Robert Heysham Sayre Diary, 1864

Robert Heysham Sayre was born in 1824 near Bloomsburg, Columbia County, Pennsylvania on the Kent family farm. His parents were William Heysham and Elizabeth Kent Sayre. In 1828, the family moved to Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pennsylvania where his father went to work as a lockmaster for the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. Robert became interested in engineering observing the operation of the canal locks. As a result he built the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railroad. He then joined the LC & N Railroad which transported coal in 1842 until 1852 when he was employed by Asa Packer for the Lehigh Valley Rail Road. In 1854, Robert was named chief engineer of the Lehigh Valley Rail Road. In 1858 he had built the home in Fountain Hill now known as the Sayre Mansion which is referred to in the diary as home. As noted in this 1860 diary Robert Sayre, he went to Cambria Iron Works to meet John Fritz and eventually enticed Fritz to the Bethlehem Iron Works, later to become Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Sayre also was an officer of Bethlehem Iron Works and served as one of the first Lehigh University trustees. He resided in the house in Fountain Hill until his death in 1907. It was Sayre and Fritz that saw the potential of the Bessemer blast furnace making of steel that made Bethlehem Steel�s fame as a producer of railway rails for the country�s booming railroad industry. The steel rails produced in Bethlehem were shipped around the Horn (South America) to supply the building of the eastward push of the transcontinential railroad over the Sierra Nevada mountains. At the time of this diary, Robert Sayre had been appointed chief engineer of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The daily notations in the diary indicate that he took this responsibility seriously.