Born in Prussia (later a part of Germany), John Augustus Roebling obtained his first conditional engineering degree ("Feldmesserprüfung") at Erfurt in 1824. He attended two semesters of lessons at Berlin's Bauakademie and worked for the Prussian government, constructing military roads. Tired of the bureaucracy, he resigned his position and left for the United States in 1830, arriving with his brother in Philadelphia on August 6, 1831. Instead of continuing an engineering profession, he took up farming for a living. After five years he married a tailor's daughter, and had eight children with her over the next decade. He found agrarian work unsatisfactory, and in 1837, after the death of his brother and the birth of his first child, he returned to engineering.