Fraley.] ^^00 [jj,n. 6, 



was that of a chainman, his employer was the eminent canal engineer, Can- 

 vass White, and the chief of the party to which he was attached was Syl- 

 vester Welch. His progress in his profession from that time is shown by 

 the fact that at the age of eighlecn he was promoted by Mr. White to tlie 

 charge of the most difficult section of the Lehigh canal, extending from 

 Mauch Chunk down for a ctistance of sixteen miles. In 1829 he published 

 a description of the Lehigh canal in Hazard's Recjister. 



It was Mr. Roberts' rare good fortune to have been connected with the 

 first railway enterprises in the United States, his career as an engineer be- 

 ing thus contemporaneous with the beginnings and growthof that greatest 

 of agents in our modern civilization. Railway engineering in the United 

 States began, in a crude way, in 1830 at the Quincy granite quarry, a 

 tramway being then constructed for the transportation of stone from the 

 quarry to the water, a distance of three or four miles. The first railway 

 of any consequence, however, was the Mauch Chunk gravity road, nine 

 miles in length, between the summit of Broad Top mountain and the head 

 of the Mauch Chunk inclined plane. The first passenger car in the United 

 States was put on this road in the early summer of 1837, and Mr. Roberts 

 was one of the passengers on the first trip down the line. Since those first 

 small beginnings, this first crude railway of nine miles, the railway sj's- 

 tem of tlie United States has grown to be the most powerful instrument 

 of progress of our day, with its 95,000 miles of iron track netting the whole 

 surface of the country and carrying wealth into almost every locality. 

 Side by side with this wonderful material development, Mr. Roberts grew 

 into eminence as an engineei'. From his first beginning as a chainman, 

 just one year before the first crude attempt at railway engineering, his ca- 

 reer was one of steady, substantial growth until the closing hours of his 

 life, crowned with the highest honors which his profession could bestow 

 upon him, and ennobled by works whose perfection and usefulness will 

 be an imperishable record of his worth and fame. 



In the course of his long career of fifty-six years as an engineer, Mr. 

 Roberts held so many and so varied positions of trust and responsibility 

 that a bare enumeration of them would require more space than this brief 

 sketch will admit. The more important of them may be summarized as 

 follows : In 1829 Mr. Roberts' connection with the construction works of 

 the Union and Lehigh canals was brought to a termination. In 1830 he 

 was appointed resident engineer of the Union railroad and a feeder of the 

 Union canal. From 1831 to 1834 he was senior principal assistant engi- 

 neer on the Allegheny Portage railroad, during which time he had charge 

 of repairs on the western division of the Pennsylvania State canal — from 

 Johnstown to Pittsburgh — which had been damaged bj' the great flood of 

 1832. In 1835, in his 26th year, he received his first appointment as chief 

 engineer, being called to fill that position on the Harrisburg and Lancas- 

 ter railroad. In 1836 he accepted the chief engineership of the Cumber- 

 land Valley railroad which he held during that year and a part of 1837. 

 During this time he planned and built the first combined railway and 



