William Murray Black

William Murray Black as major general

William Murray Black (born December 8, 1855 in Lancaster , Pennsylvania, † September 24, 1933 in Washington, DC ) was an American officer in the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), most recently major general , from 1916 to 1919 Chief of Engineers was.

Life

Black was born to James and Eliza Black. He attended Lancaster High School and Franklin & Marshall College before applying for admission to West Point Military Academy in 1873 . He graduated first in his class in 1877 and was assigned to the Corps of Engineers as a second lieutenant . He was briefly held as an assistant instructor in military engineering at West Point and then went to the Engineering School of Application at Willets Point, Long Island, where he served with the Engineer Battalion until 1880 after graduation . He was then promoted to lieutenant , assistant to various senior officers in the Corps of Engineers, including Colonel William Price Craighill . From 1882 to 1886 he again served as an instructor at West Point and Willets Point.

Black was deployed from 1886 to 1891 in Florida , where he oversaw Fort Marion and Fort Zachary Taylor and was entrusted with various tasks such as port improvements, wreck lifting and surveying, and later was chief district engineer. From 1891 to 1895 he was a member of various committees on engineering issues, then until 1897 instructor at the Army Engineers School in Willets Point and at the same time company commander of the C Company of the Engineer Battalion . He then became Assistant Chief of Engineers , entrusted with human resources and fortifications, and Engineer Commissioner in the District of Columbia .

During the Spanish-American War of 1898, Black was a senior engineer in the 3rd and later 5th Army Corps with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of the Volunteers. He took part in the expedition to Puerto Rico , in which he commanded one of the first landing units. From January 1899 to April 1901 he served under Generals William Ludlow and Leonard Wood as a chief engineer in Havana and later for all of Cuba .

As a regular major , Black commanded the Engineering School , Fort Totten and Washington Barracks, and the 3rd Battalion of the Corps of Engineers from 1901 to 1903 . From April 1903 to July 1904 he was stationed on the Isthmus of Panama , where he sat on the Isthmian Canal Commission . His next stop was in the Maine District , where he oversaw port improvements and fortification work until 1906.

From 1906 to 1909 Black was a public works advisor to the Cuban Provisional Government and was promoted to colonel during that time. For the next seven years until 1916 he was a senior engineer on the east coast of the USA and during this time was entrusted with various engineering tasks. Among other things, he oversaw the lifting of the wreckage of the USS Maine in the port of Havana. In March 1916 he was promoted to Brigadier General Chief of Engineers of the US Army. Under the influence of the First World War , he initiated a rapid expansion of the Corps of Engineers from under 2,500 to over 300,000 men. To this end, he created, among other things, the Engineer Officers' Reserve Corps .

After retiring at the statutory age of 64 in 1919, he worked until 1929 as a co-owner of a consulting firm based in Washington, DC. He then worked as a consultant for government agencies until his death in 1933 and also appeared as a speaker at public events. His grave is in West Point Cemetery .

Familiar

In 1877 he married Daisy Peyton Derby, daughter of the military topographer George Derby. With this he had at least one son. After the death of his first wife in 1889, he married Gertrude Totten Gamble two years later, daughter of Commander William Marshall Gamble, United States Navy, with whom he had two other sons.

Awards

For his services in World War I, Black was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal , among other things . His other awards include the Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize and the Arthur M. Wellington Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers . In 1920 he received an honorary doctorate from the Pennsylvania Military College .

literature

• George W. Cullum's Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, since its establishment in 1802. 1891 ff.
• Willi H. Hager: Hydraulicians in the USA, 1800-2000: A biographical dictionary of leaders in hydraulic engineering and fluid mechanics. CRC Press, 2015, p. 1838.

Web links

Commons : William Murray Black  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• General William Murray Black on spanamwar.com
• William Murray Black in the database of Find a Grave (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
Dan Christie Kingman	Chief of Engineers of the United States Army 1916–1919	Lansing Hoskins Beach