Chapter 11: Designing the Octagon
The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
Chapter 11: Designing the Octagon
 |
| Mrs. Thornton by Stuart 1804 |
Construction of the Octagon continued throughout 1800, but Mrs. Thornton's only description of the house came in her entry for January 7: "a beautiful clear day.... After dinner we walked to take a look at Mr. Tayloe's house which begins to make a handsome appearance." C. M. Harris counts that and the other seven walks in which she mentioned the house, without commenting on its appearance, as evidence that Thornton kept tabs on the house he designed. By the way, the Thorntons would have another reason to walk down New York Avenue toward the Potomac River. They owned lots in the Square 171 just below Square 170 where the Octagon was being built. In the spring, he would have it planted with buckwheat and fenced.(1)
 |
| The Octagon in 1807 |
On January 7, he had a special reason to look at the house. The board received a letter from Navy Secretary Stoddert reporting that the president planned to ship his furniture to the city in June. Adams told Stoddert to tell the board that he insisted on moving into the President's house. He would not be told where he might have to stay and jumped to the conclusion that the commissioners wanted to put him into George Washington's Capitol Hill houses.
White was not in the city on January 7. Evidently, he had not told his colleagues what he had written to the president. Commissioner Scott had not signed the November letter and assumed White had asked the president to choose a house to be rented. Scott dashed a letter off to Stoddert disavowing the very idea of not using the President’s house. Thornton also signed that letter.
Scott likely got Thornton to reveal what houses he and White had in mind. Scott had sold the lot to Tayloe and likely remained a friend. It bears remembering that before work began on the Octagon, in response to the president's plea that he move into the city, Scott had his own house built just north of the city. If Tayloe needed architectural advice, he probably relied on Commissioner Scott. To keep track of the work on Tayloe's house, Scott could check with Andrew McDonald, the master carpenter then working on the Octagon. Thornton had never built a house, let alone his own house. In January 1800, Scott likely knew that Tayloe's house would not be in a state to receive the president's furniture in June 1800. So, he challenged Thornton to see for himself what state the house was in. He wasn't taking a walk to check on a house he had designed.(2)
Harris and others cite an entry Mrs. Thornton wrote five days after their January visit to the Octagon as evidence that Thornton designed Law's house. The Thorntons took Thomas and Patsy Peter to see it, the General's houses and the Capitol. Thomas Peter was an executor of the General's will and would influence decisions about the houses and where to put the General's body. Of course, Thornton wanted it in the Capitol. Mrs. Law was Patsy's sister, both were Martha Washington's grand daughters:
Sunday [January] 12th— A very fine day, as pleasant as a Spring day. After breakfast Mr T. Peter called and mentioned that his wife was at home; we therefore sent the Carriage for her. I, and Dr T— . accompanied them to the Capitol, the General's and Mr Law's houses —the latter being locked we entered by the kitchen Window and went all over it— It is a very pleasant roomy house but the Oval drawing room is spoiled by the lowness of the Ceiling, and two Niches, which destroy the shape of the Room.— Mr and Mrs Peter dined with us and returned home early in the afternoon some of her Children not being well.(3)
Harris opines that "Thornton's role... is partially but substantially documented by his wife's diary for 1800." Certainly, that Thornton climbed through the kitchen window to get inside suggests he had some authority, though his friendship with Law and his touring with the Mrs. Law's sister might have given him sufficient license to do that. Pamela Scott puts it this way: "It was designed by William Thornton, and was 'a very pleasant roomy house' according to Anna Maria Thornton."(4)
But how does one account for Mrs. Thornton's criticism of the oval drawing room's low ceiling? Her husband likely informed her criticism of the room. In 1797, Thornton had written about the yet unbuilt oval rooms he had designed for the Capitol as dancing with shadows and lights under high domes. He had been struck by Lovering's ingenious design, but fitting oval rooms into a five story townhouse was alien to his sensibilities.However, while his merely looking at houses cannot prove that he designed them, there is no doubt that in early 1800, Thornton had an itch for drawing plans. On January 4, the first Saturday afternoon of the year, he went with his wife and mother-in-law to go inside the General's houses. One had just been finished. Then they went to the Capitol and while the ladies sat by a fire in another room where glaziers were working, "Dr. T-n laid out an Oval, round which is to be the communication to the gallery of the Senate room." She did not note his doing anything like that again. The glaziers were working to close the building so work could continue inside during the winter. Hoban and his skilled workers would build the interior rooms. In September 1798, he had boasted in his letter to his colleagues that his work was done. His drawing an oval on the floor was an exercise for his own benefit, perhaps to help him visualize setting a tomb in the Capitol.(5)
He had anticipated the General's death and the need to memorialize the Great Man. In his 1793 design of the Capitol, he designated the site for a memorial under the dome. In January 1800, he recognized that the imperative to do that could hurry completion of the Capitol. On January 6, he wrote to Congressman John Marshall who chaired the joint congressional committee planning the official reaction to the General's death. He had no design on paper yet but, as he would hint in a letter he would write to Blodget, it was ever in his mind. In that February 23 letter, he sketched a "massy rock" with the General ascending to heaven on top, and a woman with a snake coiled around her body, symbolizing eternity, on the bottom; the bodies of the General and his wife would be entombed in the middle and all that would be under the Capitol's dome.(6)
 |
| Thornton's "massy" tomb |
Blodget had no say in the matter, but he was in Philadelphia where congress began debating what to do. No one there, other than Blodget, thought of asking Thornton. Indeed, on January 20, Stoddert wrote to Thornton but not about the Capitol or tomb. He castigated the commissioners for not properly preparing the President's house for the reception of the president: "A private gentleman preparing a residence for a friend would have done more than has been done," Stoddert wrote and he wanted an enclosed garden "at the north side of the Presidents Houses" similar to one had by the richest man in Philadelphia, William Bingham. There also should be a stable, carriage house and garden house. The latter should be in a garden that would be "an agreeable place to walk in even this summer."
 |
| White House in 1820 |
On January 30, Thornton wrote back that he had always been for grandeur throughout the city. His colleagues were "afraid of encouraging any expense not absolutely necessary, and seem not to think these things necessary that you and I deem indispensable." He then reflected on the mansion: "Some affect to think the house and all that relates to it are upon too extravagant a scale. I think the whole very moderate,..." He added that the president should get a salary of $100,000 to maintain it. At that time, he made $25,000. Thornton also sent a plan of the President's house to the president and noted that "the colonnade to the south is not completed at present, and temporary steps are to be put in." As a president looked south from his mansion, he would see lots Thornton owned at the east end of Square 171. Two days after he wrote that letter to Stoddert, Mrs. Thornton noted that he designed a house for Square 171 and thus in full view of the President's house.(7)
"Saturday, Feby 1st a fine day. The ground covered
with the deepest snow we have ever seen here (in 5 yrs.) - river frozen
over. Dr. T- engaged in drawing at his plan for a House to build one day
or another on Sq. 171." On February 4, 1800, Mrs. Thornton added: "I began to
copy on a larger scale the elevation and ground plan of the house."(8)
Ridout also tries to wring evidence out of Mrs. Thornton's diary by pointing out that if Thornton designed a house for a gentleman in 1800, he could have designed a house for Tayloe in 1797, 1798 or 1799. Ironically, Ridout calls attention to two houses Thornton designed in March for Daniel Carroll of Duddington and his brother that more or less copied the design of the General's houses. Ridout, nor Harris, thinks the design for Square 171 relevant to what they insist Thornton designed for Tayloe and Law.(9)
However, why draw analogies from the diary when Mrs. Thornton didn't make them herself and when the diary actually tells a
simple story. Thornton didn't like Law's oval room. So he designed a house
with better oval rooms. His wife thought Law's house roomy and Tayloe's
wall handsome, so he showed her what a handsome and roomy house should
look like. The large design with oval rooms in Thornton's papers that is thought to be his first
take on the Octagon design, is actually his final design for a house on
Lot 17 in Square 171. Thornton designed a house to
rival Tayloe's.
Although the changes in the topography of the area were not severe, the slope to the south toward the river precluded building on the western half of Square 171 until the area was leveled. A house on lot 17 at the angled intersection of New York Avenue and 17th Street NW would face the President's house. That left Thornton with the same problem that the architect of the Octagon and Law's house had solved. That meant he could copy Lovering's solution and out do it with a nobler house.
 |
| from "historical map" published 1931 |
Thornton's design for Lot 17 in Square 171 would not have worked on Lot 8 in Square 170. An oval room in the rear of a house on Lot 8 would be hidden from view and have a view of the backs of buildings on F Street to the north that would block any view of the executive mansion. Thornton owned the lots southwest of Lot 17 and could preserve a view looking down the slope to the Potomac River. The large semi-circular porch on the other side of Thornton's design invited eyes looking down from the President's house.
Table : Orientation of Thornton design if in lot 17 Square 171
|
|
Thornton's habit of studying floor plans and elevations in books before drawing his own suggests that he asked Lovering for one of his preliminary plans for the Octagon. If he had followed the same pattern of trying to get a contract with Law and Tayloe as he would with Stier, then he made at least three specimens for each building, affording a new client a choice of six solutions to the problem faced by building in an angled lot. That explains the other floor plan in Thornton's paper that resembles the actual Octagon floor plan.
In May 1800, Lovering placed an ad in the local newspapers: "William Lovering, Architect and General Builder – Begs leave to inform his friends and the public, that he has removed from the City of Washington to Gay Street, the next street above the Union Tavern in Georgetown, where he plans to estimate all manner of building, either with materials and labor, or labor only. Specimens of buildings suitable for the obtuse or acute angles of the streets of the City of Washington, may be seen at his home." In Building the Octagon, Ridout quotes the ad and characterizes it as a mere builder taking advantage of what he was learning while building a house designed by a genius: "Supervising architect William Lovering attempted to capitalize on his experience with the unorthodox plan of the Octagon by soliciting other commissions for the eccentrically shaped lots so common in Washington." However, Lovering's ad did not merely offer "his experience." He offered to share "specimens of buildings," that is, plans and elevations to illustrate what could be built on angled lots. Lovering was trying to get work based on his experience as a designer, not merely on his experience as a builder. That Thornton studied the plan only to design his own house would not bother Lovering. He knew Thornton might pay him for estimating the cost of the building if not actually building it. Since Thornton had a specimen of Lovering's design before he placed the ad, Thornton might have led Lovering to believe that there might be a demand for them, thus prompting him to place his ad.(10)
What Thornton drew adapts Lovering's configuration to different terrain with a house less convenient for a family but befitting his grandiose ideas to bring eclat to the city. By the way, it would also put Tayloe's house in the shade, so to speak. But why didn't Thornton or his wife say more about such a consequential design?
W. B. Bryan offers an explanation for her lack of enthusiasm. She knew the house could not be built "owing, no doubt, to a lack of funds, which was a common experience in the life of a man who moved in a large orb, but one not within in the range of either the making or the saving money." There is something to that, but whenever Thornton sold his Lancaster property, he expected to make $40,000. The death of his mother in October 1799 might have led to some reckoning of the Tortola estate with money coming to Thornton. Still, Mrs. Thornton likely didn't relish the idea of that money, if it came, being wasted in that way. To bring some order to their finances, she would soon begin keeping notebooks recording every household expense.(11)
While
it is not surprising that Thornton did not acknowledge Lovering's help,
why didn't his wife? She would be particular about the genesis of designs her husband drew in late February and mid-March. On February 27, "Dr. T- received a note from Mr. Law enclosing a rough Sketch of a plan for a Stables & c. behind his house which is five stories before and three behind, which Dr. T- had promised to lay down for him as he had suggested the ideas - The Stables and Carriage house are to be built at the bottom of the lot and the whole yard to be covered over at one Story height, and gravelled over, so as to have a flat terrass from the Kitchen story all over the extremity of the lot.... Dr. T- engaged in the evening drawing Mr. Law's plan."(12)
On March 12, she wrote: "while we were at breakfast a boy brought a note from Mr. Carroll of Duddington, (living in the City an original and large proprietor) requesting Dr. T- as he had promised, to give him some ideas for the plan of two houses he and his brother are going to begin immediately on Sq. 686 on the Capitol Hill." Thornton spent the afternoon "drawing the plans for Mr. Carroll." (13)
She wrote more about those designs than anything else Thornton drew
that year. Evidently, because both Law and Carroll, as opposed to her husband, were men who did build, she paid attention to what they planned to do. In
a few weeks, the Thorntons would take a look at what the Carroll
brothers were building. She never
mentioned Law's stables again. It is not certain what Law built, but the
boarding house would advertise its ability to board 60 horses.(14)
She also doesn't attribute Law's and Carroll's interest in her husband talents to their appreciation of his previous designs. She did not assess motives in her diary. She didn't note the obvious reason why Law and Carroll involved her husband. They were flattering him in hopes that as a commissioner he would help them.
Through her nephew William Cranch, who was then Law's lawyer, they learned that Mrs. Adams had doubts about moving into the President's house. She feared the building would be too green. Law wrote the letter to James Greenleaf already quoted that described his house and asked him to see that Mrs. Adams got the letter. Carroll sent a letter to Cranch describing his house, and Cranch sent it to her. Having Thornton on their side could do neither Law nor Carroll any harm if the First Family needed a house. Coincidentally, through Notley Young, another member of the Carroll clan, Bishop John Carroll asked Thornton to submit a design for a new cathedral in Baltimore. He also asked other architects and eventually chose Latrobe's design.(15)
 |
| Latrobe's Baltimore Cathedral |
The demand for Thornton's architectural talents was short lived. The president remained adamant; the First Lady leaned toward not coming to the city at all. Congress gave the cabinet money and power to prepare the city for the government. Everyone knew the commissioners days in power were numbered. The Constitution gave congress exclusive jurisdiction over the city and its public buildings. Both Law and Carroll continued to build houses in a vain effort to profit off their many building lots in the city. Other men, including Hoban, designed their houses. There is no evidence that they again asked Thornton for building plans.(16)
 |
| Carroll's Row |
Meanwhile, her husband was an ever flowing fountain of ideas. She did not necessarily enjoy his projecting genius. Even if her husband vowed to build a house to rival Tayloe's, she wouldn't mention that in her diary. However, she knew Lovering. A 1799 marriage with a Georgetown widow merited a notice in the newspaper. In the middle of the summer of 1800, she came home and she found "Dr. T. waiting with Mr. Lovering to get into the parlor of which I had the key."However, there is no evidence in Mrs. Thornton's diary or her subsequent jottings in notebooks that she kept at least through 1815 that the Thorntons ever socialized with the Loverings. In 1811 she noted that Lovering, who then lived in Baltimore, brought her husband a book. By the way, two days later she noted that her husband drew a plan for a house. Likely, social class blinders did not allow her to conceive of a man like Lovering designing a gentleman's house. Lovering was also careful not tweak those blinders.(17)
In 1807, master carpenter Andrew McDonald advertised his services with this reminder. He had "finished the buildings on Rock Hill, near Georgetown, for the late Gustavus Scott, esq...; and also finished that elegant building belonging to Colonel John Tayloe..." So, why didn't Lovering associate his name with Tayloe's house? Lovering probably decided that he could not publicly claim his design because that would diminish the glory of house owners like Tayloe, Law and Stier. Instead, he had to rely on their good word, which he probably never heard. On June 14, 1801, Tayloe wrote to Lovering: "my Object is to be done with the building as quickly as I can with the least trouble and vexation - for the expense of it already alarms me to death when I think of it." Dorsey calculated that the house cost $10,000 over the contract estimate. By the way, in that letter Tayloe demanded that the head carpenter McDonald be fired. Stier also became vexed at Lovering because of delays in building his house. In a letter to his son, Stier called Lovering a "blockhead."(18)
In his advertisements he did not reveal what he had designed or built. In an 1801 ad, he claimed that he had "been in the practice of drawing for and superintending great part of the buildings in the City of Washington and vicinity." But he didn't say which ones. In 1804, he placed an ad in Alexandria, Virginia, "where he Draws, Designs, and makes estimates of all manner of Buildings and also MEASURES AND VALUES all the different work connected to the building art." He was ready to "contract for any building and complete the same, from a palace to a cottage, which will be executed in the most masterly and economic style." He claimed he had "long experience" but didn't list any houses he designed or built. In 1809, he placed an ad in Baltimore, which exuded a complete command of his profession: "Begs leave to inform the gentlemen of Baltimore and its environs, that they may be supplied with plans, elevations and sections of any building intended to be erected, with the estimates of the different work particularized in a manner in which it is impossible for any dispute to arise, and gives instructions to the different workmen that they have no occasion to make any inquiry during the execution of the building."
Lovering had mastered his profession, but even in booming cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia he did not leave his mark. His moving from Georgetown to Alexandria to Baltimore to Philadelphia and back to Baltimore where he died in 1813 suggests a struggle to earn a living, not a march of fame.
Although he crossed the phrase out in 1798, evidently, the Ingenious A was one architect that did not raise Thornton's hackles. By building on Lot 17, Thornton was clearly trying to rival Tayloe, not Lovering.(19)
Of course, Tayloe was a gentleman and he had a feature role in first six months of Mrs. Thornton's diary. In January 1800, Thornton met Tayloe one evening at the Union Tavern in Georgetown. The latter had to get an early start for Annapolis in the morning so, given the winter darkness, they had no time to see his house under construction. In Annapolis, Tayloe graciously helped determine the legal status of property in Georgetown owned by Thornton's sister-in-law who lived in the Virgin Islands. It would appear that the two gentlemen became friends. Ridout suggests the Octagon design was the catalyst.(20)
Then
on March 12, the day her husband got the note about designing a house
for Daniel Carroll, Mrs. Thornton put more portentous news in her diary:
"a boy came from the farm with a 3 yr old Sorrel filly which Dr. T- has
exchanged with Mr. Tayloe - He then wrote a note to Mr. O'Reilly to
know when he can have his boy to go with Driver to Mr. Tayloe's." "His
boy" was a slave named Randall who
was a jockey. Tayloe preferred slaves because white jockeys asked for more
money if they won a race. Then Randall and Joe Key, Thornton's slave,
took Driver and the filly to Neabsco near Dumfries, Virginia, where they
gave the manager of the iron works a letter from Tayloe directing him
to send a man to take Randall and Driver to Mount Airy.
In her diary, Mrs. Thornton seemed more interested in horses than houses. In her January 7 entry, in which she noted the "handsome appearance" of Tayloe's houses, she also noted that her husband received a note requesting the pedigree of Clifden and two mares. They would seen get money for his stud services. In another entry, she calculated that they owned 23 horses. Some were carriage horses and farm horses but thanks to her husband's purchases there were also race horses, and they would breed more. After ten years of marriage, the Thornton's had no children. The thoroughbreds were also the catalyst for her husband's and Tayloe's friendship. Of course, because they were breeders, they also competed.(21)
In 1800, Thornton entered the informal Maryland brotherhood of breeders. Page 4 of the April 7, 1800, Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertisers was full of its doings. An advertisement offered the stud services of "The Celebrated Running Horse Clifden, imported from England last autumn by William Thornton, esquire, of the city of Washington...." On the same page, a notice from the commissioners was signed by Thornton. But Tayloe dominated the page. There was a longer ad offering the services of Mufti, "imported last August by John Tayloe, esquire, of Mount Airy;" a letter from Tayloe certifying the pedigree of Dunganon and that he sold him "out of training for 500 Guineas;" and a long ad about Ranger noted that he had beaten Ridgely's Medley who "ran a dead heat with Major Tayloe's Leviathan, who is thought the best horse in Virginia."(22)
Only
an anonymous letter "from the City of
Washington" published in a New England newspaper celebrated Thornton and his Capitol. It also recommended the
unfinished Grand Hotel as a perfect headquarters for the
Bank of the United States, which gave away Blodget as the author. Of course, that Thornton showed visitors to his parlor his drawing of the East Elevation of Capitol, while not publicized, was not unknown. Lamentably for Thornton, it was not a must see. When he visited the city in June 1800, President Adams promised to drop in and see it, but at the appointed hour, his chariot and four roared by the F Street house without stopping. There is no evidence that Thornton showed or offered to show Adams anything in North Wing.(23)
In 1914, Bryan claimed that in Mrs. Thornton's diary, there "are references to her husband being engaged in preparing detailed plans of the work to be done at the capitol...." She did refer to his drawing an oval on the Capitol floor on January 4. The same week he drew the design for Lot 17, she described his working on his Capitol elevation, and that she helped him. As for details, on February 15, 1800, Mrs. Thornton wrote that Hoban called on her husband after dinner to "consult about the Capitals of the pillars...."
In a footnote to the Papers of William Thornton, Harris highlights the commissioners' proceedings that make clear that Thornton was directing Hoban. On February 10, "Letters received from John Kearney, making application for a drawing at large of the capital of the columns, for the Senate room; which the Board direct James Hoban to furnish him with, in conformity to the drawing given to John Kearney by Wm. Thornton - in the ancient Ionic stile, but with volutes like the modern Ionic.'" He had described such a capital in his April 17 letter to the commissioners. He also wrote the proceedings that described them again. Harris offers this as proof that, as claimed in various letters, he did indeed inform working drawings for the Capitol.(24)
On the other hand, it behooved Thornton to assure anyone who asked that the the design for the Capitol was set down to every detailed. In his own mind, he had undone the wilful errors. He didn't want another committee to change what he had done. In late April 1800, Vice
President Jefferson wrote to Thornton sharing ideas about the Senate
chamber, especially the position of the seat for the presiding officer,
i.e. the vice president.
One would think Thornton would jump at the opportunity to go back and forth with the man he hoped would be the next president. But with an eye to his legacy, rather than making the building more convenient for those obliged to use it, he jumped at the opportunity to confirm the supremacy of his plans: "I am much obliged by your kindness in suggesting several important considerations respecting the Arrangements in the Capitol & I have the satisfaction of informing you that they are so nearly consonant to my Plans that what I had directed will I flatter myself meet with your approbation...." Then Thornton wrote at length about the treatment and prevention of yellow fever, and, by the way his prescriptions were somewhat dated. Philadelphia had been cleaning residents' necessaries for almost two years.
Jefferson
asked one direct question: "Are the rooms for the two houses so far
advanced as that their interior arrangements are fixed & begun?"
Thornton didn't directly answer other than saying "that what I had
directed will I flatter myself meet with your approbation." A month
after sending his letter to Jefferson, Thornton met
with Thomas Claxton, who, Mrs. Thornton wrote, "is empowered to procure
the necessary furniture for the Capitol." She added: "they sent for Mr.
Hoban and were consulting respecting the seat for the President of the
Senate."(25)
Claxton was the doorkeeper of the House of Representatives which sent him to the federal city. Did Thornton and Claxton send for Hoban to receive Thornton's orders or Claxton's, or perhaps Hoban, to whom Thornton had passed on the responsibility of making drawings to make expedient arrangements to get the Senate chamber ready, would explain to both where the seat had to be. What is clear is that Thornton did not carry on a consultation about the chair with the first man who would sit in it. It is not clear if Thornton ever made a plan showing the internal arrangements of the Senate chamber.
In the summer of 1800 when federal bureaucrats began moving to the city, Thornton did not preen himself as architect of the Capitol. Thornton was out to better himself. As he met his fellow office holders in the government, Thornton grew envious. Not a few made more money than he did, still only $1,600. Cabinet officers made $5,000, other titled officers, especially in the Treasury department made $3,000. Thornton also had building lots to sell and seemed to broach that subject by looking at the big picture. Thornton's hustle puzzled newcomers. Treasury secretary Wolcott wrote to his wife that Thornton assured him that the city would have "a population of 160,000, as a matter of course, in a few years." Then Wolcott added "No stranger can be here a day, and converse with the proprietors, without conceiving himself in the company of crazy people. Their ignorance of the rest of the world, and their delusion with respect to their own prospects, are without parallel."(26)
Adding piquancy to his cupidity was his growing realization that he would not get money from Tortola that year. A check he wrote on the assumption that he had credit in England bounced. He had to pay a steep penalty. Law helped him out with a loan. Part of Thornton's charm that eased his entry in the milieus that attracted him was a reputation for having a personal fortune. In the summer of 1800, the federal city had no venues for lavish display. With a smart carriage pulled by handsome horses and a charming, well mannered hostess to oversee his dinners and soirees, Thornton proved his worth. No one suspected that Thornton just lost credit in pounds sterling equal to the salary of a treasury officer. Through his entertaining and equipage, Thornton met the current Treasurer of the United States who made $3,000 for now and then signing warrants authorizing spending government money. Thornton tried to prove that he belonged in that office. In his youth, he signaled that he deserved wealth by loaning his money to worthy men and causes. When he could no longer afford to do that, he let his establishment plead his case. His house virtually open to all, his scientifically managed farm and his stable with, for the moment, two imported horses would be exemplary to all coming to live in the New Jerusalem. Not that that he was a charity. On February 14, Mrs. Thornton noted money made by Clifden. The day before she noted that her husband bought Daniel and his wife for $500.(27)
Then came a setback, on
June 18, after hosting a dinner for three of
the four
cabinet officers, Mrs. Thornton noted that Driver returned "in bad plight." She
only made cursory references to horses after that. She mentioned
"Tayloe's house" again, but a three story brick house at an important and otherwise empty intersection could not help but be a landmark. She didn't mention
Tayloe. Did he avoid coming
to the city while his house was being built? Or, did he avoid Thornton
when he did come?
Her being upset at Driver's plight might have cheated historians of her reporting on what her husband did for Tayloe. In late November, she noted her husband's interest in chimney pieces for Tayloe's house that came from London. He told her that she had to see them. Harris assumes they were Thornton's idea. Harris also credits him for two "decorative" iron stoves imported from Edinburgh, and a roof with a parapet just as Thornton wanted on the General's houses. Harris argues that Thornton must have been involved since he had been in London and Edinburgh. Of course, Tayloe was educated in England and no stranger to the stoves of his rich friends. Lovering had worked in London.(28)
 |
| Chimney piece in 1896 |
Of course, the doctor did much that was not noticed by his wife in her diary. She can be trusted for knowing what Thornton did in their parlor. Beginning in October, he worked again on the Capitol elevation and had her working on it in December while he was away, likely lobbying congress. In December 1800, the city's new newspaper, the National Intelligencer, printed the letter about the General's tomb that Thornton wrote to Blodget in February. Thomas Law also lobbied for the tomb; Thornton provided an estimate of its cost; but while authorizing a tomb in the building, congress did not authorize a building to surround it.(29)
Judging from Mrs. Thornton's diary, her husband's first try at influencing congress never happened. She only noted when he went to the Capitol. She also didn't comment on her husband's seeing that his interest in stucco ornaments extended beyond the Senate chamber.
Stoddert had asked him to improve the outside of the President' house. During the summer, he met a better ornament maker from Baltimore named Andrews. Thornton confessed to Stoddert that he couldn't muster enough hired slaves to beautify the grounds of the President's house. Instead he worked with Andrews to put composition ornaments on the interior walls of the house. Thornton came up with the designs. Then on November 1, the same day President Adams arrived to occupy his house, the commissioners received a note directing that all the ornament depicting men or beasts be removed and replaced with ornamental urns. In December, when the election results were all but final, Thornton tried to introduce Andrews and "samples of his composition ornaments" to Jefferson.(30)
Mrs. Thornton had a knack of seeming underwhelmed by
her husband's attainments. On August 4, 1800, while they were at Mount
Vernon, she noted that "Dr. T. and Mr. Lewis played at backgammon till
tea. After breakfast - Mrs. Lewis, the young Ladies and I went in Mrs.
Washington's carriage ( a coachee and four) and Mr. Lewis and Dr. T. in
ours, to see Mr. Lewis's hill where he is going to build his farm, mill
and distillery. Dr. T. has given him a plan for his house. He has a fine
situation, all in woods, from which he will have an extensive and
beautiful view."
She recorded an image of everything but not her husband's plan. As many husbands know, no matter how creative they may be, wives can be like that. Then again, Lewis did not give the impression of being a dynamic man. It took three years to have the two wings of the house built and the builder balked at building the main house because it was sited too close to the precipice of a hill. Around 1804, it was built and Thornton appreciated how columns for the entrance were made of bricks plastered over to imitate freestone. He described them in an 1817 letter to Jefferson. In that letter, by the way, he didn't allow that he had designed Lewis's house. Lacking oval rooms, C. M. Harris has no interest in it: "the house as it appears today has no resemblance to Thornton's other designs."(31)
If Mrs. Thornton kept a diary in 1801 and 1802, they were lost or destroyed. From 1803 to 1815, she did keep notebooks with daily entries about kitchen expenses, visitors, visits, and her husband's whereabouts but not his attainments. Her diary ended just after Commissioner Scott died on Christmas Day. That made Thornton the senior member of the board. When her notebooks began her husband ran the Patent Office, a fact that she scarcely mentioned in her notebooks until 1808.
However, brief as her comments might have been, they would be welcome commentary on those missing years in which the Octagon was finished and Thornton lost any official control of the Capitol's construction. Thanks to the House members' distress at how they were situated upstairs in the North Wing, 1801 seemed destined to mark the apotheosis of Thornton as an architect. Before adjourning after Jefferson's Inauguration on March 4, 1801, the House authorized a chamber of its own as soon as possible. The commissioners ordered a temporary meeting place built by December on the site of the South Wing. The board decided that while the chamber to be built before the congress returned would be temporary, its foundation and walls would be incorporated into the permanent South Wing. That meant the temporary House chamber had be elliptical. Indeed, in the board's letters it was referred to as the "elliptical room."
Meanwhile, John Tayloe lost his bid for election to congress but still pressed to have his house finished when congress convened in December. That meant that his oval rooms that provided such an intriguing front when viewed from the street would invite comment from those who would actually be inside them. Not a few of them would be men and women who participated and observed the proceedings in the temporary House chamber. That Thornton did not actually design the Octagon did not diminish importance of that coincidence to the ideas of Thornton. He had designed his own house to rival Thornton's with grander oval rooms.
However, Thornton did not sense nor seize the moment. If Thornton had indeed made the drawings that he claimed he had provided for the North Wing, he need only draw the elliptical walls of the basement floor of the South Wing where in his plan he envisioned a colonnaded elliptical chamber on the first floor supported by arcades. Instead, once again Thornton didn't mind Hoban making the design, with the caveat that he follow Thornton's plan and make a building elliptical in shape on the foundation already laid. Hoban drew a plan and estimated that the temporary chamber would cost $5,000 but only $1,000 of it would have to be torn down when the South Wing was built.
President Jefferson agreed with that approach with a caveat offered by Hoban. He wrote to the commissioners: "mr Hobens observes there will be considerable inconveniencies in carrying up the elliptical wall now without the square one, & the square one in future without the elliptical wall, and that these difficulties increase as the walls get higher." For that reason, the president only approved one story for the moment. The board hired Lovering as the contractor. He had designed and supervised construction of oval rooms in Law's and Tayloe's houses.(32)
If the chamber that Thornton would call the "elliptical room" was informed by his design, why did he shrink from putting an indelible stamp on the building that the president and congress would notice? A likely answer is that Thornton thought he commanded enough credit for the building because of the design he had already made. However, he also shrank from even noting the similarity between the elliptical room and the Octagon's rooms in a bragging letter principally about house design.
Thornton arranged for James Madison to rent the just built house next door to his. He shared that news with typical flourish. In an August 15 letter, he told Madison that by agreement, the builder would pay $1,000 if the house wasn't ready on October 1. He added that: "I have directed the third Story to be divided into four Rooms, two very good Bed-chambers, & the other two smaller Bed chambers. The Cellar I have directed to be divided, that one may serve for wine &c, the other for Coals &c—and for security against Fire a Cupola on the roof, which will add to the convenience of the House in other respects. There will be two Dormer Windows in front, & two behind." In a letter to Thornton, Madison had mentioned the need for a good stable and good plastering. Thornton responded by telling Madison "I shall urge the Plaistering as soon as possible, and every thing shall be done to give you satisfaction."
On the basis of that letter, C. M. Harris claims that Thornton "supervised the construction" of Madison's rental. But did he really tell the experienced builder how to arrange the house's interior? It seems Thornton exaggerated his role in finishing the house. Madison signed a rental agreement with the builder in June 1802 on condition that he build a brick stable and "what remains to be done to the dwelling house shall also be finished." Seeing that all the work is done before occupancy is the superintending architect's principal job. In his letter to Thornton, Madison made having a good stable his highest priority.
In his August letter to Madison, Thornton joked about what he was doing as a commissioner: "like Cadmus of old, after I have presumed to invent Letters for the Americans, I was sent hither to build their great City!
There’s a Stroke of Vanity—
It lives in all my Doings!———
To descend, I who lately was nothing less than a Commissioner or Edile, am now reduced to a High-way Man. You will remember we are engaged in making Highways. The City improves rapidly.
An edile was the equivalent to a city commissioner in Roman times. Cadmus was a hero in Greek mythology. Thornton said nothing about the "elliptical room" then being built under the supervision of the ediles. Nor did he say anything about the houses being built in the city. If he had indeed been Tayloe's friend, he would have likely known that due to their mutual interest in Virginia thoroughbreds, Madison was also Tayloe's friend.(33)
That said, Thornton was not cultivating Madison in order to put a shine on his talents as an architect or city planner. In a September 8 letter he informed Madison that the Treasurer of the United States announced his retirement. Thornton asked his old friend to help him get the job. When congressmen returned to the city in the fall of 1801, President Jefferson appointed a Virginia M. D. who was also a Revolutionary War veteran.
Thornton shifted his focus, and in a way that should have prompted him to brag on talent for architecture. In April, toward the end of its session, congress finally got around to doing what every critic of the board thought it would have done once it convened in the city, it abolished the board as of June 1, 1802. Its duties would be assumed by the new Superintendent of the City, to be appointed by the president. With Scott dead, his replacement a Federalist, and White anxious for a judgeship, Thornton had to expect that he would be asked to become the superintendent, certainly his wife did.
Jefferson faced several problems in regards to surveying and selling building lots that he hoped to solve in a way that would finance completion of the Capitol. On April 17, Thornton sent a long letter to the president addressing the problem of a Water Street running along the entire waterfront of the city. Commissioner White had already opined to the president that Thornton's ideas would "carry a Water Street 80 feet wide through the whole extent of the
Potowmac and Eastern Branch, one hundred feet distant from the Channel,
leaving all the space between that and the shore which in some instances
I am inclined to believe is not less than one thousand feet, under
water until it shall be filled up. I do not see the propriety of this,..." Before he got Thornton's letter, the president drafted a resolution to only require Water Street to be adjacent to the high water mark. Thus, Thornton's grand ideas, for which he pointed to the Bordeaux waterfront as a good example, may have wearied the president. After he got the letter, he invited Dr. and Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Brodeau to one of his famous dinners, but he did not reply to his letter.
The president made Thomas
Munroe, the board's clerk, the new Superintendent on June 1. Mrs.
Thornton asked
him why he didn't appoint her husband. The president assured her that
the job was temporary. Munroe held the job until 1815.(34)
Thornton likely took that setback in stride since more momentous affairs were afoot. In December 1801, John Tayloe announced in a newspaper ad that "on or about" January 10, 1802, he would become a resident of the City of Washington. That meant his house was effectively finished, but that was not the point of the ad. In it, he announced that he invited a match race with anyone and "can be accommodate, for his own sum, not less than $1500." William O. Sprigg responded and a match race for $3000 was scheduled for May 13. Sprigg's horse had beaten Tayloe's in the city's first open purse races in November. A reprise of the 1797 match race that had a stake of 500 Guineas had to excite the city. Tayloe not only craved publicity for himself. He was in the process of establishing the Washington Jockey Club. He led the way, and Sprigg was one of the first to join.(35)
In the 20th century, Thornton would be celebrated as one of the founders of the Washington Jockey Club. Given the 20th century view of Thornton, the coincidence of the club's formation and the Octagon's completion must have pleased Thornton. It would have been a good time to celebrate Tayloe. Instead, Thornton publicly attacked him. Beginning in early April and continuing through June, a long newspaper announcement offered Driver as stud and suggested that Tayloe ruined a horse that would surely have been one of greatest:
Driver
was never tried but once, by John Tayloe, esq., at Tappanoe in Virginia
when the bets were in favor of the winner (Yaricot) distancing the
field; but Driver lost one heat by only a few feet, and the other heat
by only four inches, in three mile heats, distancing the other horses;
which as Driver, like his celebrated sire, is a four mile horse, was
thought a great race, especially as he was much out of order in
consequence of a bad cough. Col. Holmes [probably Hoomes] told me he was
thought by those who saw him run, one of the best bottomed horses in
America, or perhaps in the world. Driver was put into training the last
autumn, but met with an accident that prevented his starting; however,
he proved one of the fleetest horses Mr. Duvall ever trained, and of
ever lasting bottom.
By "bottom" was meant staying power and stamina. While the ad didn't blame Tayloe for sending Driver home in "bad plight," later in the ad, Thornton quoted Charles Duvall as saying: "if I had trained him at four years old, I think he would have made the best horse on the continent...."
The rest of the ad also put Tayloe in his place. It celebrated Thornton's English connection when everyone knew that Tayloe's connections were unparalleled. Driver was got by "Lord Edgmont's famous running horse Driver" after he was sold to the Earl of Egremont. Thornton's relation, "Isaac Pickering, esq., of Foxlease, Hampshire, England,... sent the dam of Driver... to the Earl of Egremont's by one of his own grooms." Cousin Pickering owned six plantations on Tortola and so was someone the earl would not slight, but Tayloe knew the earl well. He would soon buy a farm outside the City of Washington and name it Petworth after the earl's seat in England. Thanks to Driver's pedigree, Thornton could drop the names of two lords and a duke. No reader would mistake mere name dropping as indicating a personal acquaintance, but the ad gave the impression that only the Atlantic Ocean kept Thornton and the earl from being best of friends.(36)
Apart from proving that Thornton didn't design Tayloe's house, Thornton's attack showed how far his vanity compelled him to go in order to persuade others to believe his version of events. That in turn shows why his claims about the Capitol must be challenged. He made rivals out of men who would welcome his friendship and cooperation. If they were architects, Thornton would not brook their insolent criticism. Tayloe was new to the city and disposed to make friends with all rivals. For years, he had offered to improve blood lines in America and train and race horses ultimately for every sportsman's benefit. Thornton's complaint undermined all that but rather than challenge Thornton's version, Tayloe made a peace offering. On March 7, 1803, Mrs. Thornton noted that their slave "Joe returned in the evening with a horse called Wild Medley." Then an ad offering the services of Wild Medley ran in the Washington Federalist, but it was not written by Thornton. It noted that the horse was bought in Virginia by "W. Thornton." The ad included a testimony signed by John Tayloe certifying the wonders of a filly got by Wild Medley that handily beat Tayloe's horse. Another worthy attested that Tayloe bought two foals got by Wild Medley for $1200. Another lamented that its greatest horse had left Gloucester County. Nestled along the Virginia shore at the wide mouth of the Potomac River, it is certain that Thornton did not ride down there; he likely was not acquainted with any gentlemen there. Tayloe probably bought the horse, had it sent to Dumfries where Joe Key had dropped off Driver in 1800, and then Key brought Wild Medley to his new pasture for his pleasure and Thornton's profit in the City of Washington. Thornton owned Wild Medley until the thoroughbred died in 1810.(37)
It's not certain how much money Thornton made off Wild Medley but Tayloe's generosity was a win-win. The Jockey Club got a scientific gentleman who would inspect the track in the morning before a race as well as verify the accuracy time keepers. In time, Thornton would race capable horses. As for Thornton's return, by remaining Tayloe's friend until both died in 1828, the twentieth century would assume that Thornton had to have designed Tayloe's house.
Actually, over time, there were features of that friendship that add to the evidence that he didn't. In 1810, when the Octagon's roof's failure forced Tayloe to make
changes, he hired Hadfield. In 1816, when he decided to build a row of
town houses on Pennsylvania Avenue, he hired Hadfield.(38)
Meanwhile, on the turf, Thornton could not realistically challenge Tayloe. He was bred to be a breeder and had inherited the most impressive stable on the continent. Thornton hardly had enough money to participate at all. He never became an officer or steward in the Jockey Club. In 1806, money troubles prompted him to offer Driver, Clifden and Wild Medley for sale. He sent his horses away to be trained and prepared for races.(39)
However, that didn't prevent Thornton from playing the part of a consummate horseman. No one characterized his riding ability. His wife noted a few falls, but he had horses to spare. When it seemed that war was inevitable and militias formed, a troop of amateur dragoons elected Thornton their captain. The powers that be made Tayloe a colonel with command of all the Washington horse militia.
A few years before that, Tayloe began spending more time in the city and offered, without salary, to become Madison's military attache. Tayloe was not as close to the president as Thornton who more times than not would skip the Quaker meeting on Sunday and drop in on the president instead. However, in the president's mind his two friends seemed a paragons of mutual respect. In 1811, when her husband languished with a weeks long fever, Mrs. Thornton noted the First Family's visit to say goodbye before they repaired to Montpelier. She also noted Tayloe's visits and the palliatives he offered. When Thornton got better and Madison returned, he invited Tayloe and Thornton to join him for dinner.
Then once Madison signed the Declaration of War, Captain Thornton began plotting a course so that he too could become a colonel. He asked Tayloe to persuade the president to become the "Commander in Chief of this District, in the same manner as the Governors of States." If he did, he would have to appoint aides to carry out his orders. In states, two aides came from the militia. It was not unknown for such aides to be given the rank of colonel.
Evidently,
Thornton had already broached the subject with the president because in
his June 8, 1813, letter to Tayloe, he explained that "The President …
is actuated by extreme modesty & unobtrusive Delicacy in declining
to make, hitherto, such appointments, because his Predecessors have not
furnished an Example: but his Predecessors have never been engaged in
actual war, since the Assumption of the District of Columa: &
consequently were never in the same predicament.”
Thornton
belittled the president's reasoning: "...Reason may require her votaries
to walk in a line untrodden."
Sensing the weakness of his more or less philosophical argument, Thornton counted on a personal slight that he suffered to prompt his friends to raise his rank. Captain Thornton had been shocked when the selection of a major was made by having two longer serving captains draw lots. Thus, "...if the president should consider the manner in which I have been treated, from a gentleman of his feeling, my case would claim from him some attention, and I know not of any way now to repair that breach of correct military conduct toward me except by such an appointment...."
What Tayloe or the president thought of Thornton's letter is not known. It wound up in Madison's papers so evidently Tayloe gave it to him. If she saw it, Mrs. Madison might not have been been pleased. As a last thought on the matter. Thornton opined that “Mrs. Madison would perhaps wish her Son to be the other [aide]; which would not only give him rank, but exempt him from common militia duty.”(25) Her 23 year old son went to Europe with peace negotiators.(40)
None of that has anything to do with the Octagon, but how Thornton got a measure of revenge did. By 1814, the Patent Office was in a wing of Blodget's Hotel. It had a room with inventions creating a museum to rival the city's other must-see, the gallery of portraits of Indian chiefs in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. With the British army about to invade, clerks had removed papers from the Patent Office, but no one had removed the models of inventions. After doing duty scouting the British movements in the lower Potomac, Thornton missed the decisive Battle of Bladensburg and as a civilian watched the city burn from the heights of Georgetown. The next morning, learning that the enemy was still burning government buildings, he went to the city and with memorable words persuaded British officers not to burn the Patent Office: the building "contained hundreds of models of the arts, and that it would be impossible to remove them, and to burn what would be useful to all mankind, would be as barbarous as formerly to burn the Alexandrian Library, for which the Turks have been ever since condemned by all enlightened nations." (An August 30 article in a Georgetown newspaper characterized the speech differently: "...the cause of general science would suffer by its conflagration.")
Mrs. Thornton resumed jotting down visits in her notebook, did mention going to Mrs. Madison's "drawing room," but didn't note where it was. Thornton seemed to have enjoyed the remainder of the war vicariously, but not with an intrepid American dragoon in mind. In June 1815, Dr. Thornton wrote to Col. Thornton who had recovered in time to fight in the Battle of New Orleans. Thornton gushed over the colonel's gallantry and discussed European politics. He closed with the happy report that the buildings the British burned would be rebuilt, and that efforts to move the nation's capital elsewhere failed. He took credit for that. Because of him, the British spared the Patent Office which temporarily accommodated the Congress. "Thus it was observed one William Thornton took the city, and another preserved it by that single act."(41)
As her husband's second term ended in March 1817, Dolley Madison made farewell visits to all her friends in the city, but not to Mrs. Thornton. She was devastated. Thornton noted the slight in a letter to Madison and added, "I have long had to lament a marked distance and coldness towards me, for which I cannot account.... It would have been kind to have mentioned any Cause of dissatisfaction rather than wound us by exhibiting to the world our misfortune in the loss of your friendship & Esteem." Thornton's fell from grace in the eyes of a woman famous for bringing people together even though he is now supposed to have designed the venue she used during the nation's trying time.(42)
Footnotes for Chapter 12
1. Mrs. Thornton’s Diary p. 92; Harris p. 585.
2. Commrs to Adams, 21 November 1799, Commrs. records; White to Adams 13 December 1799 (the editors of the on-line papers transcribed "Taylor" but the letter clearly reads "Tayloe;") Stoddert to Commrs., 3 January 1800, Commrs to Adams, 7 January 1800, Commrs. records; White to Adams, 15 January 1800; Washington Federalist, 28 February 1807 p. 3.
3. Mrs. Thornton's diary
4. Harris ; Scott, Creating Capitol Hill
5. Diary
6. WT to Marshall 6 January 1800; WT to Blodget 23 February 1800
7. Stoddert to WT 20 January 1800; reply 30 January 1800, Harris p. 532-3.
8. Diary
9. Ridout
10. National Intelligencer, ad dated 1 May 1800; Ridout
11. 29. Mrs. Thornton’s Diary, p. 102; Bryan, History of National Capital, vol. 1, p. 346; WT to Madison, 2 September 1823.
12. Diary
13. Diary
14. Natl. Intelligencer
15.
16.
17. Diary lovering
18. John Tayloe letterbook, quoted in Kamoie dissertation p. 200 footnote; Callcott, Margaret, editor, ...Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, p.29.
19. Natl. Intelligencer 8 May 1801;
Alexandria Daily Advertiser, vol. 4, no. 1060, page 4, 11 August 1804 ; American Commer. Adv. 17 June 1809; Poulson's Amer. Daily 23 September1809; Diary p. 181; Baltimore City Directory. 1810, p. 117; AMT notebook vol. 3 image 124
20. Diary ; Ridout
21.
22.
23. Diary
24. Bryan
25. Jefferson to WT 30 April 1800; reply 7 May 1800; Harris ; Diary
26. Wolcott
27. diary p. 106; on timing of Tortola payments see Mrs. Thornton's diary 17 February p. 108, 14 April p. 129; Baltimore Advertiser 13 April 1799.
28. Harris p. 585; Diary p. 215.
29. Diary p. 223;
30. Diary andrews
31. DD, Diary pp. 176-7; Harris pp. 582, 591; WT to Jefferson 27 May 1817
32. Jefferson to Commrs.
33. WT to Madison 15 August 1801
34. WT to Jefferson 17 April 1802; Jefferson enclosure 14 April 1802; White to Jefferson 13 April 1802
35. Tayloe ad ; Sprigg ad
36. Driver ad
37. AMT notebook Vol. 1 image 133
38.
39.
40.
41. National Intelligencer 7 September 1814; on-line copy of Thornton's letter to the newspaper at http://www.myoutbox.net/poni1814.htm; Journal of Columbia Historical Society, 1916, "Mrs. Thorntos Diary Capture of Washington" pp. 177, 181; Monroe to Hay, 7 September 1814 ; National Intelligencer, September 8, 1814, on-line copy at Dobyns http://www.myoutbox.net/poni1814.htm; Op. cit. September 10, 1814 on-line copy at Dobyns http://www.myoutbox.net/poblake.htm ; AMT papers, Box 4 reel 1 Image 7; WT to Col. WT, 24 June 1815, Gilder Lehrman Institute, (no longer available without registered log-in)
42 WT to Madison 3 March 1817
1. Adams to GW 22 June 1798; GW to McHenry 22 July 1798; GW to Tayloe 21 July 1798, GW to Tayloe, 23 January 1799, for GW's interest in asses see 23 January 1799 to Robert Lewis.; Tayloe to GW, 10 February 1799, and footnotes; GW to Tayloe 12 February 1799.
2. GW's diary 7 February 1799; Lovering to Nicholson 9 March 1799, Nicholson Papers; In his contract with Blagden, the General required $4,000 security which the contractor established thanks to Hoban backing him, see footnotes to GW to commrs., 27 October 1798.
4. Tayloe to GW 10 February 1799, & 26 March 1799.
5. Ridout, p. 61.
6. Jefferson to White, 2 July 1802; White to Jefferson, 13 July 1802; Commrs. Proceedings, 2 and 15 January 1799.
7. Proceedings, 2 and 4 April 1799;
8. Proceedings 18 March 1799; Hoban to Commrs. 12 March 1799; Middleton to Commrs 22 March 1799.
9. Centinel of Liberty 16 April 1799 p. 1
10. Hoban to Commrs. 15 April 1799; C. M. Harris tries to make the case that Thornton did make drawings. But he quotes from the commissioners' proceedings several months after Hoban called his bluff. The board directed Hoban to "furnish him, in conformity to drawing given to John Kearney by Wm. Thornton - in the ancient Ionic stile, but with volutes like the modern ionic." That hardly proves that anyone previously relied on Thornton for drawings. That passage in the proceedings was written by Thornton himself, Harris pp. 488-90.
11. Jefferson to White, 2 July 1802; White to Jefferson, 13 July 1802
12.WT to Commrs. 17 April 1799; Chambers, Treatise, vol. II, pp. 368. 408, 425;
13. Bryan, pp. 316-6; Commrs to Hoban, 18 April 1799, Commrs. records.
14. WT to GW, 19 April 1799; April 27, 1799 entry in notebook or Almanac in Thornton's papers in Library of Congress, reel 7; for problems the board's surveyors faced see Robert King, Sr., to Jefferson 5 June 1802; Tayloe to GW 29 April 1799; on horse purchase see Pickering letter in "Clifden" ad in Maryland Advertiser 10 April 1800, also
15. Lovering to Nicholson, December 4, 1798, Nicholson papers; on Dorsey see Ridout p. 71, and Papenfuse, Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature , vol. 426, p. 279
16. Lovering to Nicholson, 27 December 1798 and 4 January 1799.
17. Lovering to Nicholson, 22 January 1799.
18. Lovering to Nicholson 26 March, 10 & 17 April 1799. For another view of Lovering’s debt problems see Tunnicliff to Nicholson, 9 April 1799.
19. Lovering to Nicholson 22 April 1799.
20. Sarson, Steven, The Tobacco-Plantation South in the Early American Atlantic World, pp. 11-2.
21. Law to GW, 25 April 1799, Law's April letter to Washington was undated, but marked received April 5. However, the modern editors of Washington's papers cite internal evidence for dating the letter as sent on April 25; Commrs to Lovering 9 May 1799 Commrs. records.
22. Harris, p. 585.
23. WT to GW 1 September 1799; 30 November 1788, GW to Henry Lee, GW to William Fitzhugh 5 August 1798
24. Lear to WT, 12 September 1799, Harris, pp. 508-9.
25.
28. Ridout, Building the Octagon, pp. 29-30, 61.
DD Intellencer 1 February 1802
31. Alexandria Advertiser 1804; National Intelligencer 1801.
34. Diary, pp. 116-7; Cohen pp. 117-8, already cited in Chapter Ten.
EE, Madison account with WT 5 December 1809
35. lots Mrs. Thornton's notebooks vol 3 Image 38, 75, 141 (for sale of another slave); National Intelligencer. ad dated 16 May 1808;
36. National Intelligencer 5 April 1802 p. 3.
37. Washington Federalist, 29 April 1803 p. 4; Mrs. Thornton's n notebook 1807 vol. 3, image 2
38. Thornton v. Wynn 25 US 183; Thornton v. The Bank of Washington; Rattler Broadside, downloaded but unsourced.
39. On Tayloe's health see JQA diary 8 November 1821; Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton", p. 182; in AMT papers, Mrs. Thornton noted WT's activities during racing weeks which usually occurred in the fall; on Tayloe's importance to banks see JQA diary 17 February 1819; on Thornton's debts see Chapter 13 footnote 22; on militia rank see Thornton to Tayloe, 8 June 1813 Madison Papers LOC; on Hadfield see Julia King, George Hadfield: Architect of the Federal City.
Comments
Post a Comment