Fayette County PA Archives Biographies.....De Saulles, Major Arthur B. January 8, 1840 - ????
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Marta Burns marta43@juno.com September 20, 2024, 5:44 pm

Source: Gresham and Wiley, 1889: Biographical & Portrait Cyclopedia, Fayette Co, PA, page 598
Author: John H. Gresham & Samuel T. Wiley

    Major Arthur B Desaulles of Dunbar, the vice president of the Dunbar
Iron Company and superintendent of its iron works, is the son of an
English gentleman, Louis De Saulles, who is of French descent, and Armide
Longer De Saulles, a Louisianian by birth and like her husband of French
lineage.
    Major De Saulles was born in New Orleans, January 8, 1840, and was
instructed at home by a private tutor until ten years of age when he was
placed in a German school at West Newton, Massachusetts, and carefully
trained in the German language as well as other studies for two years.
The period of educational discipline was followed immediately by two
years at Bolmar's French-English Institute at West Chester, Penna, and
the latter period by a course of study at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in
preparation for an advanced course of scientific studies, which he made
at the Rennselaer Polytechnic School at Troy, New York, from which
institution he graduated in June, 1859.  During his connection with the
Polytechnic School he was engaged for five months as assistant in the
geological survey in Arkansas.  
    After his graduation, Major De Saulles' father sent him on a tour of
inspection through the state of Pennsylvania to examine mining and
metallurgical operations therein, and to make report thereof to him,
after which experience and report he sent him to Europe in December,
1859, and in January, 1860, De Saulles entered the Ecole des Mines,
Paris, where he remained till September, 1861, when he returned to New
Orleans and three days after his arrival there entered the Confederate
service, and was placed on the staff of Major Lovell in the engineer
corps, and was put in charge of the construction of fortifications on
Lake Pontchartrain and on Plaine Chalmette, south of New Orleans.
    With the Confederate forces he remained on active duty (with the
exception of a short time when furloughed on account of a wound received
in a skirmish) until the surrender of the Army of Tennessee in North
Carolina, at which time he was its chief engineer.  During this period of
service he was mainly employed in the construction of fortifications at
various points, and in the building of pontoon trains for the Army of
Tennessee to which he was most of the time attached, and wherein he acted
as major from the fall of 1864 till the time of his surrender.
    Soon after the war he went to Europe where he remained till April, 1866,
when he returned to America, took the position of engineer of the New
York and Schuylkill Coal Company's works, after a year being placed in
charge, and remaining with the company till it sold out to the
Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company in October, 1871,
whereupon he moved to New York City and engaged in professional pursuits
till March, 1876, when he became connected with Dunbar Furnace Works.
Aside from his connection with these works, he is manager of the Percy
Mining Company and one of the executive committee of the Fayette Coke and
Furnace Company at Oliphant which works in all employ about a thousand
hands.
    He was one of the seven organizers in 1868 of the American Institute of
Mining which now embraces about one thousand members and associates, and
also one of the original members of the Society of Mechanical Engineers,
and is a member of the American Meteorological Society,
    In politics he is a "good old fashioned democrat" and in religion not a
"communicant" but takes interest in the little Episcopal church which his
wife built and presented to the parish at Dunbar Furnace in 1880.
    August 19, 1869, he married Miss Catherine Heckscher, daughter of
Charles A Heckscher of New York City, by whom he had three sons and two
daughters.  

Additional Comments:
Originally submitted 2000.

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