Isaac R. Trimble - Youth, Education, Building Railroads

Youth, Education, Building Railroads

Trimble was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, to John and Rachel Ridgeway Trimble. His family moved to Kentucky shortly thereafter and he was nominated by his uncle, David Trimble, a Kentucky congressman, to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, from which he graduated in 1822, 17th in a class of 42. Although he excelled academically in engineering, he was commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant of artillery. He served for ten years as a lieutenant in the 3rd and 1st U.S. Artillery regiments, but left the U.S. Army in May 1832, along with five of his West Point classmates, to pursue the emerging business of railroad construction.

Trimble was married twice: first, in 1831 to Maria Cattell Presstman of Charleston, South Carolina, who died in 1855; second, to her sister, Ann Ferguson Presstman. By his first marriage he had two sons, David Churchill Trimble and William Presstman Trimble, who survived him. Soon after leaving the Army, Trimble relocated permanently to Maryland at the urging of his wife, and he subsequently considered it his home state. He helped survey the route of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He was a construction engineer for the Boston and Providence Railroad; chief engineer for Pennsylvania Railroad predecessors Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad, Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, and Philadelphia and Baltimore Central Railroad; and superintendent (1859–61) for the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad.