He was being horribly destroyed before their eyes and there was not a thing any of them could do about it. Moreover, as nearly always happens with lockjaw, his mind remained as clear as ever, and this made the sight of his suffering all the more unbearable. They all knew the terrible, titanic battle going on behind those blazing eyes and the ghastly smile that stayed fixed like concrete on his ashen face throughout everything that was happening to him.
When the seizures passed, he generally slipped into a coma. But even toward the end, there were hours when he would lie there perfectly still in the darkened room staring straight up at the ceiling, one of his family sitting motionless beside him. During the final few days there were tears streaking down his face.
The watch went on hour upon hour. Downstairs, visitors came and went, talking in whispers. They were told their concern was deeply appreciated, that there was nothing they could do but pray, and they went away to tell others what they had heard about the particulars of his condition, which was very little.
But on the evening of July 21, quite contrary to all the professional forecasts, the patient took a turn for the better. With paper and pencil he began giving instructions to his nephew, Ed Riedel, on a special contrivance he wanted built to lift him up and move him about his bed. He made a sketch, explained how it should be done, and told the young man to get at it immediately. Through the rest of the night he kept issuing orders on a variety of matters, including the bridge, and a wave of hope swept through the house, until sometime after midnight, when it became clear from the things he was scribbling down that his mind was going. He thought he was back at the bridge office.
About three in the morning he had a convulsion so violent that he leaped clear from the bed and was caught in the arms of C. C. Martin, the assistant engineer, who with Washington and one or two others was standing watch at the time. Within minutes Roeblling was dead.
Then in the gray light before dawn, Thursday, July 22, the undertaker arrived and an artist who had known Roebling in Cincinnati was called in to take a death mask.
The afternoon edition of the Eagle had the full story. Roebling was called a martyr, while in virtually the same breath the editors assured their readers that there was still great hope for the bridge. The implication was that the success of the bridge had been more or less assured now that it had claimed a life, like the bell in the old story that would not ring true until it had been cast of molten iron into which a man had fallen. Some people were saying the only safe bridge was one that had taken a life and stories were told of the lives sacrificed in the building of famous bridges of ancient times. The Eagle, for its part, said this:
He who loses his life from injuries received in the pursuit of science or of duty, in acquiring engineering information or carrying out engineering details, is as truly and usefully a martyr as he who sacrifices his life for a theological opinion, and no less honor should be paid to his memory. Henceforth we look on the great project of the Brooklyn Bridge as being baptized and hallowed by the life blood of its distinguished and lamented author.
Flags were flown at half-staff all over Brooklyn, and when it came time to take the body down to the ferry, to start the trip to Trenton, there was slow going in the streets because of the crowds. As a subject of popular interest, Roebling seemed a more notable success dead than alive. His training, all his ambition and ability, his entire life’s work had been building toward this greatest of bridges and he had not lived to do it—that was a tragedy people could readily understand regardless of how little previous interest they may have had in either the man or his work.
Word of Roebling’s death reached Trenton early the same morning he died. Within hours the whole town knew about it, and though there had been ominous talk of his condition for days, no one seemed quite ready to accept the fact that the worst had happened. Talk of Roebling dead was one thing, but the idea of him laid out in a black suit of clothes like any other man, those pale eyes shut forever, was something else. Somehow, it was felt, he would figure a way.
But by nightfall Saturday, when the body arrived, the truth had long since sunk in. Nobody had any doubts that the extraordinary life of John A. Roebling was over and plans had been laid for the biggest funeral in Trenton’s history.
The eulogies began that night at a special town meeting. Judge Scudder, General Rushing, and Charles Hewitt spoke, as did Reverend John Brown, who said that though Roebling was known the world over as a man of science, he ought to be remembered as a gentleman all the same. Then early the following morning, in twos and threes, some leading children, people began gathering outside the Roebling house.
Separated from the wireworks by a narrow strip of lawn, the house was a tall spacious affair, with some twenty-seven rooms, walls two feet thick, and few frills. Roebling had designed it himself before the war, in the Italian style and more for comfort than show, except for the glassy cupola on top. It had stood raw and pink-looking when it was first finished, taller even than the mill in those days, with nothing but bare fields to either side. But in the time since, Roebling had had it stuccoed over, the mill had more than doubled in size, and the trees he planted had closed in most of the property. In summer, only the windows of the cupola could be seen riding high above the treetops. They were the first windows in town to catch the morning sun.
The grounds themselves were neatly set off from the street by a tall iron fence. Flowers bloomed through the whole summer. Grapes hung from elaborate trellises. There were boxwood hedges, a handsome barn, an icehouse, and an especially fine orchard that he had been extremely proud of, adding to it year by year. As might be expected, everything was kept just so.
The house faced onto the street, a railroad track, and the old Delaware and Raritan Canal, which all ran side by side, parallel to the river. Past the canal and the state prison, the land sloped away toward the ironworks and the river. That part of town was all built up now, but behind the house, on the other side of the orchard, was a broad, flat wheat field that was just beginning to turn color.
By ten o’clock the small cluster of onlookers had grown big enough to fill the front lawn and most of the street. Carriages approaching the house had trouble getting through. But there was little commotion. The time passed about as quietly as on any Sunday morning, broken only by the sound of church bells from across town. Already the temperature was near eighty as the sun climbed into a cloudless bowl of summer sky. Nothing like this had ever happened in Trenton. Estimates were that perhaps two thousand people were gathered on the front lawn.
Inside the house the entire family was assembled—a rare thing for the Roeblings—surrounded by the books and paintings he had collected, the marble statuary and the steel engravings of his bridges. At eleven the doors were to be opened to the crowd outside, but for the time being, except for the servants, they had the house and its memories all to themselves.
With Washington Roebling, now head of the family, was his pretty and alert-looking wife, Emily, who had been a special favorite of her father-in-law’s. He had admired her for her energy and intelligence, often showing her a degree of kindness seldom granted his own children. After her son had been born, she had written to Roebling in an affectionate letter from Germany, “The name of John A. Roebling must ever be identified with you and your works, but with a mother’s pride and fond hopes for her first-born I trust my boy may not prove unworthy of the name…”
Then there was Ferdinand Roebling, slight, fine-featured, bespectacled, and now twenty-seven. This was the only one of his sons, John Roebling used to say, who had the makings of a merchant. His oldest boy, the bridgebuilder, he had ordered off to war, but Ferdinand had been kept at home, Ferdinand’s services to the wire business being too valuable to spare, according to John Roebling.
Charles, younger still by seven years, was a strangely silent, thoughtful young man, whose chief interest was flower gardening and who was home for the summer from Troy, where he was a student at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institut
e, like his oldest brother before him, and not particularly happy about it.
Edmund, or Eddie as he seems to have been called by most of them, was fifteen, very shy and uncertain-looking, and still a great worry apparently.
The sisters were Laura, Josephine, and Elvira. Laura was the oldest after Washington. She had dutifully played the organ at the German church every Sunday and married a “good German,” a Mühlhausen man at that, her Mr. Methfessel, as she called him. They had a number of children and lived on Staten Island, where Mr. Methfessel had started a school and where they would have failed to make ends meet by this time had it not been for the checks she received regularly in the mail from her father.
Josephine was now the wife of Charles H. Jarvis, one of the finest American pianists of the time, and Elvira, the last of the three to be married, was Mrs. John Stewart. Elvira had always been the most playful and high-spirited member of the family, the least like her father in this respect and the one whose company he most enjoyed. Her wedding had taken place only a few weeks before, in the same large front parlor where his corpse was now on display. All that spring, as he went back and forth to Brooklyn, he kept bringing home expensive gifts for her, dresses he had picked out at A. T. Stewart’s, hundreds of dollars’ worth of silks, fancy carpets, Tiffany silver. A few days before the wedding he had insisted that she take a hundred dollars in cash, to have with her on her wedding trip. Then he had given her away to young Stewart in a room full of guests, several of whom would comment at the funeral on how exceptionally genial and good-spirited he had seemed then.
Very little is known about the new Mrs. Roebling, except that she was the former Lucia Cooper of Trenton and that their wedding had taken place in February of 1867. He had presented her with two gold bracelets and a painting by Rembrandt Peale and in his cashbook he entered $125 as the cost of the wedding trip, about which he made no other notation that is known of. Two years later she had still not been fully accepted by the family, nor would she be. Washington Roebling would write that after the summer of his father’s death, he never saw her again.
And finally, there was Charles Swan, who, in a photograph taken some years later, sits in a stiff, upholstered chair, looking quite well upholstered himself as he focuses directly and amiably on the camera, every inch the solid, kindly, dependable man, it would appear, John Roebling’s sons would say he was. That Roebling also appreciated Swan for what he was and all he had done seems clear, despite the cold formality of their working relationship. For when he sat down to write a new will in 1867, after he remarried, he included twenty thousand dollars for Swan and the clearly stated wish that his sons take Swan into the business as a full partner.
The contents of the will would not be made public for several days, but for the family its general outline had been known for some time. In addition to the money for Swan, Roebling had left some eighty thousand dollars for distant relatives and several charities. The bulk of his estate he had split eight ways, between his new wife and his seven children—except that he deducted from each child whatever money had been advanced to him during his lifetime. Year by year, in a private ledger, he had carefully itemized his expenditures for his children, down to the penny, and now in his last summing up he docked them each accordingly.
The wire business he left to his four sons, requesting that they keep the name John A. Roebling’s Sons.
At eleven sharp the house was opened to the public and the crowd started moving for the front door. For the next two hours the town was permitted to pay its respects. The people passed through the dim front parlor in slow single file, in dark Sunday dress and funeral veils, the men with hats in hand, moving with almost no sound at all up to the rosewood casket with its huge silver handles, then on out through the back way, most of them glancing this way and that, trying to see as much as possible without appearing disrespectful.
Nearly everyone thought the Brooklyn undertaker had done extremely well. The body did look emaciated, it was agreed, and the massive brow stood out more even than in life, but when they considered the horrible way the old man had died, and the July heat, most of those who filed by thought he looked quite himself, perhaps even at peace, which was what seemed most unlike him of anything. For the majority of the people in line, it was a chance for a first real look at the man close up.
At one o’clock the front door was closed again. Then shortly after one, as the crowd regathered under the shade trees, the quiet was suddenly shattered by the shriek of a train whistle. People later described it as the most dramatic moment of the day.
Up the tracks crept a special train from Jersey City, five cars long. Like the one the night before that had brought Roebling’s body home, it steamed slowly to the front gate and stopped. Then down stepped the delegation from Brooklyn and New York, some fifty or sixty men, most of them in high, shiny silk hats. They stood about in a cluster beside the train, squinting against the sunshine, until the last of them had gotten down. Then they started up the front walk in a body, the crowd making way for them. At the front door Washington Roebling stood waiting to usher them inside.
The services began at two, on schedule, the family sitting in the upstairs hallways, the guests crowded into neat rows of chairs set before the casket. The heat was terrific, fans were going at a great speed in gloved hands as four ministers—one Presbyterian, one Lutheran, two Episcopal—took turns with the services at the foot of the stairs. There was little out of the ordinary said. The Lutheran spoke in German.
Of the eight pallbearers who took the casket out the front door, four were Trenton men; the others were all associated with the New York Bridge Company—Julius Adams, Horatio Allen, Andrew H. Green, and Henry Cruse Murphy. That a large part of the funeral expenses would also be met by the New York Bridge Company, or more specifically by William Kingsley on behalf of the New York Bridge Company, was privileged information at this point.
The clergy and immediate family led the procession to Mercer Cemetery, riding in special carriages. The Brooklyn delegation came rolling along after, followed by the Board of Trade in still more carriages. Two hundred men from the Roeblings’ rolling mill had marched up from South Trenton and they fell in behind, while the men from the wire mill walked two by two alongside the carriages. Estimates were that fifteen hundred people joined in the march, counting all the professional and trade associations, the orphans, and the singing societies. With everyone under way the whole procession stretched out more than a mile and a half and along the entire line of march—out Green Street, East Street, State and Clinton—sidewalks and doorsteps were thick with silent onlookers.
By four it was all over. John Augustus Roebling had been committed to eternity, beside Johanna Roebling and two of their children. Again the distinguished visitors from Brooklyn and New York were gathered beside their train, all looking a little worse for the dust and heat, each offering his own polite, soft-spoken farewell to the Roebling family, and to Colonel Roebling in particular. One by one they stepped forward to shake his hand and to wish him well—Henry Murphy, Henry Slocum, Horatio Allen, Julius Adams, Thomas Kinsella, Demas Barnes, Colonel Paine, C. C. Martin, William Kingsley. Then as he and the rest of the family turned and walked back through the gate and up the path to the big house, the Jersey City train rolled out of Trenton, gradually gathering speed as it broke into open country.
There is no record of what was talked about during the return trip to Jersey City and that is a great shame. There was quite a lot to be discussed, obviously enough, and nearly everyone who should have a say was present, and with nothing better to do. It was the sort of opportunity a politician seldom lets pass, and since the majority of them were politicians in one way or other, it is hard to imagine the time being wasted.
They had all been together on the ride down that morning, of course, but then, with Roebling not yet in his grave, any open talk about getting on with his work would have been considered out of line. Now the atmosphere was quite different, no doubt, and it seem
s reasonable to assume that as their train went steaming along through the late summer afternoon a number of highly interesting conversations were being conducted.
Years later it would be said that Roebling’s death left everyone in a terrible quandary over who should take his place and that there were grave doubts about going ahead with the idea. “With its inspiration gone, the Brooklyn Bridge seemed impossible to build,” one biographer would claim. But the truth is there was never any doubt at all.
As William Kingsley would reveal, Roebling had long since talked to him and to Henry Murphy about his son replacing him eventually. Kingsley even said Roebling had wanted his son in charge from the start, but that he, Kingsley, and the others would have none of that. Be that as it may, the very day of Roebling’s death, Thomas Kinsella had stated in no uncertain terms on the editorial page of the Eagle that Washington Roebling would take up right where his father left off and that no man was better equipped for the job.
Not long since, before the accident, which led to his death, Mr. Roebling remarked to us that he had enough of money and reputation. And he scarce knew why, at his age, he was undertaking to build another and still greater bridge. His son, he added, ought to build this Brooklyn bridge—was as competent as himself in all respects to design and supervise it; had thought and worked with him, and in short was as good an engineer as his father.
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