Godfrey Weitzel - Postbellum Career

Postbellum Career

Weitzel was assigned to Texas in command of the District of Rio Grande until 1866, when he was mustered out of the volunteer service on March 1. He reverted to his regular Army rank, but was promoted to major of engineers later that year and to lieutenant colonel in 1882. In August 1866 he began the design of an expanded canal around the Falls of the Ohio on the Indiana side.

In 1875 he established the temporary light on a pole in the lake at Alpena, Michigan. In 1877 he built a crib for the second Alpena Light. He also designed it as a timber building in the form of a brown wooden pyramidal tower, complete with a Sixth Order Fresnel lens. In July 1888 it burned with much of the town.

In 1881 he completed the building of a 515-foot (157 m) lock at the Soo Canal, at that time the largest canal lock in the world, and the next year the Stannard Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior. He also helped design and build the Spectacle Reef Light with Colonel Orlando M. Poe. Transferred to Philadelphia, he was in charge of engineering projects in the region, and Chairman of the Commission Advisatory to the Board of Harbor Commissioners.

He died of typhoid fever in Philadelphia and was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Weitzel was the father of three children by his second wife, only one of whom survived infancy. Their first child was a stillborn son named Godfrey Weitzel, delivered on September 26, 1865. Their second child, Blanche Celeste Weitzel, was born on February 16, 1868, but contracted measles and died on April 5. Their third child was Irene Weitzel, born on April 11, 1876, who lived until 1936 and left descendants. His widow died on August 18, 1927.