George Rumford Baldwin - Engineering Career

Engineering Career

A series of his diaries for more than fifty years contain daily entries of his employments and occupations. He lived a life of marvelous industry, of wide travel, and of useful service. He was called upon as expert, witness, referee or examiner in many ways, at a period when the development of our railroad and manufacturing enterprises made a demand for talent and skill. He helped form the first associated company of engineers. He was naturally shy, modest, diffident, and reticent, of most retiring and undemonstrative ways, therefore when called upon for any utterance in public before many persons it was for him a serious strain. His social intercourse was limited, and under no circumstances could he have made a speech in public of advocacy or argument.

The following were some of his early engagements: 1821, built P. C. Brook's stone bridge; 1822–1823, in Pennsylvania with his brother; 1823–1825, at factories in Lowell; 1826, surveyed Charlestown Navy Yard also known as the Boston Navy Yard in Charlestown; executed Marine Railway; 1831–1833, in England; 1833–1834, on the Boston and Lowell Railroad; 1834–1836, in Nova Scotia; 1837, in Georgia, on Brunswick Canal. In 1845 he was chief engineer on the route to the Buffalo and Mississippi Railroad. In 1846 he was employed on the examination of the water power of Augusta, Georgia, and by the national government on the Dry Docks in Washington and Brooklyn. In 1847 he was summoned to Quebec to engage on professional tasks which occupied him till he completed them in 1856. This was the introduction of gas, water, and sewer systems into Quebec. He was in full superintendence, under the mayor and a water board. In the course of the work he sailed with his family to Europe to superintend the casting of pipes, gates, etc., and to arrange for their shipment.

In 1857–58, he was in Europe with his family, principally in Paris and London, with many excursions. With accomplished skill in draughting and etching, his pencil was ever busy in sketching all the objects of special interest, and his descriptions are illustrated by a mass of drawings, more or less perfected. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1877.

He was connected as consulting engineer with many more modern works, the most important, perhaps, being the Boston, Hartford, and Erie railroad which was later reincorporated as the New York and New England Railroad. His journals show how fully every interval between these public works was improved. He was skilled in all family, horticultural, and agricultural labors, and his pen was ever busy in his own affairs, or for the service of friends.

Most paragraphs in this entry are from out of copyright books referenced below.