Abbot, Henry Larcom, 1831-1927

Henry Larcom Abbot (born August 13, 1831, Beverly, Massachusetts - died October 1, 1927, Cambridge, Massachusetts), army officer and engineer, was born in Beverly, Massachusetts. He was the older brother of Francis Ellingwood Abbot, an influential religious radical. Upon his graduation from West Point in 1854, Abbot was commissioned in the engineers and assigned to duty with the Pacific Coast Railway. For several years from 1857, he was associated with Captain Andrew A. Humphreys in a study of flood control and navigation improvement of the Mississippi River.

During the Civil War Abbot saw varied service. He was wounded at the first battle of Bull Run, served as an engineer with General George G. McClellan on the Peninsula and as chief topographical engineer with the New Orleans expedition under General Nathaniel P. Banks, and commanded the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery of which he had been appointed colonel in the Spring of 1863, and the siege artillery before Richmond, Virginia. Placed in command of the engineer battalion at Willett's Point, New York, he organized there the Engineer School of Application, a combined advanced training and research facility for military engineers. He devoted much of his time to the improvement of coastal defenses by means of submarine mines and of other forms of ordnance and equipment, serving as well on numerous engineering boards. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in March 1880 and to colonel in October 1886, and he retired at that rank in 1895. In 1904, Congress voted him rank of brigadier general, retired. As a civilian engineer, Abbot drew plans for the harbor at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and served on the technical committee of the New French Panama Canal Company. He later was a member of the board of engineers appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to plan the American canal in Panama. He served on the graduate engineering faculty of George Washington University from 1905 to 1910. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Henry L. Abbot