Alexander Sanderson

• General Notes
  • Alexander Sanderson the fifth child of Henry and Mary Ann Ives was also born in Sheffield,
    Yorkshire, England on 10thNovember 1826 and baptised on 8thDecember 1826 in that town. He was also to
    follow in the footsteps of the family tradition and become a Civil Engineer. But before this he joined the
    Royal Navy at the age of 14 years and remained in that service for approximately four years. After coming
    out of the Royal Navy he obtained employment in the surveying and building of the breakwater at
    Portland, England in which town he remained for about 10 years. It was in Portland that he married
    Susan Randall the daughter of a fisherman. Susan was born on 7thMarch 1830 in Chickerell, Dorset,
    England. It was considered by some of the Sanderson family members, that Alexander had married much
    beneath himself. Alexander and Susan were to have a family of seven children. Three of who died in
    Portland from scarlet fever before 1860. In 1858 Alexander obtained a position on the Great India
    Peninsula Railway in Assyghur, India, with the help and influence of his elder brother William. And left
    for India about three weeks before his son Alexander was born towards the end of 1858, leaving Susan
    and two children in England. At the time Alexander’s salary was reputed to be 400 pounds ($800) per year
    and it was also the period just after the Indian mutiny when considerable civil unrest was still on the
    subcontinent. In April Mary Ann Lauchlan (nee Sanderson) Alexander’s sister, took Alexander’s wife
    Susan and his three children with her to India and onto Assyghur, where Alexander was based. Mary Ann
    Sanderson had married David Lauchlan the head of the Customs department of the East India Company
    and lived in Bombay, India. On 30thSeptember 1860, just three weeks before the birth of their seventh
    child Mary Susan Sanderson, Alexander died from malaria and is buried in the Fortress of Assyghur,
    India. He was ten days short of his 34th birthday. After Alexander’s death Susan and her four children
    went to Bombay and stayed with Mary Ann and her husband David Lauchlan for approximately four
    months. She received 300 pounds ($600) life insurance and a further 300 pounds was subscribed by
    Alexander’s brother Engineers. Eventually Susan returned to England, with hers and the children’s fare
    being paid for by Mary Ann. Susan married again about two years after Alexander’s death, to a Samuel
    Corrigan and sailed for New Zealand with Samuel and her four surviving children on 5 thSeptember 1863,
    from Gravesend, England, onboard the ship “Captain Cook”. Susan Sanderson / Corrigan (nee Randall)
    died in Hawera, New Zealand on 4thMay 1904. Samuel Corrigan had pre deceased her and died before
    1867.
    
    
    
    
    Note of Interest:
    William b.1822, Charles b.1823 and Alexander b.1826, where all employed as Civil Engineers by the Great
    Indian Peninsula Railway Company. The British occupied and ruled the Indian Subcontinent from 1757 to
    1947 and although, during the 19th century India was producing a large amount of raw cotton. The British
    textile mills were obtaining most of their cotton requirements from the American Deep South. Then the failure
    of the American crop, because of the boll weevil in 1846, followed by the American Civil War 1861 to 1865
    caused the textile mills to look elsewhere for their needs. India was the obvious choice, but lack of transport
    over this large country was the major problem. Railway was the only answer and so the building of the first
    railway systems, The East India Railway Company in 1845 and the Great Indian Peninsula Railway in 1849
    were begun. It wasn’t until 1853 that the first train rolled down the track from the dock area of Bombay, a
    distance of 34 kilometres to the town of Thane. Yet this was only the beginning and to reach the hinterland and
    the cotton fields, the tracks had to be laid over the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats, a rugged mountain
    range caused some problems. But the British engineers and thousands of Indian labourers were up to the task.
    The railway track climbed an ascent of over 550 metres in about 24 kilometres and to get the train up a
    gradient such as this a switchback system was used. This was the first time anywhere in the world that
    switchbacks, a system of alternating sharp ascents and descents (rollercoasting) had been used. It was also
    necessary to drill 25 tunnels, a total distance of 3.6 kilometres through the mountains before they finally
    reached the Deccan plateau  and the cotton fields. Today in India on a daily basis the railway system carries an
    estimated 12.5 million people, 1.3 million tons of freight on more than 8,000 trains, over a track length of about
    108,000 kilometres.