Caleb Goldsmith Forshey

Caleb Goldsmith Forshey (July 18, 1812–July 25, 1881) was an American hydraulic engineer and polymath who worked in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas on projects related to river flood control and train bridge construction.

While employed in these efforts, he made several notable contributions as an amateur naturalist through his attempt to collect vascular plants and by his discoveries of several species of bivalve mollusks and gastropods, which were published at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He also verified observations of African Americans regarding the unusual reptilia behavior of alligators swallowing their young for protection, correcting the earlier belief of William Bartram that old alligators "feed on the[ir] young as long as they can make prey of them"; the discovery of this protective behavior is sometimes mistakenly attributed to the explorer Edward McIlhenny in his book The Alligator's Life History (1935). These important anecdotal observations by Forshey were occasionally conveyed to the public through his friendships with Isaac Lea and Charles Lyell, as well as in his publications in standard scientific journals.

Forshey was additionally the first American surveyor to make detailed maps of the prehistoric archaeological sites of the Coles Creek culture (CE 700–1200) and Mississippian culture (CE 1200–1550) at Mott Archaeological Preserve and Jordan Mounds in modern-day Louisiana.

Life and Engineering Career Forshey was born on July 18, 1812 to John Sire Forshee (1774–1857) and Elizabeth Monroe Forshey (1778–1855) in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. From 1831 to 1833, he attended Kenyon College in Ohio and then, during the years 1833 to 1836, attended classes at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York, although he did not graduate. He became a professor of mathematics and civil engineering at Jefferson College in Washington, Mississippi from 1836 to 1838, and was then employed in engineering projects along the Mississippi River. From 1840 to 1848, he lived in Vidalia, Louisiana while serving as the city engineer of Natchez, Mississippi, across the river from Vidalia. In 1848, he assisted in the construction of a hydrologic station at Carrollton, Louisiana to measure the flow of the river for the years 1848 to 1855, in accordance with the federal government's Mississippi Delta Survey. It was during this time that he became involved in a dispute with the Chief Engineer of the U.S. Army, Andrew A. Humphreys, over the proper method of flood control, specifically, either levees or flood control channels. He also contested with Humphreys his priority of discovery of the "double-float method," by which streamflow velocity is approximated.

When the Galveston, Houston & Henderson Railroad was granted its charter in 1853, Forshey moved to Texas to become chief engineer. On November 16, 1853 at Virginia Point on Galveston Bay, he officiated at the railroad's ground-breaking ceremonies. Under his leadership, the construction of the line was planned, and Forshey himself is credited with the design of the original West Bay Bridge, built in 1859. On February 1, 1860, it carried the first train from Virginia Point on the mainland across to Galveston. During these years, in 1854, he also founded the Texas Military Institute in Galveston, although the school was later moved to Rutersville, Fayette County, where it was consolidated with Rutersville College and the Texas Monumental Committee of La Grange. Until its closing in 1861 at the onset of the American Civil War, Forshey served as superintendent. However, he might be best known to naturalists through the various references Charles Lyell made to him in the first edition of the text A Second Visit to the United States (1849), Vol.II. This book's mentions to Forshey include their personal discussions of stream-flow velocities and river depths at various sites along the Mississippi, as well as an account of his interaction with an alligator several days before their meeting. Forshey seems to have appreciated these acknowledgements, and wrote of it years later himself in Hardwicke's Science-Gossip: An Illustrated Medium of Interchange and Gossip for Students and Lovers of Nature (1874).

After this early recognition by Lyell, Forshey would go on to make other notable contributions to biology through his classifications of a number of species of bivalve mollusks and gastropods, conveyed to conchologist and geologist Isaac Lea of Philadelphia in the late 1850s and 1860s. Entries at the MolluscaBase Project and the Biodiversity Heritage Library reference Forshey for classifications of the following species Unio macrodon, Unio rutersvillensis, Unio forsheyi, Unio riddellii, Unio chunii, Unio bealei, Unio speciosus, Unio lincecumii, Succinea forsheyi, and Physa forsheyi.

Some of Forshey's struggles to gain due recognition for such devoted work as an amateur specimen collector might be best characterized through his letter to the Boston ornithologist Thomas Mayo Brewer on October 27, 1857, wherein he wrote:

Death and Legacy On July 25, 1881, following a series of heart attacks, Forshey died in Carrollton, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The Weekly Picayune announced his funeral for July 30, with services at the Carondelet Street Methodist Church presided by Bishop Keener, who had officiated his marriage forty years earlier.

His publications appeared in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, the New Orleans Commercial Appeal and Commercial Times, DeBow's Review, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Silliman's Journal, Bulletin of the Washington Philosophical Society, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and elsewhere.