Alfred L. Rives

Alfred Landon Rives (March 25, 1830, Paris, France – February 27, 1903, Castle Hill, Virginia) was an American engineer. He worked on various railroads, bridges, buildings and canals in Northern and Central America. He also served as a Confederate States Army officer during the American Civil War.

Life Alfred Rives was the son of William Cabell Rives and Judith (Walker) Rives. His father, who was among the most distinguished citizens of Virginia, was the United States Minister to France; based in Paris where Alfred was born in 1830. The elder Rives would serve as a United States Senator before being posted on the same position again in 1848.

Rives was taught by private tutors until fourteen years of age, then became a student of Concord Academy. At the age of sixteen he became a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute and graduated two years later in 1848, ranking sixth in a class of twenty-four.

Being proficient in engineering, he determined to adopt that as a profession, and in the same year entered the University of Virginia, where he remained one session, then accompanied his father to France. After a year devoted to the study of mathematics and French, he successfully passed an examination for entrance in the Government Engineering School of France, the Ecole des ponts et Chaussees. After graduation in 1854, he was offered a position in the French Northern Railway Company but instead returned to the United States, where he served in the engineering corps of the Virginia Midland Railway. He frequently served as Acting Chief Engineer, basically leading the bureau from late 1861 to mid 1864. Throughout the war the Confederate States Army officer was successively promoted to major, lieutenant-colonel and eventually colonel of engineers.

After the war he was offered a professorship in several institutions of learning, and also a good architectural position under the United States government. He declined all of those, preferring to stay in Richmond and try to recover his fortunes as an engineer and architect. In 1868 he was division engineer of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. In 1870 he was appointed chief engineer of the Mobile & Birmingham railroad. He was engineer in charge of the South & North Alabama railroad and part of the Louisville & Nashville system, which he completed in 1873. He was offered by Gen. William T. Sherman, for the Khedive of Egypt, the position of chief engineer of the civil works of Egypt, which position he declined to accept and of chief engineer and general superintendent of the Mobile & Ohio railroad.

Family Rives married Sadie MacMurdo, with whom he had three children: Amelia, who became a well-known author and wife of Prince Trubetskoy; Gertrude, the wife of Allen Potts, Esq.; and Miss Landon Rives.