Moncure Robinson

Moncure Robinson (February 2, 1802 – November 10, 1891) was an American civil engineer, railroad planner and builder and a railroad and steamboat owner, who is considered one of America's leading Antebellum period civil engineers. He was educated at the College of William and Mary and at the Sorbonne where he studied to be a civil engineer, and his most noted project was the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad.

Unlike many of the engineers of the early nineteenth century, Robinson did not receive his engineering education at West Point. He acquired his engineering education through self-directed study and the observation of engineering projects throughout the United States and Europe. Within nine years of the introduction of the first steam locomotive in the United States, he surveyed, supervised the construction, or was the consulting engineer for 721 miles of track, or one-third the entire railroad track built to that time. At the time of his death in 1891, over 163,000 miles of track spanned the country.

Along with well-known engineers Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II, John Edgar Thomson, and John B. Jervis, Moncure Robinson was in much demand during the late 1820s-40s and after, the transition period from America's Canal Era to the beginning of the Railway Age. By 1850, the basic technical aspects of the American railroad had been solved by this generation of engineers.

Moncure Robinson was born in Richmond, Virginia as eldest son of John Robinson III (February 13, 1773 – April 26, 1850), judge and clerk of the court in Richmond, and Agnes Conway Moncure (1780 – November 15, 1862). Both parents were from the First Families of Virginia. The Robinson family presence in Virginia dates to 1688 at New Charles Parish. His mother's father, Peyton Conway, was the clerk of the court in Stafford, Virginia, and her family also descended from Scots immigrant Rev. John Moncure (1709-1764), longtime priest of Aquia parish and friend of founding fathers George Washington, George Mason and others. His brothers were Cary, Edwin, Conway (September 15, 1805 – January 30, 1884), Eustace and Moore Robinson, sisters Octavia (1813? – 1880?) and Cornelia.

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