Thomas Paschall Roberts (1843-1924)

Thomas Paschall Roberts, known as Colonel, was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on April 21, 1843 to William Milnor Roberts and Anna Gibson Roberts. His grandfather was John Bannister Gibson, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. Roberts began classes at Farmers’ High School in 1859, then left in 1861 to attend the local Dickinson College, where he was elected President of the Union Philosophical Society.

He left Dickinson in 1863 to join his father in Brazil as an engineer on the Dom Pedro II railroad, and remained there until 1865. In 1872, on a U.S. government survey of the Missouri River, Roberts named Black Eagle and Rainbow Falls. During his career he worked on projects all over the United States, from the Montana Division of the Northern Pacific Railroad to the Louisville & Nashville system in Kentucky, and worked for many years for the Monongahela Navigation Company. From 1912 until his retirement on August 20, 1922 Roberts worked as an engineering consultant for the U.S. Engineer Office in Pittsburgh.

A regular contributor to newspapers and magazines, Roberts also wrote the Memoirs of John Bannister Gibson in 1890 and was one of the founders of the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania in 1880. Roberts had seven children with his wife Juliette Emma Christy, who he married on June 8, 1870. He died on February 25, 1924 at his home at 561 North Craig Street, Pittsburgh.