Henry Flad

Henry Flad (30 July 1824 – 20 July 1898) was a German-born civil engineer who served as an engineering officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, a railroad engineer before and during the civil war, and later as a civil engineer after the war. He co-founded the Engineers' Club of Saint Louis, and was president of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1886.

Early life Henry Flad was born on 30 July 1824, near Heidelberg, Baden. His father, Jacob Flad, who died in the same year, along with his mother, Francisca Brunn Flad, soon afterwards moved to the town of Speyer, Bavaria. After passing through the preparatory schools of Speyer, young Henry entered the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Bavaria, where he took the polytechnic course.

After his graduation in 1846, at twenty-two years of age, he was given a position in the engineering service of the Bavarian Government, his first employment being on works for the improvement of the River Rhine. Meanwhile, encouraged by the success of the French Revolution of 1848, the German people revolted, beginning the German Revolution of 1848. The princes of the many states into which Germany was divided at the time conceded to the convocation of a National Assembly, which, in May 1848, met in Frankfurt to create a constitution for a united Germany, which would later be known as the Frankfurt Constitution. However, disagreements began to appear within the National Assembly. As a result, the monarchs in Germany soon reasserted themselves and repudiated the authority of the Parliament.

Death He died on 20 June, 1898, at Pittsburgh, where he stopped on his way home from a meeting of the Mississippi River Commission to visit Godfrey Stengel, a lifelong friend who had come with him on the same ship to America forty-nine years before. His cause of death had been identified as acute heart failure while walking to Highland Park in company with Stengel.

Legacy Today, Flad Avenue in St. Louis is named after Henry Flad.