Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II

Benjamin Henry Latrobe II (December 19, 1806 – October 19, 1878) was an American civil engineer, best known for his railway bridges, and a railway executive. Personal life Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 19, 1806, he was the youngest son of Benjamin Henry Latrobe who six years previously had married his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Hazlehurst (1771–1841) of Philadelphia. Three years earlier, President Thomas Jefferson hired his father as Surveyor of Public Buildings in the new national capitol, Washington, D.C. His father became best known as the second Architect of the Capitol, because he redesigned the rebuilt United States Capitol after the British Army burned Washington in August 1814 during the War of 1812. The senior Latrobe also designed and supervised construction of the first Roman Catholic cathedral built in the United States, the old Baltimore Cathedral (later named the Basilica of the Assumption of Mary), 1806–1821, as well as construction of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. He and his eldest son Henry Sellon Boneval Latrobe (1792–1817) died of yellow fever while working in New Orleans, Louisiana. His elder full brother John Hazlehurst Boneval Latrobe became a lawyer, painter and inventor of the Baltimore heater (an improvement upon the Franklin stove). The younger Benjamin H. Latrobe studied in Baltimore, Maryland, and later at Georgetown College in Georgetown, just west of the new Federal City, in the District of Columbia. He married Maria Eleanor "Ellen" Hazlehurst (1806–1872) of Altoona, Pennsylvania on March 12, 1833. They had four sons (two of whom survived childhood) and three daughters. Their eldest son, Charles Hazelhurst Latrobe (1833–1902), moved to Florida where he married and later joined the Confederate States Army. A civil engineer like his father and grandfather, Charles H. Latrobe later moved back to Baltimore where he served as the city's chief engineer for 25 years and continued to design public buildings and bridges noted for their beauty. His brother, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, III (1840–1901) became an Episcopal Church priest and rector of the Church of Our Savior in Silver Spring, Maryland.