John Bloomfield Jervis (December 14, 1795 – January 12, 1885) was an American

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

. America's leading consulting engineer of the

antebellum era In the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit= before the war) spanned the end of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. The Antebellum South was characterized by the ...

(1820–60), Jervis designed and supervised the construction of five of America's earliest railroads, was chief engineer of three major canal projects, designed the famous, pioneering, DeWitt Clinton steam locomotive in 1831 while with the Mohawk & Hudson RR, designed the first locomotive with a swiveling 4-wheeled front

bogie A bogie ( ) (in some senses called a truck in North American English) is a chassis or framework that carries a wheelset, attached to a vehicle—a modular subassembly of wheels and axles. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transp ...

truck in 1832 for the M&H RR, designed and built the 41-mile Croton Aqueduct – New York City's fresh water supply from 1842 to 1891 – and was a consulting engineer for the Boston water system.

Biography

John Bloomfield Jervis was born in 1795 at

Huntington, New York The Town of Huntington is one of ten towns in Suffolk County, New York. Founded in 1653, it is located on the north shore of Long Island in northwestern Suffolk County, with Long Island Sound to its north and Nassau County adjacent to the west. ...

, on

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United States and the 18 ...

, the son of Timothy Jervis, a carpenter, and Phoebe Bloomfield, the eldest of seven children. Jervis moved with his family to Fort Stanwix (later known as

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

) in upstate New York in 1798 when his father purchased a farm and ran a lumber business. In October 1817 at the age of 22, Jervis was hired by Chief Engineer

Benjamin Wright Benjamin Wright (October 10, 1770 – August 24, 1842) was an American civil engineer who was chief engineer of the Erie Canal and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. In 1969, the American Society of Civil Engineers declared him the "Father of America ...

of the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing ...

as an axeman in a survey party to locate the canal west of

Rome, New York Rome is a city in Oneida County, New York, United States, located in the central part of the state. The population was 32,127 at the 2020 census. Rome is one of two principal cities in the Utica–Rome Metropolitan Statistical Area, which l ...

. The role of the axemen was to clear away brush and trees along a "trace" four feet wide.(Ibid.) In the spring of 1818, Jervis became a rodman until the canal was located from Rome to Montezuma on July 10, 1818. (Ibid.) By the end of 1818, Jervis was promoted to resident engineer in charge of a canal section seventeen miles long and promoted to General Superintendent of the Eastern Division in 1824. Jervis left the Erie Canal in early 1825 to again work with Benjamin Wright on the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. In 1827, Jervis became the chief engineer for the Delaware and Hudson. In this position, he convinced the board of directors to test locomotives for the gravity railroad feeding coal to the canal terminal. Among the four engines imported for the experiment was the famous '' Stourbridge Lion'', and the less-known "America", lighter locomotive which was delivered 5 months before the Stourbridge Lion and which was demonstrated for the public the day before the Lion. Both locomotives were ordered from Robert the Robert Stephenson & Co., the Lion being built by Foster, Rastrick and Company of England and becoming the second commercial locomotive to run in the Western Hemisphere. Jervis'_Bogie_Locomotive

In 1831, he became the chief engineer for the

Mohawk and Hudson Railroad Mohawk may refer to: Related to Native Americans *Mohawk people, an indigenous people of North America (Canada and New York) * Mohawk language, the language spoken by the Mohawk people *Mohawk hairstyle, from a hairstyle once thought to have been ...

, a predecessor of the

New York Central The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Mid ...

, and two years later he was appointed chief engineer of upstate New York's

Chenango Canal The Chenango Canal was a towpath canal in central New York in the United States which linked the Susquehanna River to the Erie Canal. Built and operated in the mid-19th century, it was 97 miles long and for much of its course followed the C ...

project and helped in its design and construction. In 1836, Jervis was chosen as the chief engineer on the 41-mile long Croton Aqueduct. After his work on the aqueduct, Jervis served as a consulting engineer for the Boston water system from 1846 to 1848. In the 1850s and into the early 1860s he worked on railroads in the

midwestern United States The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

, serving as chief engineer for both the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad, Chicago and Rock Island Railroad (a predecessor of the

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (CRI&P RW, sometimes called ''Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway'') was an American Class I railroad. It was also known as the Rock Island Line, or, in its final years, The Rock. At the end ...

), also serving as President of the latter from 1851 to 1854, and finally the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway. Jervis retired in 1864 to his homestead in Rome, but he continued to work actively in the area. In 1869, he helped form the Merchants Iron Mill, known today as the Rome Iron Mill in upstate New York. He was also the founder of the Rome public library, named for him. Much of the remainder of Jervis's life was spent writing. He published ''The Question of Labor and Capital'' on economics in 1877.

Work

Jervis steam locomotive

Jervis' first

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the loco ...

design was the ''

DeWitt Clinton DeWitt Clinton (March 2, 1769February 11, 1828) was an American politician and naturalist. He served as a United States senator, as the mayor of New York City, and as the seventh governor of New York. In this last capacity, he was largely re ...

'' while working as chief engineer for the

in 1831. The following year he built the ''Experiment'' (later renamed the ''Brother Jonathan''), the first steam locomotive with a leading bogie, a four-wheel leading truck that guides the locomotive into curves. This

4-2-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, two powered driving wheels on one axle and no trailing wheels. This type of locomotive is often called ...

locomotive, which had two powered driving wheels on a rear axle underneath the locomotive's

firebox Firebox may refer to: * Firebox (steam engine), the area where the fuel is burned in a steam engine * Firebox (architecture), the part of a fireplace where fuel is combusted *Firebox Records, a Finnish 8101705801record label * Firebox.com, an elect ...

, became known as the Jervis type. The Mohawk & Hudson Rail Road began operating the 4-2-0 in 1832.

Croton Aqueduct

In 1836, Jervis was chosen as the chief engineer on the 41-mile Croton Aqueduct, which operated from 1842 to 1865, bringing fresh water to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Many of Jervis's original diagrams for this project are now preserved at both the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Found ...

and the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

in Washington, D.C. The High Bridge which still stands across the

Harlem River The Harlem River is an tidal strait in New York, United States, flowing between the Hudson River and the East River and separating the island of Manhattan from the Bronx on the New York mainland. The northern stretch, also called the Spuyt ...

in New York City, connecting

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New ...

, was part of this project.

Legacy

Delaware & Hudson RR high-pressure locomotive, 1401 John B

Upon his death, Jervis bequeathed his homestead to the city of Rome to use as the location for a public library. His personal library now forms the John B. Jervis collection of the Jervis Public Library. The building was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1982. In 1927, the Delaware and Hudson Railroad built an experimental steam locomotive that was designed to run at 400 psi (2.8 MPa or 28 kgf/cm²) steam pressure; this locomotive, road number 1401, was named ''John B. Jervis''. The city of Port Jervis, New York, is also named in his honor. The city was a port on the former

Delaware and Hudson Canal The Delaware and Hudson Canal was the first venture of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, which would later build the Delaware and Hudson Railway. Between 1828 and 1899, the canal's barges carried anthracite coal from the mines of northeast ...

, which he designed, and is located at the adjoining borders of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Works

* ''Railway Property'' (1859) * ''The Construction and Management of Railways'' (1861) * ''Labor and Capital'' (1877)

References

Notes Further reading * * * Museum of the City of New York,
The Croton Aqueduct
'. Retrieved March 9, 2005. * White, John H Jr. (Spring 1986), America's Most Noteworthy Railroaders, ''Railroad History'', 154, p. 9-15.

External links

John B. Jervis drawings from the Jervis Public Library on New York Heritage Digital CollectionsArt and the empire city: New York, 1825-1861
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Jervis (see index)
ASCE : John Bloomfield Jervis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jervis, John B. 1795 births 1885 deaths American people in rail transportation American civil engineers People from Huntington, New York American non-fiction writers Port Jervis, New York People from Rome, New York Engineers from New York (state)