Egbert Hambley

Egbert Barry Cornwall Hambley (2 May 1862 – 13 August 1906) was a Cornish-born mining engineer and power company executive, who worked for much of his career in North Carolina.

Egbert Hambley
Born
Egbert Barry Cornwall Hambley

(1862-05-02)2 May 1862
Penzance, England
Died13 August 1906(1906-08-13) (aged 44)
Salisbury, North Carolina
OccupationEngineer
Spouse(s)
Lottie Clark Coleman
​
​
(m. 1887)​

Early life and education

Egbert Hambley was born in Penzance, Cornwall, the son of James Hambley (a civil engineer) and Ellen Read Hambley. He was educated at Trevath House School and the Royal School of Mines.[1]

Career

Hambley spent three years as a young man helping to run the Gold Hill gold mines in Rowan County, North Carolina, 1881–1884.[2] After that job, he changed engineering firms, working for John Taylor & Sons at mines around the world, from Mexico to South Africa, from India to Norway. In 1887, he was back in North Carolina, as a consulting engineer, working for British interests in the state.[3] He was managing director of the Sam Christian Hydraulic Company, and founded the Salisbury Gas and Electric Light Company.[1]

He partnered with George I. Whitney of Pittsburgh to form the Whitney Reduction Company, which had projects in several American states; the centrepiece of their efforts was a planned hydroelectric plant on the Yadkin River,[4] with a model town called "Whitney."[5] Hambley's sudden death and construction delays meant the project was abandoned and the Whitney Reduction Company was dissolved by 1910.[6][7] Their Yadkin dam project was taken over by a predecessor of Alcoa Power Generating Inc. and completed by Alcoa some years later at nearby Badin, North Carolina.[8]

Hambley also owned several granite quarries in North Carolina, which he hoped to develop into a large-scale commercial venture.[9] He was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1890.[10]

Hambley–Wallace House Salisbury NC, built for E. B. C. Hambley and family in 1902-3

Personal life

Egbert Hambley married Lottie Clark Coleman, from a prominent North Carolina family,[11] in 1887.[12] They lived on a farm, where Egbert Hambley raised prize Jersey cows as a side interest.[13][14] After 1903 they lived in an "unusually handsome"[15] large house in Salisbury, North Carolina,[16] and had five children together before Egbert Hambley died suddenly from typhoid in 1906, aged 44 years.[17] His death was pronounced "a grief to the whole South," by the Charlotte Observer, "for which section he was doing more than any living man."[18]

A small collection of his papers is archived in the library at Pfeiffer University.[19]

References
  1. Brent D. Glass, "Egbert Barry Cornwall Hambley" in William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (University of North Carolina Press 1988).
  2. "E. B. C. Hambley, of Whitney, is Dead" Greensboro Daily News (14 August 1906): 3. via Newspapers.com
  3. "To Get British Cash" The Day (19 April 1888): 4.
  4. Julian S. Miller, "The Whitney Development on the Yadkin" Electrical Review 49(December 29, 1906): 1045–1047.
  5. "Laying out a Town; Whitney Will Soon be a City" Salisbury Evening Post (20 April 1905): 1. via Newspapers.com
  6. Mark Wineka, "With Badin Lake Down, Visitors Catch a Rare Glimpse of 'Ol' Whitney'" Archived 21 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine Salisbury Post (21 December 2003).
  7. 1910 Notice of Sale of all Lands of The Whitney Company, Roxboro Courier (23 November 1910): 3. via Newspapers.com
  8. "History of Badin" Badin Centennial 1913–2013 website.
  9. "The Southern Granites" Stone 20(1)(December 1899): 137–140.
  10. Annals of British Geology (Dulau & Company 1891): 340.
  11. John J. Beck, "Building the New South: A Revolution from Above in a Piedmont County" Journal of Southern History 53(3)(August 1987): 441–470. DOI: 10.2307/2209363
  12. "Married" North Carolina Herald (10 February 1887): 3. via Newspapers.com
  13. David Harry Jenkins, Famous Jersey Cattle (Harry Jenkins & Sons 1922): 304.
  14. Untitled news item, Wilmington Messenger (7 April 1895): 2. via Newspapers.com
  15. Narrative description, Hambley-Wallace House nomination form, National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service, U. S. Department of the Interior.
  16. "Residences: Residence of the Late E. B. C. Hambley" Archived 2 September 2016 at the Wayback Machine Theo Buerbaum's Salisbury (Rowan County Public Library).
  17. "Egbert B. C. Hambley" Salisbury Evening Post (13 August 1906): 1. via Newspapers.com
  18. "Capt. E. B. C. Hambley Dead" Charlotte Observer (14 August 1906): 4. via Newspapers.com
  19. Guide to The E.B.C. Hambley Papers 1877 – 1977, Collection Number Mss 19988, G.A. Pfeiffer Library, Pfeiffer University.
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