Robert, Henry Martyn | South Carolina Public Radio

“R” is for Robert, Henry Martyn [1837-1923]. Engineer, author. Born in South Carolina, Robert’s family moved to Ohio in 1851. After graduating from West Point in 1857, he began a forty-four year career with the Corps of Engineers, culminating as a brigadier general and chief of engineers, U.S. Army. He crossed the country working on federal construction and improvement projects involving river systems in Oregon, lighthouses on the Great Lakes, dams and locks on the Tennessee River, and the famous seawall constructed in Galveston after the great Hurricane of 1900. After years of presiding over public meetings, he published his notes on parliamentary procedure in 1876: Pocket Manual for Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies—better known as Robert’s Rules of Order. Henry Martyn Robert’s guide has never been out of print and remains the definitive voice of parliamentary procedure in meeting rooms worldwide.