George Washington Whistler
George Washington Whistler (May 19, 1800 – April 7, 1849) was a prominent American civil engineer best known for building steam locomotives and railroads.[2] He is credited with introducing the steam whistle to American locomotives.[3]
George Washington Whistler
May 19, 1800
April 7, 1849 (aged 48)
American
Civil engineer
8; including James McNeill Whistler
John Whistler and Anna Bishop
In 1842, Tsar Nicholas I hired him to build the Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway, Russia's first large-scale railroad.[4] One of Whistler's important influences was the introduction of the Howe truss for the Russian railroad's bridges. This inspired the renowned Russian engineer Dmitrii Ivanovich Zhuravskii (1821–1891) to perform studies and develop structural analysis techniques for Howe truss bridges.
He was the father of American artist James McNeill Whistler, whose painting Whistler's Mother (of his second wife Anna Whistler) is among the most famous paintings in American art.[3]
Early life and family[edit]
George Washington Whistler was born on May 19, 1800, at the military outpost of Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Major John Whistler (1756–1829) and his wife Anna Bishop.[2] Ft. Wayne at that time was a part of the great Northwest Territory. His father had been a British soldier under General Burgoyne at the Battles of Saratoga in the Revolutionary War, later to enlist in American service.
Whistler had three children with his first wife, Mary Roberdeau Swift, who died at a young age in 1827.[5] Whistler then married the sister of his friend William Gibbs McNeill (1801–1853),[6][1] Anna Mathilda McNeill (1804–1881), with whom he had five sons: James Abbott McNeill Whistler, William McNeill Whistler (1836–1900), Kirk Boott (1838–1842) named after Kirk Boott, Charles Donald Whistler (1841–1843), and John Bouttatz Whistler (1845–1846), named after Whistler's Russian engineer friend Major Ivan F. Bouttatz.[5][7] Whistler and William Gibbs McNeil lived in Fisher Ames' house while working on the Boston and Providence Railroad.[8]
Professional associations[edit]
Whistler was part of the first efforts to form a national engineering association in the United States, although unsuccessful, it was thirteen years ahead of the American Society of Civil Engineers and Architects, which was co-founded in 1852 by his nephew Julius Walker Adams. There was an organizational meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1839 that elected Benjamin Latrobe as its president. The organizing committee included some of the most prominent and representative engineers of the day such as: J. B. Jervis and Benjamin Wright of New York, Moncure Robinson and Claude Crozet of Virginia, Jonathan Knight of Maryland, J. Edgar Thomson then in Georgia, later in Pennsylvania.[23]