David J KnappDavid Knapp was born in New York City in 1937 and graduated from the McDonogh School, (a military academy near Baltimore, MD) in 1955. He earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University in 1959. A year before graduation, Knapp married hi childhood sweetheart, Estelle Stephens.

He served as a supply officer in the US Army Ordnance Corps, and worked for a year as track engineer for the B&O Railroad. After military discharge, in 1962 he was accepted to a management training program with a manufacturer of rolling mills in Pittsburgh. The experience allowed him to rise steadily in manufacturing management. From the beginning Knapp was drawn to foundry work which developed into a 60-year career in metal casting. In his off hours he developed his skills as a painter producing detailed scenes of foundries around the world in acrylic on canvas.

Unknown to him when they met, his wife Estelle was a direct descendent of Andrew M. Eastwick (1810-79), a Philadelphia Industrialist, who built the first rail engines and cars for Czar Nicholas I in 1844. In 1976 Knapp developed an interest in genealogy, particularly in his wife's forebears. The descendants always fell back to remember their once famous ancestor who went to Russia to make his fortune, but the letters were difficult to read being written in long hand script of the period, and in many instances, as "cross letters" to conserve paper and postage.

On learning of the letters fragile state, Knapp offered to transcribe them. His two-year effort produced a typed transcription. In 2022 the original letters were gifted to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. For fifty years the manuscript remained unpublished until a Russian railroad historian, Igor Kuvaldin, learned of the manuscript and encouraged Knapp to self-publish. This work is the result. Read More Read Less