Harris, Joseph S. (Joseph Smith), 1836-1910

Joseph S. Harris was a railroad surveyor and topographer, a land surveyor, an astronomer, and a mathematician, during the period 1853 to 1870. He was employed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad, the Kentucky Geological Survey, the U.S. Coast Survey, and the U.S./Canadian Northwest Boundary Survey prior to the Civil War. During the Civil War he advised Admirals Farragut and Porter, and General Butler for the New Orleans campaign. After the war he was a civil and mining engineer for coal mines and railroads in Pennsylvania, later he became an executive officer for numerous railroads, including the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

Joseph Smith Harris (1836-1910): surveyor and civil engineer.

Joseph Smith Harris (1836-1910) of Chester County and Philadelphia was a civil engineer, surveyor, and railroad administrator. In 1853, after attending Philadelphia's Central High School, he took a job as a topographer with the Easton and Water Gap Railroad (later the North Pennsylvania Railroad). He then worked for the U.S. Coast Survey from the late 1850s to the early 1860s. In this capacity he worked on the Northwest Boundary Survey, which established the U.S.-Canadian border along the 49th Parallel, and participated in combat operations in Louisiana in 1862. Staring in 1864, he held positions with various railroad companies, rising to become president of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company. He also became president, in 1893, of the bankrupt Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and led the company's successful reorganization into the new Reading Company.

Civil engineer and railroad executive.

Joseph S. Harris was born on April 29, 1836, in Chester County, Pa. He began his career as a civil engineer as a member of the engineer corps of the North Pennsylvania Railroad company in 1853-55. Thereafter he worked for the U.S. Coast Survey along the Gulf Coast with furloughs to the Kentucky Geological Survey and the Anglo-American boundary survey in the Oregon Territory.

During the Civil War he served as a topographical engineer on the staff of David G. Farragut. After the war, Harris worked as a civil and mining engineer for several anthracite coal companies in Pennsylvania and for the coal-hauling railroads, notably the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company and the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Company. Harris was primarily a railroad executive after 1880, serving as president of the Reading Company from 1893 to 1901. He died at Germantown on June 2, 1910.

Joseph Smith Harris was a surveyor and civil engineer. During the 1850s-60s he worked on several projects for the federal government including the Northwest Boundary Survey of 1857-61.

Harris was born and raised in Pennsylvania and he attended Philadelphia's Central High school. In 1853 he was appointed a topographer by the North Pennsylvania Rail Road Company. Harris left the private sector in 1854 to become an astronomer for the U.S. government's survey of the Mississippi Sound, and two years later filled a similar position on the Kentucky Geological Survey. He resigned after one month in July 1856 and returned to the Gulf of Mexico to complete his earlier work. The following March, Harris was hired as an astronomer for the Northwest Boundary Survey.

In 1846, Britain and the United States agreed by treaty to draw the western Canadian-American border along the 49th parallel and a joint American-British commission began survey work in 1857. Archibald Campbell served as the American commissioner and Lt. John G. Parke was appointed chief astronomer. Harris and G. Clinton Gardner were assistant astronomers.

When the commission completed its work in 1861, Harris became an officer on the U.S.S. Sachem and served in the Farragut Mississippi Squadron during the Civil War. He went back to railroad work in 1864, joining his older brother Stephen in the Schuylkill Company of Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Harris worked with his brother doing survey work for the Lehigh Valley Rail Road and the Pennsylvania Rail Road Company. During the 1880s he became general manager for the Central Railroad of New Jersey and later served as president of various railroad and mining companies.

In 1865 Harris married Delia Silliman Brodhead and the couple had five children. After the death of his first wife, Harris married Emily Eliza Potts in 1882, and in 1896 married Emily's sister, Anna Zelia Potts. He died at home in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1910.

For additional biographical information, see the Harris family genealogy, prepared by Joseph Harris.