14 Facts About Isaac Briggs

Isaac Briggs was an American engineer, surveyor and manufacturer.

Isaac Briggs lived much of his adult life with his family in Brookeville, Maryland.

Isaac Briggs was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania in 1763 to Samuel and Mary Briggs, two Quakers.

Isaac Briggs studied at the College of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1783 and a Master of Arts in engineering in 1786.

Additionally, Isaac Briggs was a devout Quaker and a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Isaac Briggs was close friends with both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

In keeping with his Quaker beliefs, Isaac Briggs was an avid abolitionist and never owned slaves.

Isaac Briggs was a member of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery as well as an abolitonist society in Wilmington, Delaware, through which he was active in supporting free black members of his community who were at risk of being kidnapped and sold back into enslavement.

Isaac Briggs was an unsuccessful candidate for the US House of Representatives in 1789.

Isaac Briggs returned home in January 1819 and was appointed by Thomas Moore in March 1819 as a chief engineer in Virginia on the James River and Kanawha Canal.

Isaac Briggs would be promoted to principal engineer after Moore's death in 1822, but did not complete any major portion of the canal.

Isaac Briggs co-founded the American Board of Agriculture and a cotton mill and manufacturing town at Triadelphia in Montgomery County, Maryland in 1809.

Isaac Briggs became ill while working on the James River and Kanawha Canal in Virginia.

Isaac Briggs died at home at Sharon near Brookeville on January 5,1825.