Robert Poole (industrialist)

Robert Poole
Poole (seated), his son George, and grandson Robert, c. 1898
Born1818 (1818)
Ireland
Died1903 (aged 84–85)
United States
Occupation(s)Engineer, inventor
Spouse
Ann Simpson
​
​
(m. 1841; died 1891)​
Children8

Robert Poole (1818-1903) was an Irish-born engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and benefactor. In 1843 he founded an ironworks in Baltimore, Maryland. For his workforce he hired members of what would become the first generation of modern metalworkers (machinists, molders, patternmakers, and boilermakers)—an emerging trade whose numbers would swell to 250,000 nationally by the end of the 19th century.[1] His enterprise became the largest of its kind in Maryland,[2] with 800–850 employees, and, from the 1850s on, played a central role in the manufacture of iron-based infrastructure essential for private enterprise and public works in America.[3]

Poole’s company made the columns that encircle the base of the dome of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., engines that powered Union gunships during the Civil War, hydraulic pumps that dredged the Potomac River (creating park land for national monuments), and complex devices (known as carriages) that controlled the raising and lowering of long-range guns for the defense of the U.S. coastline for the federal government.

For industry, the Poole company produced metal-based turbines and millwork that powered new and expanding manufacturers of flour, fertilizer, paper, and textiles—industries central to a growing economy. Municipalities bought Poole-made steam fire engines, horsecars that ran on rails, and mechanisms that drove urban cable cars—new services for the nation's burgeoning cities.

At Poole's death in 1903, a newspaper headlined his obituary "Captain of Industry Dead."[4] Poole did business in an era of wide-spread industrial strikes; his company went fifty years without one. At his funeral service, a delegation of two hundred and fifty men from his ironworks filed past his casket. Poole is recognized as a benefactor[5] for schools, colleges, and, most notably, a library which he had built and gave to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the library system for the City of Baltimore.

  1. ^ David R. Meyer, Networked Machinists: High Technology Industries in Antebellum America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2006), 17. Maier, Pauline, Merritt Roe Smith, Alexander Keyssar, and Daniel J. Kevles.  “Changing Occupational Structure 1870– 1900,” Table 18.1, Inventing America: A History of the United States. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006), 517.
  2. ^ John Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County from the Earliest Period to the Present Day (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1881), 838. “By 1881, Poole & Hunt was described as the largest iron works in Maryland…” From “Poole & Hunt Company Buildings”, Maryland National Register of Historic Places, 1973, National Register Reference Number, 73002194, Sec.7, p.1.  (This report originally carried the reference number, B-1007.) https://apps.mht.maryland.gov/medusa/PDF/NR_PDFs/NR-184.pdf.
  3. ^ Steven C. Swett, The Metalworkers (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Industry, 2022), 84–115 (U.S. Capitol), 116–121 (Washington Aqueduct), 123–130 (steam fire engines), 131–138 (horse cars), 139–144 (Union gunboats), 255–296 (fertilizer, textiles, inclined plane, lighthouses, dredging the Potomac River, pulp and paper mills, flour mills and grain elevators, urban cable cars), 307–330 (gun and mortar carriages, copper mining, hydroelectricity).
  4. ^ Baltimore American, 14, 16 and 18 January 1903 and The Sun, 15, 16 and 18 January 1903.
  5. ^ "Character sketches of Robert Poole emphasize that his charitable nature more than balanced his technological skill and bold business acumen."  "Poole & Hunt Company Buildings", Maryland National Register, No. 73002194, Sec.8, p 2.