Chapter Thirteen: On the heights of Mount Chimborazo
The Doctor Examined, or Why William Thornton Did Not Design the Octagon House or the Capitol
by Bob Arnebeck
Table of ContentsChapter Thirteen: On the heights of Mount Chimborazo
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| Capitol in 1800 |
In late April 1800, Thornton got a pleasant surprise. Vice President Jefferson wrote sharing ideas about the Senate chamber, especially the position of the seat for the presiding officer, i.e. the vice president. He wanted the presiding officer's chair to be placed so people could walk behind it and not be forced to walk between the chair and where senators sat. He also suggested having two balustrades crossed "to form a bar at the door in a kind of pew by itself." He noted that the House of Commons has a Speaker's chamber "which is a great convenience. Even a closet will do as a substitute." Then he discussed where that could be placed to advantage. In closing, he conceded all power in the matter to Thornton: "I pray you to consider these hints as written privately to yourself, and as meant to have no other weight than your own judgment may give them. I have no authority to propose anything, and would not have it understood that I presume to interfere, or that any thing from me should have more weight than if suggested by any other bystander or spectator."
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.—There is however a difference in the Closet which will be on one side of the Room, from necessity." Then Thornton wrote at length about the treatment and prevention of yellow fever, which, by the way were somewhat dated. Philadelphia had been cleaning residents' necessaries for almost two years.(1)
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 his plan was directing the work. 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."(2)
For five years, Claxton had served 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.(AA)(3)
At the same time, he was exhibiting his genius in preparing the President's house. He found a plasterer in Baltimore who could make good stucco ornaments. Thornton suggested the designs. On November 1, the chariot and four with the President Adams and his secretary rattled by Thornton's house on its way to the President's house. Exactly how the president expressed his displeasure is not known. But that day, the board sent a note to the plasterer to "take down figures at the president's house intended to represent man or beast" and replace them with plaster urns. Thinking ahead, Thornton took the decorator under his wing and brought him to his house for a meeting with Jefferson who did not drop in as promised.(4)
Once he moved into the President's house, Jefferson had frequent contact with Thornton. With the death of Commissioner Scott on Christmas Day 1800, Thornton became the senior member of the board. Not appointed Treasurer, Mrs. Thornton at least expected her husband to become the new superintendent in charge of the public buildings. Legislation abolishing the board on June 1, 1802, established that new office. Thornton had other ideas for making money. Not only did he offer Driver for stud service, he had already set up a local insurance company with Blodget's help. The discovery of gold in North Carolina did not escape his notice. In the meanwhile, the principal complaint about the North Wing was the treatment of the House. To better accommodate its 106 members, the commissioners ordered a temporary meeting place built on the site of the South Wing. Once again the board needed the services of an architect and once again Thornton didn't mind Hoban making the design, with the caveats that it be elliptical in shape, use the foundation already laid and, as much as possible, its brick walls should become part of the permanent South Wing to be built in the future. 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 the one story building.(5) Of course, Hoban was warning that Thornton's stricture that the elliptical chamber must stand alone on the elliptical foundation wouldn't work. The president hoped that Thornton was right. Hoban hired Lovering as the contractor. He had overseen construction of his ovals in Law's and Tayloe's houses.
The Seventh Congress convened on December 7, 1801, in what Thornton called "the elliptical room" and members soon called the "oven," either because it was stuffy or it resembled a Dutch oven. While it is now treated as an amusing sidelight, the elliptical room was a second step, after laying the foundation in 1795, in the fulfillment of Thornton's plan for the South Wing. The triumph of his design wasn't clear to everyone else. The temporary chamber was only 90 by 72 feet and one story, but the president seemed to understand the incipient grandeur. Thornton must have fancied that once congress abolished the cumbersome board, he would be the one man left who could carry on its work. In April, Thornton sent his extensive ideas for the city's water front and wharves to the president. Just as General eventually did, he might respond to such visionary ideas that the budget conscious president need not implement for several years. On June 2, 1802, Jefferson appointed the board's clerk, Thomas Munroe, as the Superintendent. Mrs. Thornton complained. The president said the job was temporary. Munroe served until 1815.(6)
Thornton lost his power over the Capitol in the nicest way. Madison appointed him to be the one State Department clerk who would process patent applications. All he had to do was pass on the $30 application fee to the Treasury, fill out a patent form for the signatures of the Secretary of State and President, file away a description of the invention, and if possible, retain a model. The applicant's oath that the invention was novel and useful and that the applicant had been an American citizen for a least two years was sufficient. Federal courts adjudicated disputes over infringement, not the clerk. The salary was very high for a clerk but not for a federal officer, only $1400, but the president also appointed him a commissioner of bankruptcy for the District of Columbia and calculated that Thornton would make $600 a year in fees. All that was worked out when Thornton and his ladies joined the president at Monticello.(7)
There is no evidence that they discussed the Capitol as they rusticated together, but since he clearly had the president's trust, Thornton must have assumed that he still had a say when building resumed. At some time, Thornton gave the president a copy of his floor plan.Then just before congress returned for its second session in the city, the president, who got his exercise by riding around town on horseback, became alarmed. He wrote to Claxton: "Observing that the roof of the Representatives chambers has sunk in the middle, that the walls are cracked in several places and pressing out from the perpendicular, I think it necessary that the cause should be examined into by good & experienced persons...." He asked for a report from experts and mentioned Hadfield, Blagden, and Leonard Harbaugh. The bar for experts was not high. Harbaugh's Treasury building had burned down. The next day, the experts blamed the roof "which presses the walls outward," and recommended buttressing the walls. No one in the city had yet built an oval roof. In his 1803 report on the condition of Capitol, written before his feud with Thornton began, Latrobe noted that the temporary building seemed to be "intended for the permanent basement of the elliptical colonnade" Latrobe found that foundation poorly laid and "wholly unfit to carry the weight of the colonnade."(8)
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| Glenn Brown conjectural drawing of Capitol with "the Oven" |
The president had asked Benjamin Latrobe to come to the city to plan and build dry docks for the US Navy. That was a cost-cutting measures. With much of the fleet on land and captains getting half pay money saved could pay down the national debt. Latrobe drew elaborate plans but congress tabled the idea.(9)
In 1803, the president appointed Latrobe "Surveyor of the Public Buildings." The president gave him a Capitol floor plan and so did Thornton. In a memoir written years later, Latrobe recalled his first
reaction to the plans given to him: "They
were copies of each other and both perfectly useless; neither of them
agreed with the work as founded or carried up, and there were no details
whatever. In the superintendent's office no drawings existed." He spent his first year on the job improving the North Wing.
When Latrobe prepared to build the South Wing, the president promised to talk to Thornton about, as Latrobe put it, "objectionable parts of his plan." Latrobe went to Thornton first "to prepare the way for amicable adjustments." Thornton was not amused and told him "that no difficulties existed in his plan, but such as those that were made by those too ignorant to remove them...."
On February 28, 1804, Latrobe sent a report on the state of the Capitol to a House committee and complained that he had no detailed drawings of the design. "The most indisputable evidence was brought before me to prove that no sections or detailed drawings of the building existed excepting those that were made from time to time by Messrs. Hallet and Hadfield for their own use in the direction of the work."(10)
Latrobe trusted that he had the president's support, but then one of the many curiosities of the Capitol design process fully dawned on him. Despite the design given to him not corresponding to what had been built and not accompanied with any detailed plans of what was to be built, Latrobe found that design was officially adopted. Latrobe reminded the president that the legislation authorizing resumption of work on the Capitol mentioned making plans. He naively thought he could do just that. He didn't know about the power of "the ideas of Doctor Thornton." Their enduring commitment to those ideas is what saved Washington and Jefferson from seeming to be complete fools for being taking in by Thornton's contest winning design. Both presidents also had feared that if congress got the impression that the plan for the Capitol was not settled then congress would get involved and make its own plan. In a letter to his assistant John Lenthall, Latrobe vented his spleen: "when once erected the absurdity can never be recalled and the public explanation can only amount to this that one president was blockhead enough to adopt a plan, which another another was fool enough to retain, when he might have altered it."(11)
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| Latrobe by Peale |
Latrobe protested too much. He recognized that what had been built had not fulfilled the supposed plan. It was obvious that the so-called adopted plan could not inform what had not yet been built. Latrobe would continue building without any official recognition of a Latrobe Plan. In his design for the House chamber, Latrobe had the good sense to use some of the president's ideas. Ironically, Latrobe's attack on Thornton and his plan immeasurably raised the status of that plan both to contemporaries and posterity. In 1795, the feud between Hadfield and Hoban defined the deficiencies of the adopted plan with Hoban defending the revision of Thornton's prize winning plan. Latrobe's attack made Thornton seem the author of what had been built as of 1801 and what was intended.(12)
At first, Thornton kept their dispute private, but after socializing with congressmen in the city for four years, Thornton grasped their importance. He looked to them for help. On January 1, 1805, his pamphlet "A letter to Members of the House of Representatives" exaggerated his relationship with the General and exposed Latrobe's duplicity. It provided the evidence used by Glenn Brown, C. M. Harris and others to prove that Thornton restored his design, complete with drawings and sections, at the request of President Washington. Thornton also made much of all that Latrobe had said to him about the design before he was appointed: "....he never saw any plan of a building beside his own that he would deign to build.... I must own that I can not easily conceive why previous to this appointment I should hear nothing but approbation of my plan and after his appointment nothing but condemnation."(13)
His 1805 letter succeeded in increasing congressional sniping at Latrobe's work but the work continued. In the summer of 1806, Thornton wrote a letter to Madison sounding an alarm for the fate of the Capitol dome. He cited an example of what must be done. He claimed that in 1794, President Washington had personally banished Hallet after he tried to change Thornton's design of the Capitol. That described something that had never happened which didn't prevent Thornton from applying that lesson to defeat a threat that didn't exist: "Mr. Latrobe, as if determined to oppose every thing previously intended has carried up a large block of building on the very foundation intended to be taken up, by which the Dome is so encroached on that the part already carried up on the north side will be useless. I am confident the President could never have permitted such a deviation from the original Intention if it had been made known to him. I think it my Duty to mention it now before it be too late to prevent its progress."
Madison sent on Thornton's letter to the president and described it as "disclosing the perturbation excited in his mind, by some of the operations of Mr. la Trobe." Jefferson took Thornton's letter more seriously and replied to Madison: "If Dr. Thornton’s complaint of Latrobe’s having built inconsistently with his plan of the middle part of the capitol be correct, it is without my knolege, & against my instructions. For altho’ I consider that plan as incapable of execution, yet I determined that nothing should be done which would not leave the question of it’s execution free." That is to say, nothing should be done to preclude Thornton and congress from thinking that his plan would be carried out even though both Jefferson and Latrobe knew the plan was "incapable of execution."(14)
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| Latrobe 1806 drawing of his idea for finished Capitol |
At that time, there was a published contradiction of Thornton's 1805 claim that the General told him to and he did restore his design. In 1806, Samuel Blodget published his 226 page opus Economica, the first American tome on economics. Along with pages of valuable statistics, he included a brief discussion of the City of Washington. Blodget was familiar with Thornton's original design. He had studied it at the request of the first board of commissioners and found it wanting. In his book, he lauded and tempered Thornton's Capitol design: "For this truly sublime and beautiful building, Dr. William Thornton received the premium; but as it has undergone some changes, by deviations agreeably to taste... of the several ingenious gentlemen who have superintended the work, we know not how much the architect will disown." Two years later, Thornton would disown everything Latrobe had done and try to destroy his reputation.(15)
In November 1807 when the South Wing near completion, the editor of the National Intelligencer asked Latrobe to describe what he had done. He gave Thornton due credit for his design but hammered the theme that he was not a trained architect: "it must be confessed he has, in his design, exhibited talents which a regular practical education, and a practical knowledge of architecture would have ripened into no common degree of excellence...." In his critiques of what had already been built, Latrobe blamed Thornton for every troublesome design feature. He complimented Hadfield: "His exquisite taste appears in many parts of the North wing, particularly in the introduction of the impost tablature which crowns the basement story and gives an harmonious character to the whole mass which it could not have otherwise possessed." He added that his job building the South Wing would have been easier and the interior even better if he had not been constrained by Thornton's design of the exterior. On its outside the South Wing had to match the North Wing.(16)
Thornton found the condescension and insults intolerable. He attacked Latrobe in the April 27, 1808 Washington Federalist. He claimed Latrobe went against the wishes of General Washington for a selfish reason: "...for that great man was asked by a very respectable gentleman now living, why he did not employ Mr. Latrobe: 'because I can place no confidence in him whatever-' was the answer." Thornton also ridiculed every decoration in the South wing: an eagle looked like an Egyptian ibis, Liberty on an eagle looked like Leda and the swan, country people mistook an eagle on the frieze of an entablature "for the skin of an owl, such as they have seen nailed on their barn doors." He ridiculed the echoes in the House chamber. He dismissed Latrobe as a "carver of chimney pieces in London" who came to America a "missionary of the Moravians." Thornton attacked other buildings Latrobe had designed and his gate at the Navy Yard. He also defended his own standing as an architect:
I travelled in many parts of Europe, and saw several of the masterpieces of the ancients. I have studied the works of the best masters, and my long attention to drawing and painting would enable me to form some judgment of the difference of proportions. An acquaintance with some of the grandest of the ancient structures, a knowledge of the orders of Architecture, and also of the genuine effects of proportion furnish the requisites of the great outlines of composition. The minutiae are attainable by a more attentive study of what is necessary to the execution of such works, and the whole must be subservient to the conveniences required. Architecture embraces many subordinate studies, and it must be admitted is a profession which requires great talents, great taste, great memory. I do not pretend to any thing great, but must take the liberty of reminding Mr. Latrobe, that physicians study a greater variety of sciences than gentlemen of any other profession.... The Louvre in Paris was erected after the architectural designs of a physician, Claude Perrault, whose plan was adopted in preference to the designs of Bernini, though the latter was called from Italy by Louis the 14th.(17)
Recall that Thornton landed on continental Europe at the end of December 1783 at the earliest and returned to Britain by mid-August 1784. Based on a watercolor, biographers also credit him with a trip to the Alps during that 8 month period. Latrobe didn't bother to probe into Thornton's background. Instead, he defended his own background as a Moravian, and described his relations with George Washington. But he couldn't resist smearing Thornton as "a calumniator who is the subject of ridicule, of pity, or of contempt to all who know him..... a man too feeble for personal chastisement, and too ignorant, despicable and vain for argumentative refutation."
Thornton's response came a few days later. He credited Ferdinando Fairfax for Washington's devastating assessment of Latrobe. Then he further smeared Latrobe in a style reminiscent of British farces: "The late Moll Turner who lived between Havre de Grace and Baltimore, a woman so infamous in character, that the Poissardes of Paris would have appeared as vestals in comparison, was never outmatched in blackguardism, except by Mr. Latrobe, and it is suspected that this broke her heart,--" Then he ascended the heights:"if I had been so reprehensible a character as he represents, I should hardly have been appointed to the honorable office I had under General Washington, and have received letter of approbation on his retiring from public life, nor should I have been appointed and continued in other respectable offices by his two successors...." He closed by revealing that he challenged Latrobe to a duel in 1804 but received no answer. Finally, under his name, he put a couplet: "Only five feet eight; limbs straight;/ and about one hundred and sixty weight." Latrobe was six feet two.(18)
If only Thornton had designed the Octagon their feud might have played out with more dignity. In 1804, an economizing senator proposed putting congress in the President's house and the president into a private house. Latrobe opined that, if the bill passed, only one house in the city would do for the president, Tayloe's. He didn't allude to who designed it. If Latrobe had an inkling that Thornton designed the Octagon, their feud might not have started. At any time during the dispute, if Thornton had revealed that he had designed it, the feud might have ended. But he had had nothing to do with that house.(19)
On May 11, Latrobe announced that he was suing Thornton for libel. The suit took five years to play out in court, the better not to make a spectacle damaging to the city's reputation. Meanwhile, Latrobe
finished the South Wing. Then the Madisons used him to refurbish the President's
house. Congress also provided enough money for him to move the Senate
chamber from the basement to the first floor. In 1813, likely in anticipation of an adverse verdict, Thornton put all his city property up for sale. Latrobe won the case but only one cent in damages. Thornton turned the verdict to his advantage by telling everyone that Latrobe sued for $10,000 in damages and only got a penny. Latrobe later recalled that knowing of Thornton's poverty, he told his lawyer not to ask for damages. Indeed, in a May 28, 1808, letter to a friend, Latrobe opined that Thornton "has miserably fallen in public estimation of late, but I think the worst that can be said of him is that he is a Madman from vanity, incorrect impecuniary conduct, and official intrigue from Poverty." Latrobe was casting aspersions on his work at the Patent Office.(20)
Thornton was indeed poorer than he had been when, "with the sacrifice of considerable pecuniary interest... in Philadelphia," he came to Georgetown to be a commissioner. He received nothing from Tortola in 1800, 1807, and 1808. After that, more bad years kept him from getting out of debt. In 1808 and 1820, lawsuits arising from land purchases by his North Carolina Gold Company threatened to put him in jail. His selling his Lancaster property for $20,000, before his last aunt died, made no difference in the long run.(21) In 1828, after he died, Mrs. Thornton found a letter probably written in 1800. It brought back to her all his tribulations:
Oh my god how unfortunate he was - always involved in losses and disappointments, by the failure and dishonesty of others, he became plunged from one difficulty to another - and his mind accustomed to lawsuits, debt and all its dreadful consequences. His heart was good, his feelings good, his principles good, and yet circumstances which in many cases he could not control, (tho' I acknowledge in some he was imprudent and led away by the plausible representations and smooth faced deception of others) made it appear that he was indifferent in his pecuniary transactions to those principles of honor and strict propriety which ought always be adhered to by a man of honesty and correct education But the Almighty judges the heart he sees into its recesses. His some errors of judgment. His life one of disappointment in many ways.(22)
That said, Thornton never sold his city lots or his Maryland farm. Fearful of court judgments forcing sale of his property, in 1802, he assigned his lot next to the General's houses to his mother-in-law who likely provided bail when needed. In 1808, he sold Joe Key for $120 in cash and $350 in notes to a North Carolina congressman. In Alexandria, he ran away. The congressman placed an ad offering a $40 reward for his return. Thornton probably wrote the description of Key: "Joe is about 5 feet 6 inches high, very active and strong, a little bow legged and combs his wool very high before." The congressman got his money back. Four years later, Key was captured on a neighboring farm and Thornton sold him again.(23)
Thornton did indeed try to make money off patent applicants. While
being investigated by congress in 1811, he denied ever taking more than
the $30 required by law to apply for patent. That suggests that
Thornton angled for a share of future profits based on ideas he shared. At the same time, he threatened to exercise his First Amendment rights to publicly criticize the inventions of inventors who didn't cooperate. For example, in her 1808 notebook for August 6, Mrs. Thornton jotted down: "The Hawkins won't stand to their agreement and are very angry at not getting their patent."(24) The Hawkins brothers made an apparatus to make carbonated water and that too was too telling an advance on processes that Thornton had also cast his thoughts. He believed that anyone who realized his ideas by making an invention did not invalidate his claim that he was the true inventor.
For example, in 1819, three days after a newspaper announced that an army board of officers had approved John H. Hall's breech loading rife, it printed a correction: "We are now informed that the rifle was originally invented by Dr. William Thornton...." A letter giving the details of Thornton's claim relied on the testimony of his clerks. Hall responded: "I would now ask, why does the Dr. have recourse to such writings from such men, for identifying the plan of his gun with the plan of mine, when, by producing the gun itself, and the drawings of which he speaks, and having them compared with my gun, by competent judges, the question of right may be decided at once." That he claimed he invented the rifle before Hall did was but half of his imposition. He issued a joint patent for the rifle and then tried to stop Hall from manufacturing it himself. Thornton insisted on only licensing the patent so whoever made the rifle had to pay royalties.(25) He thought his low salary justified his patenting his own inventions and forcing inventors with similar ideas to accept a joint patent with him.
All that said, there is no evidence that Thornton made any money off other inventors' patents. Inventors excepted, many applauded his debunking inventors' claims of originality which if sustained in court burdened consumers with higher prices. He gained a reputation as a scientifically minded mechanical genius who protected the public's interest. Of the four presidents he served under, Jefferson and John Quincy Adams especially appreciated his command of new technologies. Once the Patent Office moved into the refurbished Blodget's hotel bought by the government in 1810, Thornton filled 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.
One long campaign to thwart a supposed fraudulent inventor mirrored Thornton's fights to keep professional architects from stealing glory rightfully his. He failed in both campaigns because not only had he not built what he claimed were his designs, but he had not preserved drawings, if indeed he had ever made them.
In August 1808, a year after the first successful voyage of his steamboat, Robert Fulton began working on a patent application. His business strategy was the same as John Fitch's: get monopoly rights and patents from states for steamboat service on their rivers. Fitch got monopoly rights from New York State in 1787. He died by suicide in 1798, and his patent expired in 1805. In 1803, Fulton's company got monopoly rights in New York, pending a successful voyage. His steamboat made scheduled voyages to and from Albany in 36 hours each way thus making about 4 miles an hour, which, in 1808, won the company a monopoly for up to 30 years depending on the number of boats put in service.(26) A federal patent would allow the company to use federal courts to enforce its rights throughout the nation.
In December 1808, Thornton wrote a letter to his boss and friend Secrtary of State Madison. It was a pro forma patent application asking for exclusive rights to profit from his steamboat improvements, to wit: "...modes of propelling the same by Paddles, or a wheel or wheels at the Stern and improvement in boilers for Steam Engines for the Same...."(27) While he had encouraged Fitch to do so, Thornton had never applied for a patent. He got the requisite signatures on his patent in January 1809, three days before Fulton submitted his application. On May 13, Thornton sent a letter to Fulton. The letter is no longer extant nor is Fulton's reply. Thornton may not have harped on the priority of his patent. He also knew of a paddle wheel described in a book written a hundred years ago. If Fulton bought Thornton's knowledge and experience, he would keep that early paddle design their secret. A letter Fulton wrote to Secretary of State Monroe in 1812 described the progression of Thornton' offers: a partnership with Fulton and his financial backer Livingston for equal thirds, then 1/8th of the profits, and finally, he threatened to destroy Fulton's patent through litigation. Meanwhile, in 1810, Thornton began alerting state legislatures, including New York's, that Fulton's patent did not describe a novel invention. He warned states not to let a patent intimidate them into giving Fulton's company monopoly rights for steamboat service. It was not in the national interest. Both the Virginia and Ohio legislatures refused to give Fulton a monopoly. That made patents more important, and in February 1811, Fulton got a second patent for recent improvements to his company's steamboats.
In 1812, the Fulton company advertised throughout the nation that it would defend its patents and would take half the profits after 10% was deducted for capital expenses. At the same time, Fulton wrote to Secretary of State Monroe expressing outrage that the head of the Patent Office attacked patented inventions and gave himself patents. Monroe was sympathetic and asked Thornton to lower his profile. The doctor cited his First Amendment rights and low salary. Government clerks were rarely fired. Thanks to a gentlemanly tradition of the young republic, they had lifetime tenure unless they grossly mishandled the government's money or became a notorious drunkard. In 1827, after battling a patent for bolts for over a decade, Thornton pointed out in a letter to the editor that it was his right. In the past, when "disappointed applicants then turned to Secretary of State Madison and to President Jefferson to turn me out of office; ...these good patriots smiled at turning out an officer for fearlessly doing his duty for his country."
His principles did not preclude Thornton from going to a higher authority to try to check Fulton. According to his wife's notebook, on the evening of April 11, 1812, Thornton "had a long talk" with the president "respecting Fulton & c." It is unlikely that he was being called to respond to Fulton's complaints. On the 16th, he had another long talk with the president and on the same day sent a memorial to congress which asked for a higher salary, a doorkeeper and franking privileges for his mail. It would appear that what began as a quest for executive support for his rights against Fulton, ended with executive support for his usual annual request for a higher salary which congress annually denied. Thornton was bitter and wrote to a friend: "If I had never accepted any Employment under the last & present administration I should I really believe have been many thousand Dollars better in Situation than at present. Man is a very selfish Animal." He added a couplet: "I really think a Friend at Court/Is but a kind of Friend in sport."(28)
Several other companies launched steamboats. The best organized was General Aaron Ogden's. He was a New Jersey politician, who started a steamboat service from his state to New York City. To help Ogden and others attacking Fulton, as well as vindicate Fitch's boat, Thornton published a pamphlet with a curious title: "Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats Written in 1810 and Now Committed to the Press, 1814." That he waited until 1814 to make his case public may reflect his desire to keep open private negotiations with Fulton. However, it wasn't until 1814 that two crucial witnesses who could challenge his claims died. He had found a prominent inventor who attested that Fitch's principal assistant told him that the paddle wheel was Thornton's idea. That assistant died in early 1814. A fellow federal bureaucrat attested that while in Paris, he was told by an American consul who was Fitch's agent that in 1793 he had given Fulton a complete set of Fitch's drawings and specifications. That agent died in 1813.
Unlike in his other claims of prior invention, Thornton did not bank entirely on his ideas predating Fulton's. As he first intimated in a 1788 letter to Lettsom, Thornton thought he had worked hard on the steamboat. In a pamphlet he published in 1814, he put it this way: "We worked incessantly at the boat to bring it to perfection, and some account of our labors may be seen in the travels of Brissot de Warville, in this country; and under the disadvantages of never having seen a steam engine on the principles contemplated, of not having a single engineer in our company or pay, we made engineers of common blacksmiths;...." And, as he never stopped insisting, their steamboat reached 8 miles an hour.
Thornton had his account published in the Washington City Gazette on July 18. The editor applauded him for it, but congratulated Fitch for inventing the steamboat. It was difficult to credit Thornton for the invention because he didn't have a boat in the water.(29)
Fulton died from a lung disease in February 1815. Thornton told Benjamin Ogle Tayloe that his pamphlet killed Fulton. As befitted his ideas about what the Superintendent of Patents Office should do, Thornton continued to supply information about damning inconsistencies and plagiarism in Fulton's patents. But American companies competing with the Fulton company had no interest in Thornton's patents. He looked to South America to find vindication and crafted a story at once heroic, sentimental and tragic.
He was granted a monopoly in Columbia. Any steamboat plying the Magdalena River had to pay him royalties. In 1819, he tried to enlist the aid of the American consul in Brazil for a monopoly in Bahia. He explained that Fitch was "a poor ignorant and illiterate man," and his boat was too slow. Thornton "engaged to make it go at the rate of eight miles an hour within 18 months.... In one year I succeeded." He made plans for a better boat, but he had to visit his mother. When he came back two years later, the company failed and sold everything it owned. Still, Thornton's plans lived on. When Fitch's patent expired, "Mr. Fulton came to America from Europe and began a steam boat with the late Chancellor Livingston. But Mr. Fulton had seen my papers describing the steam boat in the hands of one of Fitch's partners in France to whom I had sent them to take out a patent there.... [Fulton] of course succeeded but without having invented a single improvement. Success however give him not only all the profits but the eclat of the Invention, with those who are not acquainted with the circumstances."(30)
Thornton wrote as if Fulton had not died four years earlier and left his wife with an enormous debt. Fortunately for Thornton's tale, all the other principals were dead. Actually, Fitch was a prolific writer and his papers remain in several libraries from New York City to Washington. If Fulton saw a description of Fitch's boat in Paris, that description was written by Fitch, not written or dictated by Thornton.
The doctor was obsessed with fame and, save in medical practice, pursued it relentlessly. In a brief memoir of her husband written just after his death, Mrs. Thornton regretted his embracing "a greater variety of sciences" because it prevented him from attaining what he truly wanted. She credited him for genius in many fields - "philosophy, politics, Finance, astronomy, medicine, Botany, Poetry, painting, religion, agriculture, in short all subjects by turns occupied his active and indefatigable mind." She concluded that "had his genius been confined to fewer subjects, had he concentrated his study in some particular science, he would have attained Celebrity."(31)
He would have challenged what she wrote. His vanity, which prompted him to overestimate the importance of everything he did, marred those moments, at least for contemporaries, when he actually did something worthy of celebration. In 1814, Thornton fled to Georgetown as the British invaded the city and burned government property. Then at breakfast the next day, he heard that the British were still burning government buildings. Clerks had removed papers from the Patent Office, but no one had removed the models of inventions kept there. He was especially concerned about a musical instrument that he invented and hired a man to build. It had "68 Strings which by Keys in the manner of the piano Forte, will give all the tones of the violin—violincello—bass—double bass &c—...."9 As he put it in a letter to the National Intelligencer that he wrote a few days later: "I was desirous not only of saving an instrument that had cost me great labor, but of preserving if possible the building and all the models."
Thornton's story of how he saved the Patent Offices still resonates. His plea to British officers is often quoted: 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.")
Thornton did much more. On August 26, he found that, save for some of their wounded, the British army had gone. He called on the mayor and found that he had gone. He soon realized that he was the only justice of the peace in the city. Acting in that capacity, he claimed that he organized a guard for the President's house, Capitol and Navy Yard. He later wrote that at the Navy Yard, "I went and ordered the gates to be shut, and stopped every plunderer." He ordered provisions for the wounded: "I appointed a Commissary, and ordered every thing that the Doctor thought requisite, for which I would be responsible. The [British] Sergeant requested my protection for all his men. I told him they would be protected;... He promised to obey every order. I gave orders and he fulfilled them. Some stragglers, I understand, were taken up, and perfect order kept throughout the city."(33)
After restoring domestic tranquility, Thornton reacted to the rumored return of the enemy on ships coming up the Potomac. He decided that a "deputation" should be sent to the British. In a diary she kept during the crisis, Mrs. Thornton wrote: "The people are violently irritated at the thought of our attempting to make any more futile resistance." The president, secretary of state and attorney general returned to the city on the 27th. On the 28th, they rode to the Navy Yard. Thornton followed them. Secretary of State James Monroe had seen service as an officer during the Revolutionary War and the president intended to make him secretary of war. In the meantime, he placed him in command of military operations. In a letter he wrote to his son-in-law on September 7, Monroe recalled: "...we were followed by Dr. Thornton who stated to the president that the people of the city were disposed to capitulate. The President forbade it. He pressed the idea as a right in the people, notwithstanding the presence of the govt. I turnd to him, and declard, that, having the military command, if I saw any of them, proceeding to the enemy, I would bayonet them. This put an end to the project. The doctor retird, and afterwards changd his tone."
On September 8, Mrs. Thornton visited Dolley Madison at her sister's house next door to the Thorntons. In her diary she wrote: "They have listened to many misrepresentations and falsehoods concerning Dr. T_ and of course are not pleased with him."
The day before the National Intelligener printed Thornton's defense of his actions. He explained that he never urged capitulation. Then he boasted of what he had done. His mention of the absent mayor elicited a response. Dr. James Blake accused Thornton of being against the war and collaborating with the British. He even gave a key to his office to a British officer. In his reply, Thornton mocked Mayor Blake as a mere tax collector and made a stanza of doggerel in which "Blake" rhymed with "snake." The editor wrote at the bottom of the letter "The Public and the editor conceive that this sort of BADINAGE to be unsuited to the times and expect it to cease." Thornton didn't deny that he was against the war. He was "a man of peace," and his "situation has nothing to do with politics or war, being a member of the great Republic of Letters, and considering it a duty to labor for the happiness of all mankind." Blake replied: "Doctor T has been living upon the Public Treasury for near twenty years, and I dare say he cannot point to a single service that entitles him to the patronage of the government."(34)
The Madisons moved into the Octagon house on September 8 and lived there until March. Mrs. Thornton's never alluded to it in the detailed diary which she kept during the crisis. Later, in her notebook, she mentioned 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. The high British officer that Thornton had visited after the burning of Washington was Col. William Thornton. 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."
When 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."(35)
It's tempting to attribute Thornton's pouting to Madison asking Latrobe to restore the Capitol and overlooking Thornton when he appointed three commissioners to oversee the restoration. But Thornton at the time exhibited far less interest in architecture. On May 8, 1808, when the feud with Latrobe reached a climax, Mrs. Thornton noted: "Dr. T. working on a plan for Mr. Peter." Scholars date his plans for Tudor Place "1805-1816." The first date is when Peter bought an estate in relatively rural Georgetown Heights that had two detached houses. In 1816, the building connecting those two houses was completed.
Since his floor plan for Tudor Place featured two elliptical rooms, it is taken as more proof that he designed the Octagon which has oval rooms. As it turned out, the elliptical rooms he designed for Tudor Place were not built. Thornton is that rare architect who became famous even though what he designed was rarely built as he designed it. He undoubtedly designed the entrance to the house, a vaulting circular portico, that the resident family would call "the temple." Mrs. Thornton would not note any more architectural work until 1811 when she said no more than "Dr. T drawing a plan of a house." An intriguing coincidence was that Lovering had come down from Baltimore to drop off a book two day before.(36)
However,
with the Capitol rising, Thornton could not be completely forgotten in
that respect. Ironically, the last link in the chain of evidence that
W. B. Bryan thinks proved that Thornton restored his design played out
in a newspaper and Thornton wrote not a word about it. In 1819, the
Washington Gazette began putting an image of the future Capitol on its
masthead and its editor boasted that: "This vignette of the Capitol
[was]... from a design of Mr. George Hadfield, of the city, as
originally approved of by George Washington." Hadfield quickly wrote a
letter correcting the editor. The dome with an attic depicted in the
vignette was his, and it was "more consistent with good architecture."
But the two wings of the building in the engraved "vignette" were
"acknowledged" to be Thornton's design.
However, there was a degree of equivocation in the way Hadfield credited Thornton. He did not write that Thornton designed the Capitol two wings as depicted on the masthead, only that he is "is welcome to the credit of the design." Hadfield still deprecated the design Hoban handed to him in 1795. In his letter, he also noted what he had done. The lack of galosh ornaments leaving plain imposts was his contribution to the exterior of the North Wing. He had been responsible for "the furnishing the practical working drawings of all the cornices, and other parts of the exterior of the North Wing from the plinth to the top of the ballustrades...."
Thornton
didn't reply to what Hadfield wrote even though it made Thornton seem
less of an architect than the Author of the Capitol might have wished.
It was not as if, since 1798, Hadfield had sunk into obscurity and need
not be challenged. He had practiced as an architect and would soon win the design contest for City Hall with a plan featuring a dome and grand columns. In 1822,
Jefferson wrote to Hadfield's sister that her brother was "much
respected in Washington, and, since the death of Latrobe, our first
Architect, I consider him as standing foremost in the correct principles
of that art...."(37)
In
November 1819, congress returned to the restored Capitol, Thornton was
among several experts that were asked for advice to solve the acoustical
problems in the House chamber. In the draft of a long letter, he
recommended curtains and that they be soaked in arsenic so as not to be
devoured by moths. Then he attacked Latrobe for changing his ellipses to
semi-circles and attacked whatever his replacement, Charles Bulfinch,
had done or planned to do. In his history of the Capitol, William Allen
strung together "Thornton’s gifts of sarcasm and exaggeration:"
Skylights were “borrowed from some carpenter’s shop, for there never was
so mean a window exhibited before in any public building on the face of
the globe.” Dwarf columns belonged in London’s Newgate prison “where
the convicts are executed wholesale, for never were such galleries seen
in any building of dignity and national grandeur.” As for the whole, it
recalled “the old fashioned Tea Canisters, Bohea at one end, Green Tea
at the other, and in the center the large sugar dish.” Allen concluded
that "Thornton’s letter made it clear that his bitterness had not been
soothed by time, and his pretensions to architectural authority were as
delusional as ever." It bears noting that his East Front also resembled the "old fashion tea canisters," which suggests that his 1795 West Front with a vaulted colonnade, unlike a sugar dish, was his true plan for the Capitol. If sent, his letter to Lane was not printed in
the newspapers or congressional documents.
Thornton's frivolous critique was made in the wake of a rather serious discussion of Bulfinch's criticism of Latrobe's plans. In 1808, Lenthall was crushed to death while removing a brick arch in the North Wing. Latrobe blamed foul play, but a suspicion grew that Latrobe's over reliance on brick arches was dangerous. Latrobe published a "Vindication" of his work. In the back and forth over the strengths and limitation of brick arches, Thornton didn't offer an opinion, likely because he from lack of experience or a book that addressed the issue.(38)
Thanks to their becoming next door neighbors, Thornton had a extraordinary relationship with John Quincy Adams who, in 1818, returned from almost a decade of diplomatic missions in Europe. After he moved into the White House, Adams remained Thornton's friend. Adams kept a detailed diary. In 1819, when he visited the Patent Office then under his purview as secretary of state, Thornton told him about how he invented the steamboat. But he never told him the story about how he designed the
Capitol. In
his detailed diary, Adams never noted Thornton mentioning the Capitol. As president, he had to approve the design of the frieze on the pediment to be raised over the portico of the East front. Thornton had put Hercules atop that feature. Adams asked Thornton for ideas and got a portrait of Simon Bolivar instead.
Before
Latrobe left the city, thanks to Jefferson, the First and Second
Architects of the Capitol competed for a last time. In a May 9, 1817,
letter, the former president asked Thornton to "...set your imagination
to work and sketch some designs for us [i.e. the University of
Virginia], no matter how loosely with the pen, without the trouble of
referring to scale or rule; for we want nothing but the outline of the
architecture, as the internal must be arranged according to local
convenience. A few sketches, such as need not take you a moment."
Jefferson sketched a colonnade linking pavilions along the boundary of a
large quadrangle. He wanted the exteriors of the pavilions to show off
different aspects of the Classical orders. Obviously, the pavilion
exhibiting the Corinthian order would be the most important.
In
his reply, Thornton was in his element: "I admire every thing that
would tend to give chaste Ideas of elegance and grandeur. Accustomed to
pure Architecture, the mind would relish in time no other, and therefore
the more pure the better.—I have drawn a Pavilion for the Centre, with
Corinthian Columns, and a Pediment." Thornton's reply provides evidence
enough for some biographers to credit Thornton for designing buildings
on the campus of the University of Virginia. As C. M. Harris puts it,
Thornton "most noticeably influenced Jefferson in his design for
Pavilion VII...." However, the challenge Thornton faced was choosing
the order and arrangement of the columns and dimensions of the pediment.
Thornton made wrong choices. The glory of Corinthian columns was lost
in his design. If Thornton's sketch did influence his design, Jefferson
never discussed it with Thornton. The cornerstone for Pavilion VII was
laid in October 1817 and it had Doric columns.
At
the same time that he wrote to Thornton, Jefferson wrote to Latrobe
pressing him for ideas. Between June and November 1817, he wrote six
more letters about the university project to Latrobe. Today, Pavilion
VIII, which has "four massive Corinthian columns," is known as "the
Latrobe's Lodge."
In January 1821, Thornton wrote back to Jefferson wondering what happened to his design for the university. Jefferson had never reacted to what he sent him in 1817. Then in the remainder of the long letter asked he asked Jefferson to pressure President Monroe to send him to Latin America on a diplomatic mission. He boasted of the revolutionary leaders he had entertained at his F Street house when they sought American support. He thought his not accepting their asking him to join their cause with the rank of colonel entitled him to be rewarded by his government. In addition, wherever posted, he could also look for valuable minerals. Jefferson refused to help but flattered Thornton's hopes.
President Monroe could not abide Thornton. In 1807, during the treason trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr, Thornton's role in trying to raise troops for General Miranda, an unsuccessful liberator of Venezuela, was revealed in the proceedings published in the National Intelligencer. A little over ten years later, Thornton was still at it. In a February 18, 1818, letter to Madison, President Monroe raged that Thornton's Miranda episode had been eclipsed by a dumbfounding report that former Attorney General Richard Rush had supported a plan hatched by Thornton for the government to buy East Florida for $1.5 million from an adventurer named McGregor. Monroe fumed: "Of the absurdity of such a statement, and the impossibility, that Mr Rush, should have warranted it, by any thing on his part, both his character & that of Dr Thornton seem to afford full proof." In his reply, Madison did not impugn Thornton's character, but marveled that anyone could come up with such a stupid idea.
Thornton was conducting diplomacy on his own. The president was not amused. Thornton asked his boss, the secretary of state, to arrange a meeting with Monroe so he could explain his association with "South American Patriots." John Quincy Adams told Thornton that "the President said he would not see him, nor have any conversation with him upon any thing, unless it were Patents, and very little upon them."(41)
This last enthusiasm shines no light on Thornton as an architect save for a few touches of Thornton-esque grandeur. In 1815, Thornton trumped all others by publishing his constitution for the union of North and South American republics. He also projected another monumental building. Up in Quincy, Massachusetts, it gave John Adams a good laugh. A friend wrote to the former president about Thornton's "....One Grand Republican Government, to be placed under the surveillance, and legislation, of a Congress of Deputies from all the Cities, and all the States, not only of South, but also of North America, who should hold a permanent sitting on the top of Mount Chimborazo, twenty thousand feet above the level of the Sea;..." Thornton knew the mountain well because the Baron von Humboldt had climbed it doing scientific research and then visited Thornton in Washington.(42)
Although he always shot down his diplomatic schemes, John Quincy Adams had the patience to listen to all of Thornton's ideas. In a diary entry, he captured Thornton: "The Doctor is a native of the Island of Tortola; a Man of learning, ingenuity, wit and humour; well meaning, good-natured, and mainly honest, but without judgment or discretion. I told him there would probably not be an early appointment of a Minister at Rio Janeiro."(40) After he moved to the White House, Adams kept track of his old neighbor whose health was poor during the last three years of his life:
...I called to see Dr Thornton who is ill in bed. He has been for some months much out of health, but had apparently recovered, and was last Sunday Evening with Mrs Thornton at my house— He was very suddenly seized that same Night, and has not since left his bed— He is exceedingly reduced both by his disease and his remedies— He can scarcely speak, but retains his facetious humour, and his South-American ardour— He was very fearful that the British would cut a canal for Line of Battle and India Ships, and obtain an exclusive right of navigating for forty years.
The liberation of South America was his ruling passion until his death.
A remembrance of Thornton published in the National Intelligencer shortly after his death did not mention his design of the Capitol. He was credited for being one of the city's founders and the first Superintendent of the Patent Office, a title congress finally gave him in 1821, but without raising his salary. His eulogist also credited him for his "...early, eager, and disinterested efforts of argument and eloquence which are embodied in his memorials, some of which preceded public opinion, and probably contributed to incline its tardy prudence in favor of Greek liberty and South American independence...."(43)
Given that a crusade to end slavery brought him to America, it is a pity that no eulogist reckoned his final thoughts on slavery. In essays published in 1804 and 1819, he tied freeing slaves to separating the races. He thought the federal government should go in debt to buy all slaves and that posterity would be ever thankful. He supported the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America but did not shift the focus of his personal dreams of glory from South America and back to West Africa. If they learned to read, he wanted his wife to free their slaves after his death and either give them land or send them to Liberia. A caveat that they be well behaved justified her in selling most of them. She faced daunting debts. His one invention, the musical instrument, proved worthless.(44)
In the wake of his wife's death in 1865, his work as "the original architect of the Capitol" was remembered. Then he managed to take over his wife's obituary, written 37 years after his own death, with the improbable claim that "...Mrs. Thornton was the daughter of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd, of London, who was executed for forgery in 1777." According to the obituary, her mother was married to Dr. Dodd and then changed her name at his death. Her obituary cited a source: "It is not believed that she was aware that she was the daughter of Dr. Dodd, although her husband was, and mentioned it to his friend, the late Col. Bomford." In a letter to the editor, her "most intimate friends" responded that they "were much pained" by the obituary and "have never given credit to that suggestion." But they acknowledged that Mrs. Brodeau "never, in any manner, alluded to her life before she came to America."
British historians did not pick up on Mrs. Thornton's revealed father, nor find others he might have conceived. They had enough good stories about the "Macaroni Parson" so-called for his extravagant dress and affected mannerisms fueled by money made off his sermons to London's Magdalen Society and ending at the end of a Tyburn rope despite Dr. Samuel Johnson choreographing his last days in a way that was supposed to coax the King's pardon. He had forged Lord Chesterfield's handwriting in a bond for 4,700 Pounds.
Mrs. Thornton was born in July 1774 and thus likely conceived in November 1773. At that time Dr. Dodd and his wife of 22 years, nee Mary Perkins, were facing mounting debts from their extravagant life style with only annuities and the income from a rectory in Bedfordshire to live on. Dodd's first scandal to anger the King George occurred in January 1774. His wife wrote an anonymous letter offering 3,000 pounds and a 500 pound annuity to a Lady influential in the choice of who might fill a worthy clerical office. The Chancellor was not amused, discovered the writer, and the King dismissed Dr. Dodd from other clerical positions he held. To assure that scandal would soon be forgotten, Dodd offered and did leave the country first to Geneva. In the summer of 1776, he was in Paris. Mrs. Brodeau was in Philadelphia by December 1775 when she first advertised her boarding school with the endorsement of Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris.
Ever in the need of money, in 1777 after his return to London, Dodd likely looked to touch those old bases that had made him famous. Just before his arrest, he wrote to Benjamin Franklin, asking him to forward a letter to "a worthy young woman, who in an unfortunate hour, went to America and to whose fortune and situation there, I am a stranger." His prime money maker had been his Magdalen sermons and work with attendant charities. If he had indeed been guilty of ruining a woman, his own hour of need would not be the time to settle that score. But to find fruits of his pastoral work might help gear up another charity. He also hinted to Franklin that he was in touch with a double agent in France and might work "to effect a reconciliation" between the rebels and Britain. The editor of Franklin's papers wrote in a footnote of the young woman: "We are convinced in our bones (in other words without proof) that this was Ann or Anna Brodeau,... "
Why Mrs. Bordeau kept her secret which likely didn't involve Dodd and why Thornton embellished her past are easily explained. Beginning with good references from London, she ran a high class boarding school for girl which provided a very comfortable living. Revealing her daughter's father made no sense. Whoever he was, if he in anyway abandoned his family, it would garner pity for mother and daughter but detract from the reputation of her boarding school and embarrass her sister who also lived in Philadelphia. Revealing her past was not the best way to introduce herself to Georgetown society or something to be discussed when she was at President Jefferson's table.
Thornton principally lived off a slave plantation that he had no hand in managing. He never made a government salary over $1600. Beginning in letters he wrote to his English mentors, he exaggerated what success he had in America. Then he found that exaggeration wore well in disputes in America and burnished his fame as a projecting genius. As a horse breeder he learned to appreciate the power of pedigree and a tout sheet. After his death, his claims about Rattler's victories were challenged. The fraternity of the turf shrugged. He came to America to find a wife trusting that would prompt his father-in-law to divide the Tortola estate. In Paris, he traded love notes with a 50 year countess. In Tortola he was jilted. He wanted a young bride and found that fathers stood in the way. So he courted a 16 year old girl and her 40 year old mother. No Dr. Dodd stood in the way. Still, he confronted the frequently bruited pedigree of his friends and their wives. Bomford's was sympathetic. Thornton probably met Col. George Bomford around 1812 shortly after he invented the largest smooth bore, muzzle loading cannon in the world. He was the best of men to tell a story some might find made sordid by bigamy and illegitimacy. His birth records did not list a father and his second wife also "sheltered a personal history."
Thornton may have known the truth, but regardless once his mother-in-law was too feeble to react to any queries, he needed a father for his wife. Thornton was 18 years old and in Lancashire when Dodd was hanged. Thornton would brag that "when a lad at school he handed his uncle two 5 Pound notes and asked him to select the one better engraved. The uncle selected the counterfeit just made by young Thornton." In an 1819 essay urging a paper currency, Thornton claimed that he had "invented" a test to detect forgeries which also suggests that Thornton well remembered Dr. Dodd.
Maybe one night in their cups, he consoled Bomford. That indeed gives a happy ending to a questionable tale, and a gift to historians, another fascinating sidebar about a man who in reality was often a pathetic braggart.(45)
Footnotes for chapter 13:
1. Jefferson to WT 23 April 1800; WT to Jefferson 7 May 1800;
AA. In February 1800, the board directed Hoban to provide drawings to the guide the plasterer making the crowning ornaments atop the columns in the Senate chamber based on a drawing by Thornton "in the ancient Ionic stile, but with volutes like the modern Ionic." That seems to be a confirmation of Thornton's over riding power except that day's proceedings were in Thornton's handwriting.
2. Mrs. Thornton's diary p. 134.
3. Harris, p. 490.
4. Commrs. Proceeding 1 November 1800; Mrs. Thornton's diary 18 December 1800.
5. Jefferson to Commrs., 2 June 1801.
6. WT to Jefferson WT to Jefferson, 17 April 1802, , Jefferson to WT 23 April 1802. Founders online; Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton" p. ; Munroe to Jefferson 15 June 1802;
7. Jefferson to WT, 10 September 1802;
8. Jefferson to Claxton, 26 October 1802, Harbaugh et al to Jefferson 27 October 1802; Latrobe to Jefferson, 4 April 1803 Enclosure,"Report on the Public Buildings:" Latrobe, Benjamin, The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of, p. 278.
9. Latrobe to Jefferson, 27 March 1802; Jefferson to Latrobe, 2 November 1802; Latrobe to Jefferson, 9 November 1802, 28 November 1802.
10. Latrobe to Jefferson, 27 February 1804, in Latrobe Journal, p. 190."The Report of the Surveyor of Public Buildings," Latrobe Correspondence pp. 444-5.
11. Latrobe to Lenthall, 8 March 1804, Correspondence p. 458.
12. for examples of Jefferson's involvement see, Jefferson to Latrobe, 16 January 1805, or 8 September 1805.
13. Harris, Papers of William Thornton. p. 257; Brown, History of Capitol, new edition, pp. 113ff
14. WT to Madison 6 August 1806, Madison to Jefferson 15 August 1806; Jefferson to Madison, 28 August 1806.
15. Blodget, Economica; a Statistical Manual for the United States, 1806, pp. iii, 167.
16. National Intelligencer, 30 November 1807 p. 1.
17. Washington Federalist, 20 April 1808; Latrobe Correspondence vol. 2 pp. 600ff.
18. Ibid., 30 April 1808, p 2;
19. Latrobe to Lenthall, 28 March 1804, Correspondence p. 463.
20. 7 May 1808, p. 3. Brown, Gordon, Incidental Architect, p. footnote 1, p. 67; National Intelligencer ad date 14 May 1813; AMT notebook June 24, 1813.
21. Natl Intelligencer ad 23 April 1806; Kamoie, Laura, Irons in the Fire, p. 138. Bickley v. Blodget; cited Boyd v. Camp in Washington Law Reporter vol. 37 pp. 14ff; WT to Madison 17 December 1809; Thornton v. Carson's Executor, Google Books.
22. AMT notebook vol. 4, p. 10
23. House report 397 United States Congressional serial set. 5407. n. 797 lots Mrs. Thornton's notebooks vol 3 Image 38, 75, 141 (for sale of another slave); National Intelligencer. ad dated 16 May 1808;
24. American State Papers Misc. vol 2 p. 193; AMT notebook, volume 3, image 47
25. National Intelligencer, 25 March 1819, 1 April 1819.
26. New York State Library "Steamboats on the Hudson"
27. WT to Madison, 9 December 1808; Dobyns Chapter 8 on Jacob Cist patent.
28. AMT notebook vol. 3 May 13; Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton", p. 199; Thornton, Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats Written in 1810 and Now Committed to the Press, 1814 ; History of the Patent Office, chapter 9, (Mostly) IP History blog has copy of Fulton's patents; Century Magazine vol. 70, 1909 pp. 832-3 ; The Daily National Journal 4 May 1827 p. 2. Thornton to Steele, 18 April 1812, Papers of John Steele NC Digital Collection page 219.
29. Thornton, Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats Written in 1810 and Now Committed to the Press, 1814 ; AMT vol. 3 image 181; Annals of Congress, 12th 1st session p. 1324; Fulton to Madison, 18 March 1813; In 1824, Ogden's case against Fulton's made it to the Supreme Court but not as Ogden originally intended. He caved into the monopoly and one of his partners, Gibbons, sued Ogden. The court embraced the argument of Daniel Webster that the Constitution's commerce clause was overriding and states could not give a monopoly to control commerce on a river. Patents had no bearing on the court's decision; Henry Voight died February 7, 1814, and Aaron Vail died November 21, 1813. Thornton's account appeared in the July 18, 1814, Washington City Gazette.
30. Westcott, Life of Fitch, p. 404; Annals of Congress, 14th congress first session, House, March 15, 1816, p. 204; see Duer, William Alexander, "Reply to Mr. Colden's Vindication of the Steamboat Monopoly," 1819. pp. 87; AMT notebook series 4 (1828) image 11; WT to Henry Hill 20 April 1818, in Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton" pp. 187-8.
31. Clark, 'Dr. and Mrs. Thornton", p. 199.
32. WT to Jefferson, 9 January 1821; Thornton v. Carson's Executor, Google Books; AMT notebook vol. 7, 1828.
33. WT to Jefferson, 27 June 1814; several sources claim that WT helped his clerk pack and move the papers to his farm. In her diary, she did not mention that nor did WT in his report on what he did at the time; Georgetown Federal Republican 30 August 1814 p. 3; National Intelligencer 7 September 1814.
34. Journal of Columbia Historical Society, 1916, "Mrs. Thornton's Diary: Capture of Washington" pp. 177-8, 181; Monroe to Hay, 7 September 1814, Papers of James Monroe, University of Mary Washington; September 10, 1814 on-line copy at Dobyns; Natl. Intelligencer, 13 & 15 September 1814.
35.American State Papers, Military Affairs vol. 1, p. 569; Howard, Hugh, Mr. and Mrs. Madison's War, p. 253; WT to Col. WT, 24 June 1815, Gilder Lehrman Institute; WT to Madison 3 March 1817, Founders online.
36. AMT notebook reel 3 image 40; Tudor Place Museum website, "Tudor Place History;" Mount Vernon Museum website "A Community Divided"; ; Brown, Glenn, 1896 p. 64: Harris, p. 588; AMT notebook, vol. 3, image 121
37. The Gazette, 8 February 1819 p. 1; Bryan, History of National Capital volume one, pp. 317-8; Hunsberger, The Architecture of George Hadfield, p. 61; King, Julia, Hadfield, p. 95; TJ to Cosway 2 October 1822.
38. Allen, William, "The Bulfinch Years 1818-1829" History of the United States Capitol, p. 143; Bulfinch Life and Letters p. 215; Latrobe, Vindication, 1819 .
39. Harris, Charles M, Library of Congress web article "William Thornton 1759-1828:" Jefferson to WT 9 May 1817; WT to Jefferson, 27 May 1817, Founders online; for Latrobe's suggestions see Latrobe to Jefferson, 24 July 1817; Jefferson to Latrobe, 9 May 1817; Jefferson to Latrobe, 19 May 1818, Founders online.
40. WT to Jefferson, 9 January 1821; JQA diary September 22, 1820
41. Monroe to Madison, 13 February 1818; reply 18 February 1818; JQA diary February 14, 1818; see also the diary entry for February 13
42. James Lloyd to John Adams, 7 April 1815; reply 22 April , Founders online; Friis, Herman R., "Baron Alexander von Humboldt's Visit to Washington, D. C., June 1 through June 13, 1804" Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., Vol. 60/62, p. 27 (book version).
43. Ibid. May 22, 1825; Daily National Intelligencer 4 April 1828.
44. Sherrwood, "Formation of Amer. Col. Soc." Journal of Negro History 1917; Hunt, Galliard, "William Thornton and Negro Colonization," Amer. Antiquarian Soc. 1921, pp. 57ff; Jenkins, Tortola, p. 61: Berlin, Jean V. "A Mistress and a Slave: Anna Maria Thornton and John Arthur Bowen" Proceeding South Carolina Historical Associationy, 1990 (pdf) p. 70.
45. Daily National Intelligencer,18 & 22 August 1865; Tayloe, B.O., , In Memoriam. p. 100; Dodd, "Thoughts in Prison...." Wikimedia commons; Dodd to Franklin 29 January 1777 footnote; Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton", p. 148; Peterson, Nancy Simons, "Guarded Pasts: The Lives and Offsprings of Colonel George and Clara (Baldwin) Bomford." pp. 283, 298; Fitzgerald, Percy, A Famous Forgery, 1865, pp. 9, 155ff; See also Claude-Anne Lopez, "Benjamin Franklin and William Dodd: A New Look at an Old Cause Célèbre." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 129, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 260-267 https://www.jstor.org/stable/987009
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