Squire Whipple

This modest headstone of black granite on the South Ridge near the graves of Herman Melville's parents and the brownstone sarcophagus of Cortlandt Van Rensselaer marks the grave of Squire Whipple, a civil engineer known as "the father of iron bridge building"

Born in Massachusetts and educated at Union College in nearby Schenectady, Whipple is best remembered locally for the bowstring truss bridge preserved in the Normanskill Hollow between Albany and Delmar. 

Squire Whipple on Wikipedia