Benjamin Wright

Benjamin Wright (1770 to 1842) was an American civil engineer who served as chief engineer of the Erie Canal and of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, he moved to the Fort Stanwix area of New York as a young man and began as a land surveyor, later working under the English canal designer William Weston on locks and canals along the Mohawk River. He surveyed the Mohawk route for the New York State Canal Commission in 1811 and, when construction began in 1817, led the building of the middle and then the eastern section of the Erie Canal with large crews using hand tools, horses and mules. He also served as chief engineer for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, spent about a year on the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and in 1828 became chief engineer of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal along the Potomac. In 1969 the American Society of Civil Engineers named him the Father of American Civil Engineering.