Robert Poole (1818-1903) was an Irish-born engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and benefactor. In 1843 he founded an

ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloomeri ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was d ...

, Maryland. For his workforce he hired members of what would become the first generation of modern

metalworkers Metalworking is the process of shaping and reshaping metals to create useful objects, parts, assemblies, and large scale structures. As a term it covers a wide and diverse range of processes, skills, and tools for producing objects on every scale ...

(

machinist A machinist is a tradesperson or trained professional who not only operates machine tools, but also has the knowledge of tooling and materials required to create set ups on machine tools such as milling machines, grinders, lathes, and drilling ...

s, molders, patternmakers, and boilermakers)—an emerging trade whose numbers would swell to 250,000 nationally by the end of the 19th century. His enterprise became the largest of its kind in Maryland, with 800–850 employees, and, from the 1850s on, played a central role in the manufacture of iron-based infrastructure essential for private enterprise and public works in America. Poole’s company made the columns that encircle the base of the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., engines that powered Union gunships during the Civil War,

hydraulic pump Hydraulic pumps are used in hydraulic drive systems and can be hydrostatic or hydrodynamic. A hydraulic pump is a mechanical source of power that converts mechanical power into hydraulic energy ( hydrostatic energy i.e. flow, pressure). It generat ...

s that dredged the Potomac River (creating park land for

national monuments National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

), and complex devices (known as carriages) that controlled the raising and lowering of long-range guns for the defense of the U.S. coastline for the federal government. For industry, the Poole company produced metal-based turbines and millwork that powered new and expanding manufacturers of flour, fertilizer, paper, and textiles—industries central to a growing economy. Municipalities bought Poole-made steam fire engines, horsecars that ran on rails, and mechanisms that drove urban cable cars—new services for the nation's burgeoning cities. At Poole's death in 1903, a newspaper headlined his obituary "Captain of Industry Dead." Poole did business in an era of wide-spread industrial strikes; his company went fifty years without one. At his funeral service, a delegation of two hundred and fifty men from his ironworks filed past his casket. Poole is recognized as a benefactor"Character sketches of Robert Poole emphasize that his charitable nature more than balanced his technological skill and bold business acumen." "Poole & Hunt Company Buildings", ''Maryland National Register, No.'' 73002194, Sec.8, p 2. for schools, colleges, and, most notably, a library which he had built and gave to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the library system for the City of

Early life

As an only child Poole lived in a one-story dwelling on an eight-acre farm outside the village of

Gulladuff Gulladuff ()Placenames NI
is a small

Belfast, in what would become Northern Ireland. His father, George Poole (c. 1785-c. 1822), was a farmer; his mother, Mary Shields Poole (1783–1857) was a flax spinner. After his father's death, Poole, age 6, and his mother, 41, immigrated to Baltimore in 1824. (At the time, Baltimore was America's third largest and fastest growing city.) "She must have had friends there," his granddaughter wrote. Poole’s mother supported the family as a seamstress and tutor, and she homeschooled her son. Starting at the age of 15 Poole apprenticed with a blacksmith, with machinists in textile mills, and with the engineer Ross Winans in the shops of the fledgling Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. From these experiences, Poole learned about iron, metalwork, engines, machinery, and the organization of an industrial enterprise.

Poole Ironworks

In 1843, on the northern edge of Baltimore, Poole and his first partner,

William Fergusson Sir William Fergusson, 1st Baronet FRCS FRS FRSE (20 March 180810 February 1877) was a Scottish surgeon. Biography William Fergusson son of James Fergusson of Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, was born at Prestonpans, East Lothian on 20 March 1808 ...

(1816–1863), hired a small crew of metalworkers and opened for business as the Baltimore Ironworks (generally known as Poole & Fergusson). During the 1840s and 1850s a tectonic shift had begun in the use of natural resources—away from wood (and its derivative,

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, cal ...

), long the nation's primary source of heat, and toward coal, soon to become the dominant fuel for heating homes and factories, for driving steam engines, and for smelting iron. By using coal instead of charcoal (as a source of heat and carbon), together with a process known as hot blast (blowing hot air into smelting furnaces), operators could build larger, more efficient furnaces and vastly increase their production of

pig iron Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate product of the iron industry in the production of steel which is obtained by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with silic ...

(the raw material for finished iron-based products). What had been scarce and expensive became plentiful and affordable—helping set off a wave of industrial diversification that laid the foundation for the Poole company's expansion. In 1851, because of disagreements over money and management, Poole ended his partnership with William Fergusson and took on, as his new partner, German H. Hunt (1828–1907), in a business they named the Union Works (generally known as Poole & Hunt). During their collaboration—until 1888, when Hunt retired—Poole managed internal operations of the ironworks; Hunt directed sales, bidding on contracts, and relations with the public. In 1853, after a fire in their foundry and machine shop, and a city-wide strike of metalworkers, the partners moved their operations from Baltimore to what was then the village of Woodberry, a few miles north of the city. On farmland beside the Jones Falls (falls is a local word for river), they constructed a plant fifty percent larger than the in-town ironworks. Each craft had its own shop of one story; ample space between shops made possible the subsequent enlargement of the business. It was during this period of transition—to a new partnership and a new location—that Poole's company came to national attention with its work on the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. in the 1850s. Responsible for enlarging and modernizing the overcrowded building, the architect of the project,

Thomas U. Walter Thomas Ustick Walter (September 4, 1804 – October 30, 1887) was an American architect of German descent, the dean of American architecture between the 1820 death of Benjamin Latrobe and the emergence of H.H. Richardson in the 1870s. He was ...

made architectural history when he selected iron instead of marble for the thirty-six columns (known as a peristyle) that surround the base of the dramatic new dome he designed. Flickr - USCapitol - Capitol Dome Construction - 1857

Flickr - USCapitol - Capitol Dome Construction - 1857

Forty miles away, Poole set precedent, too, when he cast the columns in deep pits in his new foundry. Molding iron in that way and for this purpose had not been accomplished before. The Poole company would go on to supply a total of 2.8 million pounds of structural iron for the new Capitol, chiefly for the dome. For the Capitol project, Poole and Hunt took their instructions from

Montgomery C. Meigs Montgomery Cunningham Meigs (; May 3, 1816 – January 2, 1892) was a career United States Army officer and civil engineer, who served as Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army during and after the American Civil War. Meigs strongly opposed sece ...

of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, superintendent of Capitol construction during the 1850s. (Meigs was later appointed by

President Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

as Quartermaster of the Union Army during the Civil war). Simultaneous with the Capitol Project, Meigs was responsible for the building of the Washington Aqueduct, and contracted with the Poole company to supply a derrick, a

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...

, and a stone-smoothing machine for that project. The Poole company worked again in Washington, D.C., in the 1880s, when its hydraulic pumps on barges sucked up muck and debris from the bottom of the Potomac River and, via a pipeline, deposited the material thousands of feet away, on the edge of the city, where it formed the ground for East Potomac Park, home to the

Lincoln Memorial The Lincoln Memorial is a U.S. national memorial built to honor the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., across from the Washington Monument, and is in the ...

and other monuments. Over his lifetime, Poole was granted eleven patents—one for improving the durability of wheels on railroad rolling stock and another for a device that accelerated the heating of water before it entered a boiler. His most successful invention was a revolving pan that mixed ingredients for commercial fertilizer, a mechanism that was widely adopted in the emerging fertilizer industry during the 1870s and 1880s. Poole’s openness to the innovations of others freshened his company’s array of products and added to its profitability. George Babcock and Stephen Wilcox, Jr. of Providence licensed the Poole company to manufacture their patented safety boiler. Its water was dispersed in many small tubes that resisted exploding under pressure, a significant improvement over conventional, so-called shell boilers, whose water was concentrated in a single container which, when overheated, could exploded easily and with fatal consequences. Robert Poole and Englishman John Walker collaborated on the manufacture and use of semi-automated, gear-molding machinery (an advance over cast and machine-cut gears) that, reportedly, sped production and improved their quality. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Poole company was ranked as the leading maker of diversified industrial gearing in the United States—with gears that fit into a child's hand and stood as high as an elephant. Poole's most important alliance was with James Leffel of

Springfield, Ohio Springfield is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Clark County, Ohio, Clark County. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio and is situated on the Mad River (Ohio), Mad River, Buck Creek, and Beaver Creek, approxim ...

, inventor of the so-called double turbine water wheel, a highly efficient mechanism that converted the energy of moving water into rotary power that drove machinery. Leffel’s turbine, and turbines that Poole engineers designed on their own, enable the company to become a significant competitor in the generation and distribution of industrial power, particularly in textile mills in the South after the Civil War and in the paper-making industry in the Northeast. The company’s largest single order—for forty custom-made turbines—was for the hydroelectric station at

York Haven, Pennsylvania York Haven is a borough in York County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 691 at the 2020 census. The borough is the home of the Brunner Island coal-fired electrical generation plant, located on the Susquehanna River on Wago Road an ...

, beside the

Susquehanna River The Susquehanna River (; Lenape: Siskëwahane) is a major river located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, overlapping between the lower Northeast and the Upland South. At long, it is the longest river on the East Coast of the ...

. Twenty of these turbines continue to turn electricity-producing generators today. “Robert Poole was an exceptional engineer with remarkable insight into the future and anticipation of big things in engineering," wrote editor and author E.A. Suverkrop, in the ''

American Machinist The ''American Machinist'' is an American trade magazine of the international machine industry, machinery industries and most especially their machining aspects. Published since 1877, it was a McGraw-Hill title for over a century before becoming a ...

''. (vol.52, no.3, 15 January 1920)

Benefactor

Poole responded to needs, one by one, as they came to his attention, not as part of any organized program of philanthropy. On land adjoining his ironworks, in the early 1880s, he underwrote the construction of a public school building that could house 350 pupils. In the 1890s, he gave money to support both The Woman’s College (later Goucher College) and Morgan College (later Morgan State University), where he was a trustee (1893–1901). Although he was a Methodist, Poole paid for rebuilding and enlarging St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Hampden-Woodberry. In 1899, he financed the construction of a branch library in Hampden-Woodberry and donated the building and its books to the Enoch Pratt Free Library of Baltimore. During his lifetime, his gifts to institutions totaled the modern equivalent of $4–5 million dollars. After his death in 1903, trustees learned that he held mortgages, many for long-time employees, worth $3.4 million today, only a fraction of which was repaid.

Personal life

On 7 November 1841 Robert Poole and Ann Simpson (1818–1891) were married in the Emory Methodist Episcopal Church in her home town of Ellicott Mills, Maryland. Ann Simpson was born in Washington, D.C., the youngest of five children of Welsh-born parents. She bore eight children, six of whom lived to adulthood.Poole family genealogy, Swett, ''The Metalworkers'', 383.

References

1818 births 1903 deaths {{Improve categories, date=May 2023 Industrialists Ironworks and steel mills in the United States 19th-century Irish philanthropists Machinists Place of birth missing Place of death missing