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the results of most beneficial character to both state and nation, was one of Cleveland's honored residents and a representative of a family that through successive generations has been noted no less for patriotism and devotion to high ideals than for splendid business and executive ability. He was of the twenty-sixth generation in England and of the seventh in America in direct lineal descent from Robert de Ebroicis, or Robert D'Evreux, known in history as one of the Norman conquerors of England in 1066. In the early colonization of Massachusetts representatives of the name aided in the reclamation of the wild western world and their descendants through successive generations continued to live in the old Bay state, his father, Captain John Devereux, being connected with the merchant marine service at Boston. In that city John H. Devereux was born April 5, 1832. His education was acquired in the academy at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and early in 1848 he left his Massachusetts home for Ohio, that he might engage in civil engineering in this state. He was then a youth of sixteen years, a "very independent, high spirited boy, possessed of undaunted courage and unbounded enterprise." Almost immediately after his arrival in Cleveland he became connected with the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad as a contracting engineer, and on the completion of that line he found similar employment on the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula Railroad. Between the years 1852 and 1861 General Devereux was in the south devoting his time to the construction of railroads in Tennessee in the capacity of civil engineer. He was prominently connected with the internal improvements of that state and section and was referee in several important cases as to location and construction. It was his intention to remain in the south, which seemed to open before him an advantageous field in the line of his profession, but the outbreak of the Civil war led to a change in his plans and he left Tennessee for the north. At that time he was city engineer of Nashville and resident engineer of what was then the Tennessee & Alabama Railroad. In the spring of 1862, after having made a reconnoissance for a military railroad in the Shenandoah valley, he received an appointment as superintendent of military railroads in Virginia and under it had charge of all railroads out of Alexandria and connected therewith. His work in this connection was of a most important character and he rendered to his country signal service, the value of which can hardly be overestimated. An account of his work is given by a contemporary biographer as follows: "It was early in the spring of 1862 that the forward movements of the Federal armies in Virginia called for active operation, by the government of railroad lines centering in Alexandria and connecting with Washington. These lines of railroads Pg 6 |
