the S&R railroad, and develop rail-water service between Baltimore, Portsmouth, Raleigh, Hamlet, Abbeville and Atlanta. After the War, Moncure Robinson, his son John Moncure Robinson, former Confederate general William Mahone and North Carolina businessman Alexander Boyd Andrews successfully worked with investors to consolidate a series of short-line railroads into what became the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and ship system. They foiled an attempt by Thomas A. Scott, who had risen through the ranks of the Pennsylvania Railroad and acquired the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad after the war, to build a system along the eastern seaboard. Instead, John Moncure Robinson became superintendent then president of this major, southern trunk line, from Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama. Even during the Panic of 1873 (which destroyed Mahone's empire and much of the fledgling Republican party in Virginia) the Seaboard Road showed a profit and declared regular annual dividends. In 1887, at age 85, Moncure Robinson completed his last railroad construction project, the 18-mile Palmetto Railroad in the Carolinas, which helped link the Seaboard line from Richmond to Florida. Death and legacy Robinson died on November 10, 1891 in Philadelphia and was interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery. He had survived his brother Conway Robinson by seven years (although Conway's body would be returned to Richmond for burial). Moncure Robinson's widow survived him by four years; their son and railroadman John M. Robinson reconciled with his father in their last years but only survived him by two years. Eulogists remembered that as a young man, Moncure Robinson had been one of the new Republic's first railroad civil engineers. Robinson wrote his will on September 11, 1873 (months before Conway's death), and left an endowment for preservation of the Aquia Episcopal Church, Aquia, Virginia (his grandfather was reverend there, and his parents and many cousins of various degrees of descent are buried there—the Robinson trust still funds the cemetery's maintenance). His personal papers and the papers of the Robinson family are held by the Special Collections Research Center at the College of William and Mary. Reputation Robinson became the leading railroad engineer in the United States, attained an international reputation for engineering excellence and executive talent, and during his retirement continued to consult on various railroad projects. Called "one of the most distinguished civil engineers in the United States" and the "genius of America's earliest railways," Robinson was instrumental in the