Colonel, Josiah Bissell, Engineer and soldier
This document is a bit long, though it’s mostly about Col. Josiah Bissell of Rochester, NY. It also notes several different “Josiah Bissell” descendants of Capt. John Bissell who were the Colonel’s ancestors, so I thought I’d keep the information all together. For me, it’s doubly interesting because this line of several men named Josiah Bissell from Windsor, CT was important to the early success of my hometown of Rochester, NY. These Josiah Bissell men trace back to my wife Betsy’s line from Nathaniel Bissell, son of Capt. John Bissell of Windsor.
Here’s one key line of Bissells leading up to early Rochester:
Captain John Bissell
John Bissell, Jr. and Israel Mason
Josiah Bissell, born 1670 in Windsor, CT., died 1724 in Windsor, CT.
Josiah Bissell, born 1714 in Windsor, CT., died 1776 in Redding, CT.
Josiah Wolcott Bissell, born 1757, Windsor, CT.,
died 1822 in Rochester, NY (per Roger Bissell. Other sources have
his death in 1830 in Seneca Falls, NY, but Roger’s makes more sense)
Josiah Wolcott Bissell, born 1790, Windsor, CT.,
died 1831 in Rochester, NY.
Josiah Wolcott Bissell, born 1818, Rochester, NY,
died 1891 in Pittsburgh, PA; buried in Rochester, NY.
I’ll start at the end and work backwards. Col. Josiah Wolcott Bissell, 1818-1891, had an interesting and illustrious career. Born in Rochester, NY he was the son of an early settler of Rochester. As a very young man, Col. Josiah Bissell worked briefly in a bank and then practiced as a self-taught architect and engineer. In that capacity, he directed the successful construction of a large stone aqueduct that carried the Erie Canal across the Genesee River in downtown Rochester.
When the Erie Canal was constructed, one of the major challenges of the canal flowing between Buffalo and Albany was crossing the Genesee River. An aqueduct was built to carry the Canal across the river and served from 1822 until about 1840. The first aqueduct had several problems, including bad leaking. At 17 feet wide, it was also too narrow to allow two canal boats to pass each other. Finally, it had a narrow and difficult sharp turn at one end. A decision was made to build a new aqueduct and young Josiah Bissell served as the principal engineer.
Beginning in 1838, when Bissell was only 20 years old, he supervised the demolition of the first aqueduct. The sandstone blocks from that first bridge (many on the bottom of the river) were salvaged by Bissell and in the late 1840s, he used the sandstone to build a luxurious home on what he developed into the “ritziest” street in Rochester in the 1800s and early 1900s. He named it East Avenue and it’s still one of the finest avenues in the city. He planted horse-chestnuts and later elm trees along its edges (among his other activities, he was also a nurseryman). HIs own house later belonged to the son of Schuyler Colfax, a former Vice President of the United States, and other houses on “the Avenue” included the mansion of Kodak-founder George Eastman and that of Hyram Sibley, first president of the Western Union telegraph company. In the 20th century, Bissell’s house became the Methodist Home in Rochester, and still is today.
Col. Bissell built the second Erie Canal aqueduct over the Genesee River from 1838 to 1842, for a cost of $445,347. It was 45 feet wide, plenty of room for two canal boats to pass each other, and had a main span of 444 feet with wings at each end making the total length 848 feet. The Genesee River was deepened by blasting and the finished Canal water trough stood more than 18 feet above the river. The right angle turn at one end was smoothed out into a rounded curve.
What’s amazing to me is that when the canal was re-routed out of the city to the south of Rochester in 1919 (and the aqueduct had never leaked in 77 years), the city bought the structure and used it to get its new subway system across the river. The train tracks were laid in the original canal bed. The subway ran from 1925 to 1956. And when the subway opened in 1925, the city built an arched, covered parapet on top of the aqueduct as a roadway across the river for automobiles that became Broad Street. That Broad Street bridge built on top of Bissell’s aqueduct is still in operation in the heart of downtown Rochester today.
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After completing the second aqueduct, Bissell and an older man born in Windsor, CT named Horace Hooker (1794 - 1865) (a descendant of Rev. Thomas Hooker, founder of Hartford, CT) went into business together in 1844, establishing the Rochester Commercial Nursery, starting with young fruit trees for which Western New York later became famous. By the end of the 19th century, Rochester was known as the nursery and seed capital of the country. In these years, Bissell was completing his mansion on East Avenue. A decade later, in 1855, Bissell had his own architecture and engineering firm and he designed and built a huge suspension bridge across the Genesee River gorge just a few miles north of downtown, towards Lake Ontario.
According to an article in Rochester History, “Bridging the Lower Falls” by Joseph W. Barnes in January 1974 (V. 36, No.1), in 1855 the engineering firm of Josiah W. Bissell (then age 37) and his partner William Kauffman were chosen by the City to design a new suspension bridge over a deep gorge of the Genesee River by the Lower Falls, north of downtown where the aqueduct was. A previous wooden arch bridge in the same spot, approximately 200 feet above the river and about 700 feet long, had collapsed in 1820, 15 moths after it was completed. Bissell opened the Genesee Suspension Bridge in 1856, 19 feet wide, 755 feet long and 208 feet above the bottom of the river gorge.
The bridge had many problems, including swaying in high winds or when loads crossed it at faster than a slow walk. Horace Hooker declared it the safest bridge in the area, but after temporary closure for safety concerns and some additional work, it closed early in 1857. In April of that year, after a heavy snow which melted into slush, the bridge collapsed one night. Five thousand people turned out the next day to see the ruins.
That same year, Bissell left Rochester to move to St. Louis, MO and designed a suspension bridge to go over the Mississippi River. A few years later when the Civil War began, Bissell organized an Engineering Regiment and had the military career for which he is most well known.
There’s lots of information about Col. Bissell’s military career online for those who want more, but I’ll just include a shorter summary here. In St. Louis, Bissell first formed the volunteer Engineer Regiment of the West (later the 1st Missouri Engineers). At the start of the war, the Union Army had fewer than 150 officers and soldiers in engineering forces. During the war, the Engineering Regiment performed a variety of engineering work, building forts, constructing gun batteries, opening up bayous for ship passage, constructing fortification works (trenches, fences), occasionally building structures like a hospital or a bakery, repairing damaged railroads, and building roads and bridges.
In one case, they built a bridge overnight to allow Union troops to retreat across a river. Bissell’s regiment early in the war had about 1,000 men, mechanics, artisans like carpenters, and laborers who had been recruited from Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. One of Bissell’s officers was the son of his old Rochester business partner Horace Hooker (the son named Horace B. Hooker, 1837-1914).
In early 1862, they were helping in siege operations against Confederate positions at New Madrid and were involved in the Battle of Island Number Ten against the only Confederate position north of Vicksburg, Mississippi impeding traffic on the Mississippi River. Under the command of Gen. John Pope, Bissell moved heavy mortars across the river and forced the rebels out of Fort Thompson. The engineers constructed the New Madrid Canal, a 12 mile long canal through the swamps of New Madrid, helping the Union forces gain the passage of Union gunboats to the rear of Island No. Ten, which the Union mortar fleet bombarded March 16, 1862 (pictured on the previous page above).
General Pope was a trained engineer himself and said of Bissell’s work at New Madrid, “Col. J.W. Bissell, Engineer Regiment, rendered me the most valuable service both before and during the bombardment of the place.” In his official report of the Island Number 10 surrender, Pope said, “Of Colonel Bissell and his Engineer Regiment, I can hardly say too much. Untiring and determined, no labor discouraged them, and no labor was too much for their energy. They have commenced and completed a work which will be memorable in the history of war.”
As the war progressed, they spent time in Tennessee (including the defense of Union railroads) and at the Battle of Jonesboro. They were in Atlanta with General Sherman’s army and in the March to the Sea Campaign through Georgia, Nov. 15 - Dec. 10, 1864 and in the Siege of Savannah Dec. 10-21, 1864. In early February of 1865 at the Battle of the Salkehatchie Bridge in South Carolina, the Union forces got around the Confederates by building bridges through the surrounding swamps. In March, the engineers were present at the Battle of Bentonville in North Carolina, the last large-scale battle of the Civil War. The regiment mustered out of service in July 1865.
In the years after the war, Bissell lived in Cincinnati, Boston, and Pittsburgh, where he died in 1891. He’s buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, NY.
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Before I get to Col. Bissell’s father, let me note the ancestry of his wife Julia Wolcott Hooker Bissell (1823-1905). Julia was the daughter of Col. Bissell’s business partner Horace Hooker (1794-1865), who was born in Windsor, CT and died in Rochester, NY. Notwithstanding her maiden name of Hooker, Julia was also a descendant of Capt. John Bissell of Windsor. Horace Hooker had an older brother named Alexander Allin Hooker. They were descendants of the Rev. Thomas Hooker who was a founder of Hartford, CT in 1635. Alexander Allin Hooker, 1789-1849 and Julia’s uncle, was born in Windsor and died in Irondequoit, abutting Rochester to the north.
While likely not of interest to most, this information is interesting for me because it adds to a story I first learned more than 50 years ago. Irondequoit is the little town (now a suburb) between Rochester and Lake Ontario where I grew up. Alexander Hooker, Julia’s uncle, was an early settler of Irondequoit. He deeded the land for the first cemetery there to the town in 1824 and was the first town clerk. There were red and white oak, great stands of white pine and groves of chestnut trees. Millions of board feet of lumber were cut from these forests around 1830 when Rochester was doing a great deal of building. The Hookers moved from a log cabin into a handsome new red fieldstone home in 1833.
Well, more than a century later, in 1966, I was a high school senior working for our high school’s FM radio station (one of only 4 in the U.S. at the time) and doing a radio documentary about the controversial demolition of the historic “Hooker House,” in order to make way for a new expressway. The old fieldstone house was indeed demolished, but the cemetery was left alone. This picture of the house, with the bulldozer in the foreground, is from a newspaper story at the time.
Julia Wolcott Hooker’s parents, Helen and Erastus Wolcott, were both born in Windsor, CT. , as was Julia. Julia’s maternal grandmother was a Bissell, Chloe Bissell (1758-1802). Chloe Bissell’s line of descent from Captain John Bissell is:
Chloe Bissell (1758-1802); to
Aaron Bissell (1722-1787) and Dorothy Stoughton; to
Ebenezer Bissell (1685-1750) and Mary Loomis (granddaughter of Joseph
Loomis, Jr.); to
Thomas Bissell II, (1656-1738) and Hester Strong (1661-1726); to
Thomas Bissell, (1630-1689) and Abigail Moore (1640-1728); to
Capt. John Bissell
So, with the Bissells and the Hookers (and the Strongs, a major name in Rochester history), there is clearly a very strong connection between early Windsor and early Rochester.
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Going back a generation from Col. Bissell to that long line of Josiah Bissells, Col. Josiah Bissell’s father was Josiah Wolcott Bissell, born in 1790 in Windsor, CT and died 1831 in Rochester. “Josiah born 1790” was born either in Windsor or in Pittsfield, MA where he grew up. By 1813, he and two friends from Massachusetts were running the Red Mill, the first commercial structure in Rochester. The business did well and he may also have made money in land speculation.
He was a religious zealot, launching a campaign to put a Bible in every home. Bissell was also an elder of the Third Presbyterian Church, President of the Rochester Tract Society, President of the Rochester Sabbath School Association and a member of the Monroe County Bible Society.
In 1828, he and other “Sabbatarians” (believing in the strict observance of the Sabbath in business and public life) also founded a line of stage coaches and canal boats, for passengers, mail and freight, that operated only six days a week but were closed on Sundays. The line was called “the Pioneer Line.” Bissell used his part ownership of the Rochester Observer newspaper to attack his principal competition, the Old Line Mail, and per John Fiske in Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 1, Josiah Bissell was vicious in his efforts to put the Old Line Mail out of business. He bought the building where the Old Line stabled its horses and put them out on the street. He spared no expense in winning with making his coaches go faster than the Old Line coaches. According to Fiske, “Within three years, the Pioneer Line had run itself into the ground. In 1831, Josiah Bissell and his fellow investors sold what was left to John Sherwood and walked away. The war was over. In his attempt, Bissell had lost $30,000; others he had persuaded to invest lost tens of thousands more. Bissell died that year, at the age of 40. His estate was insolvent.” Josiah, born 1790, died in Seneca Falls, NY at age 40 in 1831.
His father was Josiah Wolcott Bissell, born 1757 in Windsor. He married a descendant of Windsor’s Mather family, Mary Mather, and they eventually ended up in Seneca Falls, NY. Roger Bissell reports he died in Rochester in 1822.
The next one going back in time is Josiah Bissell, born 1714 in Windsor, CT., died 1776 in Redding, CT. Either this Josiah or his son Josiah born 1757 was involved in oversight of Newgate Prison, in East Granby, CT. From the book A History of Newgate of Connecticut (1860), Newgate was the first chartered copper mine in America (it began in 1707) and the first state prison in early America as well. A shaft was sunk vertically into the rock about 80 feet, then horizontal shafts extended to get copper ore. Some of the miners were African and Native American slaves leased from local owners. In 1773, the defunct mine was made into the first state prison. Some prisoners escaped up the main shaft or ventilation shafts with help from people outside the prison.
When the Revolutionary War began, some Loyalists were taken prisoner and kept in the mine, as many as 30 or 40 at a time. In 1774, a “Capt. Josiah Bissell” was one of the three “overseers” of the prison along with his two compatriots, Erastus Wolcott and John Humphrey. They made recommendations to the state legislature that the facility be made more secure. In the following year, facilities for guards and for better security began to be constructed above ground of the prison. It’s purely a guess, but I’d speculate that this “Captain” was Josiah Bissell born 1714.
There is another interesting fact here: Josiah Bissell born 1714 was married to a woman whose maiden name was Ruth Bissell (1713-1788). They were second cousins, and both track back to Captain John Bissell. Ruth’s parents were David Bissell, 1681-1733, and Ruth Warner, 1675-1733. David and Ruth are my wife Betsy’s 6th Great-grandparents. David Bissell’s parents were Nathaniel Bissell and Mindwell Moore. Ruth Warner came into the Bissell family as the daughter of Deliverance Warner, Nathaniel’s third wife. She was a step-daughter to Nathaniel and step-brother to David. When Ruth and David came of age, they married.
Back to the line of Josiah Bissells, next back in line is the father of Josiah Bissell born 1714, a man named Josiah Bissell, born 1670 in Windsor, CT., and died 1724 in Windsor, CT. This Josiah was the son of John Bissell, Jr. (c. 1625 - 1678) and Israel Mason (c.1637 - 1688). John, Jr. was the son of Capt. John Bissell; Israel was the daughter of John Mason (c. 1600 - 1672) who was the chief military officer of early Connecticut and the commander in the Pequot War in 1637.
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