Andrew Talcott Andrew Talcott ( 1797 – 1883 ) was an American civil engineer and close friend of Civil War General Robert E . Lee . While serving as a Confederate States of America Colonel and the State Engineer of Virginia , he was arrested and made prisoner of war during that conflict . Early life . Talcott was born on April 20 , 1797 in Glastonbury , Connecticut . He attended West Point , 1818 , graduating second in class . In the Engineers , he was garrisoned at Fort Atkinson and explored the passage to Fort Snelling in 1820 . His brother was General George Talcott , Chief of the Ordnance Corps . His granddaughter Lucia Beverly Talcott ( born 1865 ) married the famous statistician and inventor Herman Hollerith in 1890 . He is a descendant Joseph Talcott , Colony of Connecticut Governor from 1724 - 1741 , and John Talcott , one of the founders of Hartford , Connecticut . Career . Talcott ' s career was as a military and civil engineer building forts , roads and railroads both in the States and Mexico . He started the 1824 construction of Fort Adams , at Rhode Island . In 1833 he extended a previously invented method of finding latitudinal direction . He rediscovered the method to determine a place ' s latitude from the stars , a method originally invented by the Danish astronomer Peder Horrebow . On further developing Horrebow ' s method , it subsequently came to be known as the " Horrebow - Talcott Method " . The so - called Horrebow - Talcott method fixed latitude " by observing differences of zenith distances of stars culminating within a short time of each other , and at nearly the same altitude , on opposite sides of the zenith . " He was hired as superintending engineer for construction on the Hampton Roads at Fort Calhoun and Fort Monroe becoming a superior and friend to the future general , Robert E . Lee and married Harriet Randolph Hackley at Norfolk , Virginia , in 1832 . ( His wife was also to become a close platonic companion to General Lee . ) Talcott surveyed the Ohio - Michigan border with Lee in the spring of 1835 . With the rank of Captain , he resigned his commission in 1836 and by 1839 he was a civil engineer and surveyor of the Mississippi river delta together with a young A . B . ( Andrew ) Gray . Talcott was considered for the post of Superintendent of the Coast Survey which was subsequently filled by Alexander Bache in 1843 , but he went on to supervise construction of the Richmond and Danville Railroad in 1849 , where he was later appointed general manager . Talcott became chief engineer and superintendent of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad and later appeared as a consultant at the Coroner ' s jury for the disaster at Desjardins Canal Bridge , Hamilton , Ontario , 1857 . Mexican Railroad . He was engaged as an engineer late in 1857 by A . Escandon who , with English financing , planned to connect Veracruz with Mexico City by rail via Cordova and Orizaba , supervising W . W . Finney of the Pony Express . When Escandon purchased the fourth concession from Mosso brothers in 1856 , two routes were considered and Talcott was assigned the far more difficult southern passage probably due financial stakes held near Orizaba by the project ' s investors . The Northern passage was explored by Pascual Almazán ) . It was supposed to be the steepest railway undertaken up to that time , rising in a distance of and to span the Metlac River was an English - made iron bridge high . Civil War . At the request of Lee , Talcott accepted the positions of Colonel and State Engineer of Virginia in 1861 . Talcott was charged with the coastal defense of Richmond and James river . After rearming the star - shaped Fort Boykin , the fort was later crippled by the ironclad corvette USS Galena ' s escort . Talcott was arrested in New York , March 1863 , only to be held at Fort Warren in Massachusetts as a Mexican citizen . He returned to a French - reorganized Mexican project in the late 1860s under a new concession where he remained until Juárez defeated Maximilian ' s conservative regime in 1867 . Personal life . As a co - claimant he filed an unsuccessful suit before the Supreme Court in 1853 , regarding Florida land deeded to his father - in - law R . S . Hackley by the Duke of Alagon in 1819 . In his later years , along with his son , Thomas Mann Randolph Talcott , Talcott invested in development in Bon Air , VA . Death . Talcott died on Sunday 22 April 1883 at his residence , 519 East Leigh Street in Richmond , Virginia , aged 87 , remembered for building the Richmond and Danville Railroad .