Chapter 11 The Case of the Ingenious A: Tayloe’s House

 Table of Contents

 Chapter 11: The Case of the Ingenious A - Lovering Designs the Octagon

117. The Octagon in the 20th century, and below its floor plan

 

In a January 23, 1799, letter, the General notified John Tayloe that the Senate confirmed his nomination to be one of two majors in the dragoons in the Provisional Army that President Adams asked the General to raise to deter French aggression. He also recalled that in late 1797, Tayloe had expressed interest in buying "Jack Asses when I shd be disposed to part with any." The General offered him "three for $800, and one for $300." He added that "Ready money would be very convenient to me, as my buildings in the City call for it...."  In his reply sent on February 10, Tayloe worried that becoming an officer would force him to vacate his seat in the Virginia senate. He added that "respecting the Jack," his father-in-law gave him "a very fine one—consequently my wants on that head [are] supplied—Beside this—I am anxious to appropriate every shilling I can raise—towards the improvements I contemplate putting up in the F. City.”

The General replied promptly and assured him that he need not accept the commission until the war actually started. He didn't mention their houses, or Thornton who had just spent two nights at Mount Vernon. Their exchange of letters suggests that the General was unaware that Tayloe also faced the burden of financing a house. That in turn suggests that Tayloe had just put his mind to solving that problem. In their last exchange of letters in the summer of 1798, neither had mentioned their houses. Indeed, since he bought the lot 8 in Square 170, Tayloe had diversified his fame by, “with an infinity of fatigue,” becoming a senator in the Virginia legislature. That would keep him in Richmond for much of the winter and he would have no need for a federal city house. However, he thought he was destined for a seat in congress. He intimated to the General that he would run in 1801 and that meant he did not need a house in the federal city until December 1801.(1)

132. 18th century dragoon

Tayloe’s claim that he was anxious about raising money has not impressed historians. They crown him as the richest Virginian of his day with an estimated annual income of $60,000 a year. Contemporaries credited him with making $10,000 off breeding and racing horses. He was and is still thought of as being in that happy set of men who could toy with the future, especially with a genius like Thornton thinking about putting a house in his problematic lot since 1797. But do the psychology: his father died when John III was eight; when he reached his majority, he inherited everything; his seven older sisters may have bowed in reverence, but did their husbands? He had to have the best of everything but not to the point of folly. He needed a house of quality but could not be embarrassed by a L'Enfant. The house he had designed and built in Philadelphia for Robert Morris was soon called “Morris’s Folly.” Whoever designed the Octagon was not given a carte blanche. Thornton would write to the General on April 19 that “Mr J. Tayloe of Virga has contracted to build a House in the City near the President’s Square of $13,000 value."(2)

Unfortunately, that’s all Thornton wrote about the house. He wrote the letter to report on Blagden’s progress and the wooden sill at the General’s house’s kitchen basement door. The sentence about Tayloe was one of three items of gossip. Of course, Ridout, Harris and others credit Thornton for minimizing his footprint when he lent his genius to a project that involved signing a contract and money. He didn’t want to impugn his standing as a gentleman by letting anyone think he was pursuing a career outside the bounds of being an officer, lawyer, senator, divine, professor & c.. However, Tayloe’s contract was not like the contract the General signed with Blagden. In 1869, according a column in a Washington newspaper on local news, William Henry Tayloe shared information about the Octagon with the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District. He noted that “the contract was made with William H. Dorsey."(6)  Dorsey was a not a building contractor. He was a Georgetown lawyer, That Dorsey would be Tayloe’s fiscal agent in the city is well documented in Tayloe’s paper. That he was known to Thornton professionally and socially is documented in Mrs. Thornton’s diary. But he also had a relationship with William Lovering who he would pay $900, 7 % of the contracted price, to be the superintending architect for Tayloe’s house.

Lovering documented the existence of a contract for Tayloe’s house over a month before Thornton. On March 9, 1799, Lovering wrote to Nicholson:  “I shall not be able to get any business at this place owing to being insolved. I could have had a Building to do upon a contract close to fifteen thousand dollars for a Gentleman in Virginia but could get no security therefore have lost it and I hope and trust you will do something for me.”(7) 

That doesn’t prove that Lovering had drawn a design for the house. As Lovering would tell Stier, he didn't necessarily have to build one of the designs he drew for Stier. But there had to be some semblance of a design before a contract could be drawn up that one could put a price tag on. Vexed about every shilling, it seems that Tayloe would be careful that regard.

Lovering had certainly met Dorsey months before he lost the contract for the house. He mentioned him in a December 4, 1798, letter to Nicholson. Five trustees in Philadelphia representing the legion to whom Greenleaf, Morris and Nicholson owed money had hired Dorsey as their attorney. He was so sanguine about the likelihood of selling federal city property to reimburse the creditors that he asked the trustees for a $2,000 retainer. Lovering was the source of his optimism and no man in the federal city knew the property on Greenleaf’s Point better than he. Dorsey also represented Georgetown in the Maryland Senate, and likely was one of the several legislators helping Lovering get protection under the Insolvency Act. Before Dorsey and his colleagues left Annapolis in January, they passed a bill that did that. However, Lovering had to prove he was a citizen of Maryland to the Chancellor, the state’s top legal officer. In 1799, the federal city was still legally in Maryland. Then when Lovering appeared for what he expected to be pro forma approval, his creditors complained that Lovering’s bookkeeping was faulty. The chancellor postponed making a decision. Lovering was still optimistic and begged Nicholson not to think that his once again making money relieved the speculators from paying him his due. Land in Tennessee would do fine. He and his son could sell it in England. That happy month of February was likely when Lovering tried to make a contract with Tayloe. 

By then, Ridout assumes that Tayloe could have easily gotten a floor plan from Thornton. There are two undated and unsigned floor plans in Thornton’s papers. Ridout thinks that in April 1797, Thornton showed Tayloe a "jumble of conflicting and asymmetrically placed geometric forms" only to convince Tayloe to buy the lot despite the inconvenient building regulations. 

 

Then when Tayloe got serious about building, Thornton showed him another plan that also remains in Thornton’s papers. 

 

Ridout did not know about Lovering’s March letter to Nicholson and he leaves the date open as to when Thornton gave Tayloe a final plan. However, his evidence that Thornton could easily have done that comes from a March 1800 entry in Mrs. Thornton’s 1800 diary. On March 12, a boy delivered 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." The next day he “worked all the afternoon at Mr. Carroll’s plans.” The day after that, Carroll saw the plans and “was much pleased.” Two weeks later, the Thorntons walked up to Capitol with Thomas Law to see what work had been done on Carroll’s houses. Ridout observes, "If Mrs. Thornton's detailed diary for the year 1800 is any indication, Thornton would have been pleased to respond to the opportunity to produce a design for Tayloe, fitting it into quiet afternoons and evenings between his work routine as a commissioner."(3)

The entry also shows that Thornton’s talent for design was recognized and coveted by other gentleman. However, there was something fishy in his friendly services for Carroll and also for Law for whom he had designed a stables two weeks earlier. Both may have had an ulterior motive to make the process very easy. Through her nephew William Cranch, who was then Law's lawyer, Carroll and Law 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 already quoted that described the house and that wound up in the Adams family's papers. Cranch thought Carroll's country style mansion better suited and Carroll sent a letter to Cranch describing his house, and Cranch sent it to his aunt. If the First Family needed a house, having Commissioner Thornton on their side could do neither Law nor Carroll any harm. And asking him for designs was a timely form of flattery. 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. Then the First Lady decided to not come to the city at all. 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. Latrobe designed the cathedral in Baltimore.(4) 

There is another problem with the suggestion that Tayloe could drop by and talk floor plans with Thornton. That winter and early spring, Tayloe had no personal contact with Thornton. The General’s paymaster and Grand Inquisitor in the Hoban investigation could not go to Mount Airy and its master could come to the federal city. After his politicking in Richmond, the Tayloes had their third child in late January. Then Tayloe joined his wife during her 45 day confinement at Mount Airy. That done, in March he headed north to see the General and the secretary of war in Philadelphia. But he got ill on the road and returned to Mount Airy. After a quick visit to Mount Vernon on April 17, Tayloe signed the contract for his house, likely on the 18th, and  on the 19th, Thornton reported the news to the General.(5)

There is no evidence that Thornton and Tayloe corresponded about the design, nor that Dorsey mediated differences between them. There is evidence that Tayloe and Dorsey pulled strings so that Lovering could superintend construction of the house. Indeed, the Case of the Ingenious A has a fairy tale ending. Lovering lost the contract on the house because he could not put up security. The General required that Bladgen offer a $4,000 security for his $12,000 house. Hoban, who owned property in the city, backed Blagden. That Dorsey drew up a contract to be signed by himself and Tayloe was likely their way of relieving Lovering, who supplied all the specifications in the contract, from having to put up security. Lovering would advise but Dorsey would handle all the money. But even that arrangement could be threatened by Lovering's creditors.

On April 10, the new sheriff notified Lovering that his creditors had writs that would force the seizure of all his property the following day. The sheriff would also put a notice in the newspaper warning people not to do business with Lovering. Because court was in session at the county seat in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, there were no lawyers in town to help Lovering. Someone advised him to hurry to Annapolis and see the Chancellor. Lovering lacked money for the trip. He got it from Thomas Law. In Annapolis, Lovering saw the Chancellor, who quashed the sheriff's writs. This is such a fairy tale ending to Lovering's crisis that one has to suspect the fine hand of a superior power. Indeed, in November, the legislature had elected Benjamin Ogle governor. He was Tayloe's father-in-law. Lovering had the joy of writing to Nicholson about the reaction of their creditors when Lovering gave them the chancellor's order: “You would have been pleased to see their chagrin." However, beaten down so long, Lovering evidently didn't anticipate that he would soon have three jobs. In an April 22 letter to Nicholson, Lovering sounded like a man with no hope: “I have nothing to do here and shall be soon be on my way to Philadelphia, as I now am down to the last shilling without any hope of getting any relief,...” 

Then suddenly, Lovering landed on his feet. On April 25, 1799, Law wrote to the General that “your corner stone is to be laid today and I am to attend” and that same day Law would sign a building contract. Presumably, thanks to the Chancellor's order, Lovering signed that contract to build Law’s house just three days after his morose letter to Nicholson. Maryland legislators had arranged another job for him. During its session the Maryland legislature had authorized a tax levy for repairs to or replacement of the Prince George's County Courthouse in Upper Marlboro. On April 26, the justices of the Levy Court opted for a new courthouse and asked "William Lovering of the City of Washington Architect, to draft a plan thereof...." He would receive $400 for his design and construction of the building would be under his "Direction and Inspection." 

139A. What had been built under Lovering was later added to throughout the 19th century. The porch and back buildings were not his design. The secular steeple was likely within the $12,000 budget for the project.

Would Dorsey and Tayloe go to such lengths to help Lovering only because he was a good carpenter? But he never explicitly claimed the he designed and built the house.

However, in May 1800, Lovering owned the design for Law’s and Tayloe’s house in a newspaper advertisement: "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. He was trying to get work based on his experience as a designer, not merely on his experience as a builder. Indeed, assuming that he wooed Tayloe just as he would woo Stier, then there were at least three floor plans that were extant suitable for a house to face an intersection that formed an acute angle, one of those not used could have wound up as the “thoughtful” design now in Thornton’s papers.

Could Lovering have been more explicit? 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 designs 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 project cost $28,476.82 well over the contract price of $13,000. That should temper modern claims that it was "constructed with enslaved labor." By the way, in that letter Tayloe demanded that McDonald be fired. Stier would also be vexed at Lovering's delays in building his house. In a letter to his son, Stier called Lovering a "blockhead."

In his future advertisements, Lovering did not reveal what he had designed or built. In an April 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 an 1804 ad, he announced that he had relocated to Alexandria "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." He also offered to build and added: "his abilities may be known by resorting to different works which he has executed..." He mastered his profession and left his mark on houses throughout the federal city then he moved on to Baltimore, Philadelphia and back to Baltimore where he died in 1813.

His modern reputation for architectural design suffers because he built too many houses. He was also the wrong type of man that architects in the modern era wanted to honor. A man trained as a carpenter who the exigencies of the moment forced into making memorable designs could not compare to Dr. William Thornton M.D. It was better for their purposes to honor a talented amateur who had never built anything and heralding his success proves the supremacy of design over engineering.

A 2025 on-line description of Tayloe’s house leaves no doubt of Thornton’s brilliance:

This three-story brick house breaks with the traditional late Georgian and early Federal house planning that preceded it. Many of the leading European architects of the late 18th century sought to achieve a new direction in architecture through a design philosophy that sought to combine simple, basic geometrical shapes while using a minimum of unnecessary decoration. Thornton, the Octagon’s architect, traveled extensively in both England and in France and was no doubt alive to this philosophy. Presented with a building site that did not lend itself readily to a stereotyped solution, Thornton took full advantage of his opportunity and brought to the new Federal City a building of startling freshness and originality which has never been surpassed.

Given that, to attribute the design of the Octagon to Lovering, an architect whose design philosophy was to please the client, is a sacrilege. It damns the history of architecture to mean considerations. It suggests that Tayloe saw that an oval room solved the problematic building lot and that “using a minimum of unnecessary decoration” went easier on the pocket book.

Lovering’s advertisements don’t explicitly say that he designed the Octagon but the evidence that Thornton did is less persuasive. In the editorial notes in The Papers of William Thornton, C. M. Harris suggests that Thornton designed the house after the contract was written and work began: "Thornton's work on his design for Tayloe can be dated to the period between April and September 1799 on the basis of letters he wrote to George Washington." He didn’t cite any particular evidence. In his April 19 letter, Thornton only informed the General that Tayloe had signed a contract for $13,000. On September 1, in reply to a note from the General about his next payment to Blagden, Thornton wrote a long letter that tried to compensate for he and his wife not making a visit to Mount Vernon as they had hoped. Instead, “Mr Tayloe of Mount Airy spent the Day with us…” Then after explaining the latest bill from Blagden, he reported on progress in the city without mentioning Tayloe's house.

Harris also cites seven visits to the house in 1800 mentioned in Mrs. Thornton’s diary. That Mrs. Thornton’s diary entries about the General’s, Law’s and Tayloe’s houses are misconstrued is understandable. Her diary became available to researchers a decade after Glenn Brown credited Thornton for designing and superintending the General’s and Tayloe’s houses. Using her diary to hobble her husband’s fame seems unfair. After all, she didn’t credit anyone else and did describe his interest in the houses. Why shouldn’t she assume that future readers of her diary would already know that he had designed them? However, only in one entry did she write anything about the house. On January 7, they “walked to take a look at Mr. Tayloe’s house which begins to make a handsome appearance.” Harris suggests that her husband was checking on the house he designed. However, as is often the case in diaries, the sentence before she described her walk relates to the walk: "The Commissioners received a letter from the Secy of the Navy (Mr. Stoddert) mentioning that the President's time being expired in the house he now occupies that he intends removing his furniture here in June." Perhaps because her husband didn’t tell her, she didn’t note that the letter also shared the president’s anger at the Commissioners White’s and Thornton’s assurance that if needed he could live temporarily in Law’s, Carroll’s or Tayloe’s house. The president had jumped to the conclusion drawn from White’s private letter to him, that the commissioners wanted him to move into the General’s houses.

Commissioner Scott got Thornton to join him in sending a letter denying that the board had any intention of putting the president in a private house. The Carrolls had moved into their house; the Laws were showing theirs off, but Tayloe's was half done. The Tayloes did not expect to move into their house until the fall of 1801. On January 7, Scott likely told Thornton to look at Tayloe’s house and see first hand that his and White’s suggestion that the president could live there was nonsense.

The other seven entries that Mrs. Thornton mention the house don't described the house. However, Harris and Ridout make much of Thornton's interest in one feature of the interior. 

illustration in 1896 Glenn Brown article

In November, Mrs. Thornton noted that her husband went to the house to see Coade chimney pieces just imported from London. Harris thinks they, as well as an iron stove from Carron Iron Work near Edinburgh, "likely reflect Thornton's specific recommendations." While touring with Faujas in 1784, Thornton visited the Carron works. Ridout takes another tack to associate Thornton with perhaps the most photographed decorative element in the house. Glenn Brown, by the way, thought Thornton designed its decorations. As it turned out, not all of the Coade shipment arrived which, in July 1801, prompted Tayloe to head a letter to Coade: "Mr. Coade - ought to be Mr. Shark." In September, George Andrews, an ornament maker that Thornton hired in 1800 to ornament the interior walls of the President's house, came to the rescue. That convinces Ridout that "Thornton can doubtless by credited with Andrew's employment at the Octagon."

Of course, Tayloe was educated in England and no stranger to the chimney pieces and stoves of his rich friends. Lovering had worked in London. Harris notes that in a 1797 letter to Nicholson, that Lovering mentioned using Coade stone in a house he built on Greenleaf's Point. In early December, Mrs. Thornton found time to see Tayloes's chimney pieces but wrote nothing about them, the interior of the house, or her husband having anything to do with it. Tayloe's weren't the only chimney pieces that Thornton went out of his way to see in 1800. Back in May, she noted that her husband previewed a sale of chimney pieces at Tunnicliff's hotel. As for Andrews, since May, he had been advertising that he made chimney pieces and his "Composition Manufactory" was "in the rear of the President's house." Dorsey and Lovering likely noticed him.

Harris and Ridout miss two diary entries that help prove that Thornton did not design the Octagon. On February 1, she noted: "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." He evidently finished the design on February 2. On the 4th, Mrs. Thornton  "began to copy on a larger scale the elevation and ground plan of the house."

What Thornton drew suggests that he didn't design the Octagon. Her diary told a simple story. He 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 brick wall handsome, so he showed her what a handsome and roomy house should look like. The larger design with oval rooms in Thornton's papers that is thought to be his first take on the Octagon design, is likely his design for a house on Lot 17 in Square 171. Thornton designed a house to rival Tayloe's and Law's. A 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. 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. In May 1800, he may have advertised that he had them because of the interest Thornton showed in them back in January. Lot 17’s proximity to the President’s house can explain the house’s large and curious portico. It would face the semi-circular South Portico of the President’s house, and resemble the West Portico of the Capitol. Someone looking down from the President’s house would see a miniature of Thornton’s Capitol. Two days before he finished the design, he had replied to a personal letter from Navy secretary Benjamin Stoddert who challenged him to get the President’s house ready for the president: "A private gentleman preparing a residence for a friend would have done more than has been done." Stoddert wanted 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." In his reply, Thornton blamed his colleagues. They were "afraid of encouraging any expense not absolutely necessary, and seem not to think these things necessary that you and I deem indispensable." Thornton's house would add to the tone of the president’s neighborhood.

But why didn't his wife say more about such a consequential design? She noted that he spent the day designing his house "to build one day or another." She stated the obvious which meant the opposite. This was not a project that might be done in the future, and couldn't be done at that time. W. B. Bryan offered an interpretation 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.

His wife didn't allude to a lack of funds. Money was always a factor but in this case Thornton's preposterous design for a house uncongenial to anyone who had to live in it made its realization equally unlikely no matter the day. A house designed for a rectangular lot would, even if done by Thornton, likely accommodate a live-in mother-in-law and frequent house guests, and not stick out like a sore thumb. Mrs. Thornton had grown up in Philadelphia, an orderly brick city on a grid.  

Harris and Ridout don’t mention references to Tayloe in the diary likely because one can easily infer that the budding friendship between Thornton and Tayloe was about horses. In November 1799, Thornton's imported horses, Clifden and Driver, arrived in Norfolk. The day Thornton spent with Tayloe in late August 1799 likely involved a tour of Thornton’s farm and stables. Indeed, on April 27, 1799, Thornton may have done Tayloe a favor that Tayloe repaid by advising him how to train Driver. On that day, Thornton jotted down in a notebook where he occasionally kept track of his activities that he "set out Mr. Tayloe's lot." The official process of setting out a lot required a representative of the board in consultation with the builder and/or property owner to ascertain that the design conformed to building regulations. Thornton didn't note who represented Tayloe, who wasn't there. He had returned to Mount Airy for the crucial Virginia elections. Whether a curvilinear front could be parallel to intersecting straight streets was a question that required special understanding from the commissioners' representative. Law's design had gotten a pass, but Tayloe's design was different. The front wall with a projecting oval had several feet of flat wall on either side of the bow. That part of the wall did not parallel the nearby streets. It marked a hypotenuse to the angled intersection. Thornton was likely there representing the commissioners so that he could do Tayloe a favor for the very good reason that he needed Tayloe's services to train Driver. Offering a house design is a dangerous favor to give. New houses can be costly and problematical, but bending a rule?

On January 24, 1800, on his way from Mount Airy to Annapolis, Tayloe sent a message to Thornton who was in nearby Virginia trying to get a gentleman to take a filly and share profits from the sale of her future foals. While returning home after a tea in Georgetown, Mrs. Thornton bumped into her husband on his way to Georgetown to see Tayloe at the Union Tavern. The doctor got back home at 9 pm. Tayloe had to get an early start for Annapolis in the morning. When 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. They evidently also talked about horses.

In February 1800, Mrs. Thornton would account for their 23 horses and note that Driver would soon be sent to Mount Airy to be trained for racing by Tayloe. On March 12, the day her husband got the note about Daniel Carroll's houses, she could 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." On March 13, she wrote:

Joe set off early this morning to accompany Randall Mr. O'Reilly's boy (whom Dr. T. engaged, letting Mr. O'R- have another during his absence) to stay at Mr. Tayloe's Mount Airy, Virginia, to train Driver. He also took the Sorrel filly; is to go as far as Neabsco near Dumfries and return to morrow. He rode one of the carriage mares. He took a letter from Mr. Tayloe to the manager of his iron works at Neabsco directing him to send a man with Randall to his seat. Took with them corn, bread and meat to save tavern expenses. After breakfast Dr. T went to the [commissioners'] office, I worked on my screen, mama quilting. Dr. T wrote a letter to Mr. Lewis, to request to him to purchase some provisions on account for the two asses he bought at Mt. Vernon because he could not make it convenient to send for them immediately.... Dr. T worked all day on Mr. Carroll's plans - I read-

Joe and Randall were slaves. The letter Joe carried from Tayloe was a better guarantee of passage through Virginia than the usual pass written by Thornton. Then one of Tayloe's slaves would escort Randall to Mount Airy. Randall was a jockey. Tayloe favored slaves as jockeys, which was congenial to Thornton. White jockeys who won races demanded more money. The Sorrel filly was going to Tayloe as part of a trade, but horse for horse, not horse for house design.

In the spring of 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 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;" and a letter from Tayloe certifying the pedigree of Dunganon and that he was sold "out of training for 500 Guineas."

Profiting off their horses that year took on added importance for the Thorntons because money did not come from the Tortola plantation as it usually did. Thornton needed a loan from Thomas Law to cover $2,358.43 due in 75 days for a bounced check and hefty penalty. However, the Thorntons didn't stint on entertaining the many important newcomers to the city. The Thorntons also expected Driver to return ready to race and win purses. Then  on June 18, the same day they entertained the secretaries of State, War and the Navy, Mrs. Thornton wrote, "Driver returned from Virginia in the Afternoon, lame and in bad plight."

Judging from her diary, the Thorntons cut Tayloe off. If Tayloe came to the city or Georgetown again while his house was being built, she didn't mention it her diary. Her husband went to the November 1800 Alexandria races which Tayloe dominated but she didn’t mention that or that her husband saw him. It is possible that in August 1800, he took the next step toward building a house to rival Tayloe’s. On Thursday August 21, Mrs. Thornton wrote that she “returned at two o’clock found Dr. T. waiting with Mr. Lovering to get into the parlor of which I had the key.” Perhaps he wanted Lovering to estimate the cost of building the house. There is no other mention of Lovering or the never built house in her diary. His rivalry with Tayloe centered on horses. If Mrs. Thornton kept a diary in 1801 and 1802, they are no longer extant. They might have revealed more about her  reaction to Tayloe ruining Driver. Thornton waited until the spring of 1802, just after the Tayloes moved into the Octagon, to publicly attack Tayloe.

In May 1801, Tayloe lost his election for a congressional seat by 307 votes, but it wasn't close. There were only 1107 voters. Defeat must have stung because he arranged another way to add eclat to his making the federal city his family's winter home. In December 1801, he heralded his arrival in a signed notice in the Washington Federalist newspaper. He would become a resident of the City of Washington "...on or about" January 10, 1802. That meant his house was effectively finished, but that was not the point of his notice. In it, he invited a match race with anyone and "can be accommodated, 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 Jockey Club races in November.

Thornton could not accept the challenge. Driver was in no shape to race. Thornton blamed Tayloe. First appearing in early April 1802 and periodically published through June, a notice in the National Intelligencer offered Driver as a stud and suggested that Tayloe ruined a horse that would surely have been one of the greatest racers:

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.

Every American breeder knew that horses that raced at Tappanoe had been trained by Tayloe prior to the race and then put to the test by racing one of Tayloe’s better horses. Of course, Thornton did not want to mention that Driver had come up lame. So 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.…" Which is to say that if Thornton had first sent Driver to Duvall, then the four year could have easily beaten Yaricot and commenced the profitable pursuit of fame on the turf.

Tayloe was new to the city and disposed to make friends with all local rivals on the turf. For years, he had offered to improve blood lines in America and train and race horses ultimately for every sportsman's benefit. He founded the Washington Jockey Club. Thornton's advertisement undermined all that. That he held fire until Tayloe moved into the Octagon proves that Thornton did not have anything to do with the Octagon. He aimed to embarrass Tayloe. Their friendship had ended on June 18, 1800.

Tayloe made amends in 1803. In 1803-4 and 1807-1815, Mrs. Thornton kept track of expenses, income, and briefly noted visits and visitors. On March 7, 1803, she noted that their slave Joe Key “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 Tayloe certifying the wonders of a filly got by Wild Medley that handily beat Tayloe's horse. Tayloe's brother-in-law attested that Tayloe bought two foals got by Wild Medley for $1200. Another gentleman lamented that its greatest horse had left Gloucester County which is nestled along the Virginia shore at the wide mouth of the Potomac River. Likely, Tayloe bought the horse and gave it to Thornton. Unlike Clifden and Driver, Wild Medley had a chance to win a race and beat one of Tayloe's horses. Plus, while matching Tayloe's horses stride for stride was very difficult, on the newspaper pages where stud advertisements ran, Thornton's rhetoric could make the progeny of Driver and Clifden seem unbeatable.

Judging from Mrs. Thornton's notebooks, the friendship between the Thorntons and Tayloes blossomed and transcended their rivalry on the track. However, there is no evidence that Tayloe sought architectural advice from Thornton. In 1810, when the Octagon’s roof had to be replaced and redesigned, Tayloe hired Hadfield. In 1816, when he decided to develop lots on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, he again hired Hadfield. 

There is no reason to expect that in the context of their rivalry on the track that Thornton's architectural talents would become an issue. If his horse lost a race to Tayloe's horse, a catty retort that he had designed the man's house would not resonate. But in 1814, Thornton had a pressing motive and opportunity to claim that he designed the Octagon.

Like all officials, Thornton fled the city after a British regiment routed American troops at the Battle of Bladensburg. But rumors and the sight of flames as seen from Georgetown brought him back to the city the next day on a mission to rescue a musical instrument he had invented what was being built by a workman at the Patent Office. Thornton, then the Commissioner of Patents, persuaded British officers not to burn down the Patent Office, for which he is justly famous. He did more. He was also a justice of the peace and with the president, cabinet and mayor absent, he stepped up, and would claim that he brought order to the city by arranging guards to prevent looting of the burned buildings. He also enlisted British soldiers left behind to guard the wounded to help patrol the streets. He didn't attend a public meeting that shouted down that proposal. Alarmed that British ships in Alexandria were preparing to attack the city and Georgetown, Thornton and his wife recognized the futility of resistance. The Thorntons lived next door to the First Lady's sister and became aware of the return of and movements of the president. When the president, Secretary of State Monroe and Attorney General Richard Rush rode to the Navy Yard to see if forces there could respond to the expected British incursion. Thornton followed them. 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."

The Madisons spent one night, August 30, next to the Thorntons. During the day, Mrs. Thornton noted that her husband and Ferdinando Fairfax visited Col. Tayloe "who is unwell at ONeills," a hotel near the President's house. On the 4th, Dr. T_ made his second visit to Col. William Thornton whose brigade had spearheaded the British charge at Bladensburg. On September 8, the Madisons moved into the Octagon. Between the 30th and the 8th, she didn't mention her husband seeing the president or Tayloe. She saw Mrs. Madison at her sister's on the 8th and she wrote "I had a long conversation with Mrs. Cutts and Madison today. They have listened to many misrepresentations and falsehoods concerning Dr. T_ & of course are not pleased with him." In a long letter in the National Intelligencer, Thornton defended himself and also mocked the city's mayor. In his reply, Mayor James Blake mocked Thornton: "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." He also accused him of collaborating with the enemy. 

Thornton chimed back that 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." A few months later he coined a bon mot. When congressmen returned to the city after the conflagration they met in the Patent Office. Northern politicians who wanted to move the federal government out of the city could not point to the lack of a meeting room. Because those wanting to move out of city were stymied, Thornton claimed credit for saving the city by preserving the Patent Office. Of course, his friend and namesake was justly famous for his heroics at Bladensburg. So, it could be fairly said that "One William Thornton took the city and another preserved it by that single act." In a letter to the Colonel, Thornton claimed that his bon mot swept the city.

The president was not amused and Thornton noticed. When Madison left office, Thornton wrote to him about the shock Mrs. Thornton felt at not getting a farewell visit from Mrs. Madison. As for himself "I have long had to lament a marked distance and coldness towards me, for which I cannot account." In January 1815, the Treat of Ghent was signed in the oval sitting room now called the Treaty Room. It would have been just the time for the designer of the house to take a bow, especially if he was in bad repute. Of course, Thornton couldn't because he didn't design the house.

Go to Chapter 12 

 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. Ridout p. 47; Manasseh Cutler Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 143;

3. Ridout, pp. 62-5

4. A. Adams to Cranch, 4 February 1800 footnote 3, Founders online; Law to Greenleaf, 9 April 1800, Adams Papers: Cranch to A. Adams, 24 April 1800; see also Abigail Adams to Anna Greenleaf Cranch, 17 April 1800, Adams Family Papers.

5. Tayloe to GW 26 March 1799; WT to GW 19 April 1799 

6. The National Republican 2 December 1869 p. 4 

7. Lovering to Nicholson 9 March 1799, Nicholson papers.

 

xx. The Supreme Court returned the case to the lower court because the judge had told the jury not to consider the condition of the horse. Thornton scored a victory for consumers, and, in his own mind at least, a victory over Tayloe.