did not agree with him. Still, he was highly acclaimed during his lifetime. And, he always demonstrated love and tenderness towards his wife and children. Although Ellet's mass applause has grown silent, notable engineers sing his praises, and descendants beat the drum. The eminent engineer made history in his day. He deserves this page today.