Rossiter Worthington Raymond
Rossiter Worthington Raymond (1840-1918)
1919 Obituary [1]
ROSSITER WORTHINGTON RAYMOND, Honorary Member, died suddenly, of heart failure, at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., on December 31, 1918. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 27, 1840. He was of English descent, his earliest American ancestor on the paternal side, Richard Raymond, having emigrated from England and settled at Salem, Mass., about 1632 ; while on his mother's side he was descended from well-known New England families. He received his early education in the common schools of Syracuse, and in 1857 entered the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, graduating from that institution in 1858. He spent the ensuing three years in professional study at the Royal Mining Academy, Freiberg, Saxony, and at the Heidelberg and Munich Universities. Returning to the United States in 1861 he entered the Federal Army and served as aide-de-camp, with the rank of captain, on the staff of Major-General J. C. Fremont.
From 1864 to 1868 he engaged in practice as a consulting mining engineer and metallurgist in New York City, and in the latter year was appointed United States Commissioner of Mining Statistics, which position he held until 1876, issuing each year " Reports on the Mineral Resources of the United States West of the Rocky Mountains " (8 vols., Washington, 1869-76).
In 1873 he was appointed United States Commissioner to the Vienna International Exhibition and as such delivered at Vienna addresses at the International Convention on Patent Law and the International Meeting of Geologists, and an address at the meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute in Liege. From 1875 to 1895 he was associated as consulting engineer with the firm of Cooper, Hewitt and Co., owners of the New Jersey Steel and Iron Company, the Trenton Iron Company, the Durham and the Ringwood Iron Works, as well as numerous coal and iron mines. As President of the Alliance Coal Company and director of the Lehigh and Wilkesbarre Coal Company, his articles on "Labour and Law," published in the Engineering and Mining Journal at the time of the Homestead riots, attracted wide attention.
From 1885 to 1889 he was one of the three New York State Commissioners of Electric Subways for the city of Brooklyn, and served as member and secretary of the 3oard. He then became consulting engineer to the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company. In 1898 he was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of New York State and of the Federal District and Circuit Courts, his practice being confined to cases involving either mining or patent law. In 1903 he • was lecturer on mining law at Columbia University. He was the editor of the American Journal of Mining from 1867 to 1868, of the same periodical under the title of Engineering and Mining Journal from 1868 to 1890. In 1884 he prepared for the United States Geological Survey an historical sketch of mining law, which was subsequently translated into German and published in full by the Journal des Bergrechts.
He was an honorary member of the Societe des Ingenieurs de France, the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, the Mining Society of Nova Scotia, and the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers. He received the degree of Ph.D. from Lafayette College in 1868 and that of LL.D. from Lehigh University in 1906. An original member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, he served as its Vice- President, President, and from 1884 to 1911 acted as Secretary. At the time of his death he served as Secretary Emeritus. In 1911 he received from the Mikado of Japan the distinction of Chevalier of the Order of the Rising Sun for eminent services to the industry of Japan.
He was elected an honorary member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1904.