James H. Ledlie

from The New York Times, August 16, 1882:

        GEN. JAMES H. LEDLIE.
  Gen. James H. Ledlie died yesterday, at St.
Mark's Hotel, New-Brighton, Staten Island, of
dropsy and jaundice, after a brief illness. He was
about 50 years old and a native of Utica. He was
graduated from the Scientific Department of Union
College, and soon after was made a Division En-
gineer on the Erie Canal. At a later period
he took the contract of the Seneca River
Improvement Company for draining the
marshes near Geneva, in this State. At
the beginning of the civil war he joined the
Army of the Potomac as Major of the Nineteenth
New-York Volunteers. Subsequently he was made
a Colonel, and at the battle of Fredericksburg he
commanded a brigade. After the battle he was
promoted to Brigadier-General of Volunteers.
During the greater part of 1863 he was Chief of
Ordnance at Norfolk, Va., and he commanded the
military in this City at the outbreak of the
riots of 1863, but was superseded by Gen.
Butler. After the war he returned to the
practice of his profession, and was the first person
to demonstrate the practicability of taking rafts
from the lumber regions across Lake Michigan to
Chicago. Later he obtained and carried out the
contract for the construction of bridges, trestles,
and snow-sheds along the entire line of the Union
Pacific Railway. After completing that work
he built the breakwater in Chicago Har-
bor and did some railroad engineering work
in Georgia. He next visited Europe,
and after his return, in 1879, he built
the Nevada Central Railroad, from Austin to Battle
Mountain. He was when he died President of
the Baltimore, Cincinnati and Western Railroad
Construction Company, and First Vice-President
of the railroad company; also Chief Engineer and
General Manager of the Santa Rosa and Sonoma
Central Railroad of California, Chief Engineer of
the Nevada Southern Railroad, and largely inter-
ested in the Indian River Railroad of Florida. He
was a member of the Military Order Loyal Legion
and a Mason of exalted degree. He leaves a
widow and two sons. His body will be taken to
Utica by the train which leaves this City at 10:30
o'clock this morning, and will be buried there to-
morrow.