Robert Stevenson (civil engineer)
Robert Stevenson, FRSE, FGS, FRAS, FSA Scot, MWS (8 June 1772 – 12 July 1850) was a Scottish civil engineer, and designer and builder of lighthouses. His works include the Bell Rock Lighthouse. Early life Robert Stevenson was born in Glasgow. His father was Alan Stevenson, a partner in a West Indies sugar trading house in the city. Alan died of an epidemic fever on the island of St. Christopher in the West Indies on 26 May 1774, a few days before Robert's second birthday. Robert's uncle died of the same disease around the same time. Since this left Alan's widow, Jean Lillie Stevenson, in much-reduced financial circumstances, Robert was educated, as a young child, at a charity school. Robert's mother intended him to join the ministry, so when he was a bit older she enrolled him in the school of a locally famous Glasgow linguist, a Mr Macintyre. But when Robert was 15, she remarried and the family moved to 1 Blair Street, off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Robert's new stepfather was Thomas Smith, a tinsmith, lamp maker, ingenious mechanic, and civil engineer, who had been appointed to the newly formed Northern Lighthouse Board in 1786. In 1798