Benjamin Wright

Early life Wright was born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, to Ebenezer Wright and Grace Butler.

Career In 1789, at age 19, he moved with his family to Fort Stanwix, New York, which is now Rome, New York, where he became a land surveyor. Over the next decade, Wright worked as a land surveyor and engineer, especially on the construction of the Erie Canal and later on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. In addition to his engineering work, Wright was also elected to the New York State Legislature in 1794 and was appointed a New York county judge.

Wright returned to New York in about 1833. He continued to work primarily as a consultant on a number of canal projects, but also began doing surveys for railroads, In 1794 Wright was hired as a surveyor and planner by the noted English canal designer William Weston. Working for Weston, he helped lay out canals and locks on the Mohawk River. After Weston returned to England in 1801, Wright was commissioned to survey the Mohawk River between Schenectady and Rome, and then to the Hudson River.

Erie Canal

Wright surveyed the same route of the Mohawk River from Rome to the Hudson River again for the New York State Canal Commission in 1811, and by 1816 funding for the Erie Canal was in place. Its construction began in 1817. The ASCE (1996) explained:

What created challenges for the canal construction were the multiple elevation changes along the route. Hence, the supply of water to the canal and the drainage of excess water were far trickier than single sloped canals. To keep water flowing, an elaborate system of feeders and waste weirs was created. Furthermore, the east-west canal had to transverse multiple north-south running rivers, which called for numerous aqueducts, the largest employing 11 Roman-style arches to span 802 feet across the Genesee River Valley.

Wright was approached in 1825 by the Wurts brothers of Philadelphia to survey a possible route from the coalfields of Northeastern Pennsylvania to the Hudson, where anthracite could be shipped by boat downriver to New York City. Wright consented, and served as chief engineer on the Delaware and Hudson Canal for about a year. At that point, he stepped down and became a consulting engineer; the job of chief was taken by John B. Jervis, who had worked under Wright on the Erie Canal.

The elder Benjamin Wright is buried in the New York Marble Cemetery in Manhattan.

Publications Moncure Robinson, Jonathan Knight, Benjamin Hall Wright (1835) Report of M. Robinson ... Jonathan Knight ... and Benjamin Wright ... Civil Engineers, upon the plan of the New-York and Erie Rail Road. Scott & Company, 1835 Benjamin Hall Wright (1843) Report of the Survey of the Route of the New-York and Erie Railroad ... Together with the Report of a Special Committee of the Common Council of the City of New-York, in relation thereto. Office of the Railroad Journal. Benjamin Hall Wright (1870) Origin of the Erie Canal: Services of Benjamin Wright. Sandford & Carr Pennington, Steven M. Benjamin Wright: Father of American Civil Engineering. Reston, VA: ASCE Press, 2020.