John B. Jervis - Life and Career

Life and Career

Jervis was born at Huntington, New York, on Long Island, and was raised in Rome, New York, which was then called Fort Stanwix.

Jervis was hired for work on the Erie Canal as an axeman in 1817. While working on the construction teams, he studied engineering, at a time when there were few engineering schools in the United States. By 1819 he became the lead engineer on the canal's 50 mile long center section.

In 1827, Jervis became the chief engineer for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. In this position, he designed the Stourbridge Lion, which was built by Foster, Rastrick and Company of England. In 1831, he became the chief engineer for the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, a predecessor of the New York Central, and two years later he was appointed chief engineer of upstate New York's Chenango Canal project and helped in its design and construction.

Jervis was the first railroad engineer to design a 4-2-0 steam locomotive; the 4-2-0 type is called the Jervis type in his honor. A 4-2-0 is a locomotive with a four-wheel leading truck that guides the locomotive into curves and two powered driving wheels on a rear axle underneath the locomotive's firebox.

In 1836, Jervis was chosen as the chief engineer on the 41-mile long Croton Aqueduct, which operated from 1842 to 1965, bringing fresh water to New York City. Many of Jervis's original diagrams for this project are now preserved at both the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The High Bridge which still stands across the Harlem River in New York City, connecting Manhattan and the Bronx, was part of this project.

After his work on the Croton 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, 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), also serving as President of the latter from 1851 to 1854, and finally the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway.