Call Number:

C1483

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 2 boxes
• 1.4 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); John A. Roebling's Sons Company Records, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1821-1936 (inclusive)

Creator:

John A. Roebling's Sons Company

Form:

Address books -- 19th century., Administrative records -- 20th century., Correspondence -- 19th century, Ledgers (account books) -- 19th century, Minutes (administrative records) -- 20th century., Product specifications -- 20th century., and Scrapbooks -- 20th century

Abstract:

The John A. Roebling's Sons Company was a family-run wire rope manufacturing business based in Trenton, New Jersey, and established in 1848 by John Augustus Roebling (1806-1869), a German-born American civil engineer best known for his wire rope suspension bridge designs, particularly the Brooklyn Bridge. The records consist of 10 bound volumes of business records, correspondence, and clippings kept by the company during the 19th and early 20th centuries, including typescript copies of John A. Roebling's professional correspondence, a company address book and manufacturing specifications catalog for wire rope, Ferdinand W. Roebling, Jr.'s business ledger, a minute book for the Roebling Construction Company, a volume of John Ferreol Monnot's patents, and a two-volume scrapbook on the German civil engineer and bridge-builder Karl Bernhard.

The John A. Roebling's Sons Company was a wire rope manufacturing business, established in 1848 in Trenton, New Jersey, by John Augustus Roebling (1806-1869), a German-born American civil engineer best known for his wire rope suspension bridge designs, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the Niagara River Gorge Bridge. Working in Western Pennsylvania during his early career, Roebling turned his efforts toward the manufacture of strong but flexible twisted wire rope as an alternative to the unreliable hemp rope that was then being used to haul barges over railways across steep terrain as a part of the area's extensive canal system. Roebling's invention soon was being used by the Allegheny Portage Railroad, and he received a patent for his novel method of manufacturing wire ropes in 1842. Upon his death in 1869, Roebling left the company to his three sons, Washington Augustus Roebling (1837-1926), Ferdinand W. Roebling (1842-1917), and Charles G. Roebling (1849-1918), who built their father's company into the world's leading producer of wire rope, with four factories and nearly 8,000 employees at its peak. Ferdinand W. Roebling's two sons, Karl G. Roebling and Ferdinand W. Roebling, Jr., headed the company after the death of their father in 1917, followed by his grandsons, Joseph M. Roebling and Ferdinand W. Roebling III, and later Charles Roebling's grandson, Charles Roebling Tyson, who joined the company in 1937 and served as its president from 1944 until 1953, when the family sold the business to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which operated it until 1974.

The collection consists of 10 bound volumes of administrative records, financial ledgers, meeting minutes, professional correspondence, product specifications, and clippings of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company of Trenton, New Jersey. Materials include three volumes of typescript copies of John A. Roebling's professional correspondence from 1831 to 1865 with Ferdinand Baehr, Charles Swan, and others, including some translations from the German. Also present are a company address book documenting the company's business relationships and contacts in the 1890s; a 1920 company manufacturing specifications catalog for wire rope, with two related pamphlets, inscribed by Siegfried Roebling; Ferdinand W. Roebling, Jr.'s business ledger of price estimates and product specifications for various orders and projects in the early 1900s; a minute book for the Roebling Construction Company (1899-1915) with related correspondence regarding its incorporation and dissolution; a volume of Monnot and Prior U.S. Patents for Compound Conductors (1821-1914), with correspondence interleaved regarding John A. Roebling's Sons Company's potential purchase of patents for wire rope manufacture; and a two-volume scrapbook on the German civil engineer and bridge-builder Karl Bernhard, with clippings in German covering his activities from 1896 to 1934.