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Donald Roebling
1908 - 1959 (50 years)-
Name Donald Roebling Birth 15 Nov 1908 New York 
Gender Male Death 29 Aug 1959 Boston, Massachusetts Person ID I30759 Scudder Last Modified 7 Dec 2007
Father John Augustus Roebling, II, b. 21 Nov 1867, Muhlhausen, Thuringen, Prussia d. 2 Feb 1952, Trenton, Mercer, New Jersey (Age 84 years) Mother Margaret Shippen McIlvaine, b. 31 Aug 1867, Trenton, Mercer, New Jersey d. 24 Oct 1930, Bernardsville, Somerset, New Jersey (Age 63 years) Marriage 12 Jun 1889 New Jersey Family ID F10879 Group Sheet | Family Chart
Family 1 Florence Spotswood Parker, b. Abt 1909, New York d. Yes, date unknown Marriage 6 Jun 1929 Charlottesville, Virginia Family ID F10884 Group Sheet | Family Chart Last Modified 3 Mar 2024
Family 2 Margaret Napier Divorce 1936 Pinellas county, Florida Family ID F10885 Group Sheet | Family Chart Last Modified 3 Mar 2024
Family 3 Clarissa Joy Gilmore, b. 14 Feb 1914 d. 19 Dec 1977, Pinellas county, Florida (Age 63 years) Marriage 1945 Pinellas county, Florida Family ID F10883 Group Sheet | Family Chart Last Modified 3 Mar 2024
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Notes - Donald, strong-willed, temperamental, and overweight, spent his childhood in the luxury of his parents' Bernardsville, New Jersey, mansion. Shipped off to the Stuyvesant Prep School in Warrenton, Virginia, he demonstrated little scholastic aptitude and upon graduation, chose not to follow the Ivy League college routine of his wealthy peers. In August 1927, the nineteen year old Roebling enrolled in the Bliss Electrical Academy in Washington, D.C. In April 1928, he was asked to leave the Bliss Academy as the result of conflicts with his teachers.
Finding life with his parents in New Jersey difficult, the restless Donald travelled to Clearwater, Florida, in 1929 to live with his cousin, Margaret MacIlrane. A year later, the twenty-two year old Roebling, undoubtedly subsidized by his father, established the Roebling Construction Company, a business specializing in the building of luxury homes. In 1930, Donald purchased a choice seven-acre tract of beachfront property in Clearwater. Inspired by his fiancee, Florence Spottiswood Parker of East Orange, New Jersey, he built a fifteen-room English Tudor mansion with a large outdoor pool and surrounding gardens. The mansion, awkwardly named Spottis Woode after Miss Parker, was of fortress proportions and strength and for decades was considered to be the largest, best built single- family dwelling on Florida's West Coast.
But by early 1932 the twenty-three year old Donald had completed his mansion in Clearwater and possessed both the means and the time to address a serious project. His father clearly recognized the requirement to set his eccentric and hitherto unproductive son to work on a useful and possibly profitable activity. He challenged his mechanically gifted son to build a reliable and commercially useful amphibious rescue vehicle, a vehicle that, in his words, "would bridge the gap between where a boat grounded and a car flooded out." He offered to pay all the design, development, and production costs and the father-son deal was sealed with a handshake. Donald accepted his father's challenge with gusto. The amphibious vehicle became the primary focus of young Roebling's creative energy for the next eight years. The final product, named the Alligator, became the mainstay of U.S. Marine Corps amphibious operations in World War II.
- Donald, strong-willed, temperamental, and overweight, spent his childhood in the luxury of his parents' Bernardsville, New Jersey, mansion. Shipped off to the Stuyvesant Prep School in Warrenton, Virginia, he demonstrated little scholastic aptitude and upon graduation, chose not to follow the Ivy League college routine of his wealthy peers. In August 1927, the nineteen year old Roebling enrolled in the Bliss Electrical Academy in Washington, D.C. In April 1928, he was asked to leave the Bliss Academy as the result of conflicts with his teachers.