Edward W. Serrell

Edward Wellman Serrell (November 5, 1826 – April 25, 1906) was an American civil engineer during the mid 19th century. In 1861, during the American Civil War he helped raise a regiment of engineers from New York state, the 1st New York Volunteer Engineer Regiment for the Union Army, and was appointed colonel of the regiment. Later he was brevetted brigadier general. One of his more notable achievements during the war was his work on the "Marsh Battery" during the Second Battle of Charleston Harbor.

Early life

Serrell was born in London, England, on November 5, 1826. He was the tenth of eleven children of William and Ann Serrell. The family immigrated to New York in 1831, and as a result, Edward received his early education in the schools of New York City. He later took up civil engineering under the direction of his father and an older brother. On April 6, 1848, he married Jane Pound, an English girl two years his senior. They had four children.

Career From 1845 up to the time of the Civil War, Serrell was engaged in railroad and bridge design and construction. He was, successively, assistant engineer to the commissioners of the Erie Railroad, and assistant to the chief of the US Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. He was the assistant engineer of the 1848 Panama Survey, where he located the route of the railroad between Aspinwall and Panama. He later had charge of the surveys for the Northern Railroad of New Hampshire, and was for a time the engineer of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. He prepared plans and supervised the construction of the suspension bridge across the Niagara River at Lewiston in 1850; superintended the construction of the bridge at Saint John, New Brunswick; and planned the bridge over the St. Lawrence River at Quebec. He was later concerned with the building of the Hoosac Tunnel (1858), the Bristol Bridge over the Avon River in England, which had one of the longest spans in that country at that time, and the Union Pacific Railroad.

One daughter, Josephine, married Robert Powell Page Wainwright, a career U.S. Army cavalry officer. Together they had three children including Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV of World War II fame and the namesake of Fort Wainwright in Alaska. Another daughter, Harriette, married Clarence Deems, an 1874 West Point graduate, in 1876 at General Serrell's home near the Academy. She died in 1885, but their son, Clarence, Jr. graduated from West Point in 1900.

His wife, Jane, died on August 29, 1896. He did recover sufficiently to be moved to his wife's home on Staten Island. She died in 1904.

Death Serrell died in Manhattan on April 25, 1906. He is buried at the Saint Luke's Cemetery in Rossville, New York.