Chapter 11 Mrs. Thornton’s Diary

 Table of Contents  Rewriting this chapter

 Chapter 11: Mrs. Thornton’s Diary

Octagon and environs toward southwest in 1817

Apart from the commissioners’ proceedings and the General’s letters, historians have no way to measure Thornton’s impact in 1798 and 1799 when they suppose he gained control of the Capitol design process and designed memorable houses. His wife’s diary pinpointed what he did and who he saw in 1800. By January 12, she proved his interest in his friends houses. After dinner on Saturday January 4, Thornton took his wife and her mother inside the General’s houses. One of which had been “nearly finished.” She described their salient design feature: “they are divided so as to let one or two houses.” “After dinner" on January 7 "we walked to take a look at Mr. Tayloe’s house which begins to make a handsome appearance.” On January 12,  they visited Law's house along with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Peter. She was a sister of the much more famous Mrs. Eliza Parke Custis Law. They found the house locked. So, they "entered by the kitchen Window and went all over it— It is a very pleasant roomy house but the Oval drawing room is spoiled by the lowness of the Ceiling, and two Niches, which destroy the shape of the Room….”

To be sure, Mrs. Thornton did not explicitly say why her husband visited all three house, but clearly he was exhibiting more than a taste for architecture. He had to see what was going on. For C. M. Harris the mere visit to Law’s house is enough. He opines, without quoting the diary, that "Thornton's role... is partially but substantially documented by his wife's diary for 1800." Pamela Scott agrees and quotes five words: "It was designed by William Thornton, and was 'a very pleasant roomy house' according to Anna Maria Thornton.” Both architectural historians avoid trying to explain Mrs. Thornton’s criticism of the oval rooms low ceilings. Is it likely she would criticize oval rooms designed by her husband? If she shared her observation with the Mrs. Peter, it was a neat if not nice way to take sides in a sibling rivalry. Thornton’s climbing through the window of Law’s house could have been social climbing, not an architect’s inspection. The Peters also had entree to Mount Vernon, Thornton’s Mecca.

It was a hard climb. Despite his intimacy with the family, in the wake of the General's death they relied on Tobias Lear, the General's secretary, to communicate with the rest of the world including Thornton. On January 3, Lear asked Thornton for his accounts of the General’s payments to Blagden. In her diary, Mrs. Thornton explained that “the money to the undertaker of them having all gone thro’ my husband’s hands, he having Superintended them as a Friend.” Pamela Scott jumps to the conclusion that Thornton superintended the houses as an architect. However, even though the houses were not finished until April, Thornton had nothing more to do with them after January 21. In a January 20 letter to Lear, he offered “to aid the fulfilment of the objects contemplated by our great and good friend…,” but judging from his wife’s diary, the last thing he did was to send “Joe very early in the morning" to get receipts from Blagden to be sent to Mount Vernon on January 21. Joe Key was the Thorntons’ slave. All Thornton did was what he truthfully wrote to his Quaker friend Thomas Wilkinson: the General “has confided to me his money transactions here, as a friend...."

In the Papers of William Thornton, C. M. Harris had to write about Thornton’s role in the design of the Octagon because Thornton never wrote about it. Harris quotes Mrs. Thornton’s January 7 entry and then adds that “she mentioned other walks made on 24 April, 26 June, 17 July and 20, 26 October and then on 2 December 1800 recorded another visit to Mr. Tayloe’s house, to see the chimney pieces of artificial stone.” He implies Thornton was keeping tabs on the house he designed. But in those other visits, she said nothing else about the house itself.

There was also another reason for their January 7 after dinner walk. Before noting the visit, she wrote: “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." She didn’t note or perhaps didn’t know that Stoddert’s letter also shared the president’s anger at Commissioners White’s and Thornton’s assurance that he could live temporarily in Law’s, Carroll’s or Tayloe’s house. 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. Scott, who sold the building lot to Tayloe, probably knew that Tayloe did not expect to move into the 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 in the fall of 1800 was nonsense.

In his Building the Octagon, Orlando Ridout V takes another tack to use the diary to help his thesis: "If Mrs. Thornton's detailed diary for the year 1800 is any indication, [in 1799] 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." Ridout quotes her March 12 description of how a gentleman solicited a design and got one almost immediately: "while we were at breakfast a boy brought a note from Mr. Carroll of Duddington, (living in the City an original and large proprietor) requesting Dr. T- as he had promised, to give him some ideas for the plan of two houses he and his brother are going to begin immediately on Sq. 686 on the Capitol Hill." Thornton spent the afternoon "drawing the plans for Mr. Carroll." He worked on the plans the next afternoon, and the next day he brought Carroll home to show him the plans "with which he was much pleased." Ridout notes that in the entries describing their activities during the two days it took him to draw Carroll’s design, he also went to the Capitol and to the Commissioners’ office. Given what he did for Carroll in 1800, Ridout also rates Thornton along with Lovering and Hoban as “a source of architectural expertise in the federal city” that Thornton might have tapped a year or two earlier.

In her diary, Mrs. Thornton rarely assessed motives. She didn't intimate that Carroll had been impressed by anything else her husband had designed or gave the impression that in 1800 he was suddenly notorious for drawing a design on demand. However, there is other evidence that Carroll was not trying to tap Thornton’s expertise, and that he only wanted to curry the favor of one of the commissioners. On February 3, in the draft of a letter to her nephew William Cranch, the First Lady worried about “the Presidents House which is represented so very large and like to be uncomfortably cold—situated from all Society.” Of course, the president was adamant about moving into the President’s House and she cut that from the letter she sent the next day. However, there is evidence that rumors of her reluctance to live there reached Cranch who was then Thomas Law’s lawyer. In late February, Law made Thornton a flattering proposal, he could draw out a plan for carriage house and stables behind Law’s new house. Mrs. Thornton February 27 entry described her husband doing just that. Nothing in her diary suggests that she suspected that Law and Carroll had ulterior motives. But she did describe a personal letter from Navy secretary Stoddert that asked Thornton to improve the grounds of the President’s House. If news that Stoddert gave Thornton such responsibility spread beyond Thornton and his wife, Carroll and Law would have been fools not to do something to gain Thornton’ sympathy for a Plan B. Law had learned from Hadfield of Thornton’s thirst for grandeur delaying work on the Capitol. As it turned out, Thornton didn’t do anything to improve the grounds. The First Lady opted for Law’s house. Cranch told her Carroll’s house was better. She got letters describing both. The president decided the President’s House would do. Carroll and Law never again asked Thornton for architectural advice. In a March 1801 letter, Thornton pleaded with Law to renew their friendship which had gone cold "for a long time." Law suspected him of being "partial" to the west side of the city. 

But there is no doubt that Thornton had a sudden desire to design. It was most likely related to the death of the president. It would make sense to posterity that because the General chose Thornton’s design for the Capitol, he would also ask him to design his Capitol Hill houses. In 1800, it made sense for Thornton to design houses for the General’s family to prove that the General had blessed the elevation in Thornton’s parlor with the Grand Vestibule and Dome. The first entry in her diary provided an early clue:  “Wednesday, January 1st – a gloomy day – with the appearance of snow. Mr. T. Peter called and sit awhile – took a letter from Doctor Thornton to take down to Mr. Law to take to Mount Vernon to Mr. Laurence Lewis inclosing... an unpaid ticket in the Canal Lottery which had been in Philadelphia some months for collection.” Lewis had also married a Custis sister. Apart from Carroll's boarding house, Thornton would only designs two houses actually built, Lewis’s Woodlawn and Peter’s Tudor Place. Thornton had missed out on designing Law’s largest house, but he found a way of compensating for that. What he did for Lewis best proves the point. According to Mrs. Thornton’s diary, he visited Mount Vernon in early January to principally see Lewis; in early March he showed him where to clear the top of a hill for his house; and in August he would hand him a plan for his house.

Of course, with the death of the General there was renewed interest in the Capitol design, whose ever it might be. Being on the spot, Thornton could demonstrate that it was his. On January 4, after they visited the General’s house, they went to the Capitol "where we staid for some time by a fire in a room where they were glazing the windows - while Dr. T-n laid out an Oval, round which is to be the communication to the Gallery of the Senate Room.”  She didn't say why, and judging from Hoban's recent report all rooms had been built. In his January 3 letter, Lear reported that Mrs. Washington had agreed to let her husband's corpse be entombed in the Capitol. But close as he got to the possibilities, the men who controlled the fate of the Capitol were in Philadelphia. On January 6, Thornton wrote to John Marshall, the Virginia congressman who wrote the resolution to place the General’s body in the Capitol. Thornton presumed that congress already knew his grand design and he zeroed in on it. "Here, in the center of the intended dome is the point from which we calculate our longitudes, and here I presume Congress mean to place the body of the beloved and lamented chief. It will be a very great inducement to the completion of the whole building, which has been thought by some contracted minds, unacquainted with grand works, to be upon too great a scale." In 1791, as Andrew Ellicott surveyed the District of Columbia and L'Enfant planned the City of Washington, they hit on the idea of shifting the prime meridian from Greenwich, England, to the Capitol by making the center of North and South Capitol Streets 0 degree longitude. That conceit was on the engraved copy of plan. Marshall replied a month later and evidently only acknowledged receiving Thornton’s letter. 

Meanwhile, a letter from Philadelphia may have inspired the first floor plans and elevation that he drew after the General's death. On January 30, Mrs. Thornton noted the difficulty he had replying to Stoddert's letter about the President's House. Stoddert owned the farm next to his and they had confided ideas about the federal city since 1794. In his reply, that took two days to write, Thornton reminded him that he had always been for grandeur throughout the city. His colleagues had always dragged their feet: "They are however afraid of encouraging any expense not absolutely necessary, and seem not to think these things necessary that you and I deem indispensable." He then reflected on the president’s mansion: "Some affect to think the house and all that relates to it are upon too extravagant a scale. I think the whole very moderate,..." He added that the president should get a salary of $100,000 to maintain it. He sent a plan of the President's House to the president and noted that "the colonnade to the south is not completed at present, and temporary steps are to be put in." As a president looked south from his mansion, he would see lots Thornton owned at the east end of Square 171.

Then, on February 1, she wrote: "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." That square is across New York Avenue from Square 170 where Tayloe’s Octagon was being built. Thornton had bought most of the lots in Square 171 shortly after Tayloe bought his lot his Square 170. Thornton 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." She didn’t describe the house but it is likely the design in Thornton’s papers that is mistaken for his first take on a design for the Octagon. 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.

The large elliptical room in his Lot 17 plan is similar to his elliptical House chamber.

 

A partially erased line in his Lot 17 design reveals a central oval that suggests that there was a second floor. The mark in the middle of the plan of first floor, offset inward from the four columns fronting the semicircle might mark the orientation of the columns on a second floor that raised a dome similar to his arrangement of columns in his West Front elevation. If the elliptical room in back of the house had a lower dome, then his house combined both fronts of his Capitol design.

 

The lot’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 his Capitol plan. Someone looking down from the President’s house would see a miniature of Thornton’s Capitol. Someone looking out from Thornton’s portico would see the nearby presidential  mansion and the Capitol a mile away.

The day after she finished the elevation for the house in Square 171, Mrs. Thornton wrote in her diary:  “Dr. T- at work all day on the East Elevation of the Capitol. - I assisted a little till evening then worked at my netting." But that’s all she wrote; she didn't elaborate on what his suddenly restless genius was up to. Thornton relied on the commissioners’ proceedings to mark his fame as a designer. On February 10, according to the board's proceedings written in Thornton's hand, the plasterer John Kearney asked for a drawing of the ornaments for the tops of the columns circling the interior of the Senate chamber. The board directed "James Hoban to furnish him with, in conformity to the drawing given to John Kearney by Wm. Thornton - in the ancient Ionic stile, but with volutes like the modern Ionic." In a footnote to the Papers of William Thornton, Harris highlights the proceedings that he thinks made clear that Thornton was directing Hoban, and made a drawing to inform a working drawing to be made by Hoban. However, the Superintendent may have been confused. On February 15, 1800, Mrs. Thornton noted that Hoban called on her husband after dinner to "consult about the Capitals.…"

Perhaps because her observations were brief, her diary gives the impression that her husband had a seamless commitment to architecture. However, her diary did damn his two most ambitious designs. She pegged the Square 171 design as something “to build one day or another.” His monument to the General was “to be erected some future day in the Capitol.” All to say, quite accurately, that they would never be built. W. B. Bryan opined that 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. The pomposity and inconvenience of Thornton’s design were more likely the reasons for her lack of enthusiasm. Look at in another way, maybe she had herself to blame. 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.

Thornton likely did have Tayloe’s house in mind, when he drew the floor plan. Because of the angled intersection, Thornton faced the same problem that the architect of the Octagon and Law's house had solved. 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, Lovering may have advertised that he had them because of the interest Thornton showed in them back in January. With Lovering's solution in hand, Thornton could see how to fit a house into an angled lot.

What a difference a year made in Thornton’s attitude toward architecture. During the first four months of 1799, he oversaw an investigation aimed at justifying the dismissal of Hoban with whom he claimed he had been collaborating. In April, by refusing to provide drawings Hoban requested, his colleagues stopped the investigation. In the first four months of 1800, he collaborated with Lewis, Law, Daniel Carroll and, likely with Lovering to draw floor plans for them and himself. Then at the end of April, he was once again a genius.

On April 26, a gentleman interested in business opportunities in the city handed Thornton a letter of introduction from Vice President Jefferson. The bulk of the letter shared his ideas about the Senate chamber, especially the position of the seat for the presiding officer, i.e. the vice president. While it might seem obvious that Jefferson wanted to open a discussion about the layout of the chamber, Thornton chose to read the letter as an expression of support for his design. Jefferson assured Thornton that he wasn't pulling rank on him and that he recognized that Thornton alone made final decisions about arrangements in the Capitol: "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."

Jefferson asked one direct question: "Are the rooms for the two houses so far advanced as that their interior arrangements are fixed & begun?" Thornton simply thanked Jefferson for his "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...." He filled out his letter to Jefferson, who was also president of the American Philosophical Society, with his theories on the prevention of yellow fever epidemics that included spreading “quick lime and fresh ashes” in reservoirs.

The interior arrangements were not fixed. A month after sending his reply to Jefferson, Thornton met with Thomas Claxton, the Doorkeeper of the House of the Representatives who, Mrs. Thornton wrote, "is empowered to procure the necessary furniture for the Capitol." Then, "they sent for Mr. Hoban and were consulting respecting the seat for the President of the Senate." She left it unclear if Thornton and Claxton sent for Hoban to receive Thornton's orders or Claxton's, or perhaps Hoban explained to both where the seat had to be. Claxton was not one to sit idly by. He would be responsible for putting red Morocco leather on the senators' sully seats, a feature that would attract more notice than the ancient Ionic capitals.

Thornton invited the vice president to stay with him when on his way from Philadelphia to Monticello and offer more advice, but not necessarily about the Capitol: “Though much has been done here we still appear in the infancy of our operations and your improved mind would suggest many things worthy of our attention.” It is unclear if Jefferson had seen the plans that Thornton had shown to Volney and Latrobe but since both of them saw Jefferson in Philadelphia, they likely shared their impressions of his plans. Volney could have shown Jefferson his copy of the floor plan. There was no printed copy easy to share. In 1798, President Adams was at a loss as to what the L’Enfant Plan looked like, and Thornton sent him an annotated copy. But to see his plans for the Capitol, the president had to visit Thornton. When he came in June to inspect the city. Thornton got him to agree to see his plans on June 7, but an hour after the appointed time, Adams' chariot and four rumbled by the house and didn’t stop. Adams left the city on June 13 without seeing them. Mrs. Thornton noted the busy president’s excuse, but his snub was a setback. Thornton did not assume that Jefferson would be the next president, and he refrained from campaigning for either candidate or party. 

However, even if he did not remain in power, Jefferson’s support for his plan relieved Thornton of any doubts that the plan for the Capitol was his. He had that in writing. Meanwhile, after he gave Lewis his design in August, at least Mrs. Thornton thought they had it made socially: “Monday, August 4th – Dr. T. and Mr. Lewis play’d a Back gammon till tea. After breakfast Mrs. Lewis, the young ladies, and I went in Mrs. Washington’s carriage (a coachee and four) and Mr. Lewis and Dr. T. in our to see Mr. Lewis’s hill where he is going to build and his farm, mill and distillery. Dr. T. has given him a plan for his house. He has a fine situation, all in woods, from which he will have an extensive and beautiful view.” In other entries, she focused on Mr. and Mrs. Peter before they departed, and when they returned: “We, got to town about one o’clock, Mr. Lewis stopped at M. Peter’s – As soon as we came home had to send down to Mr. Law on some business… Mrs. Law stopped at the door with Mrs. Barry & to get a letter I brought down from Mrs. Lewis. Mr. Law came up after dinner - Mr. Lewis & Peter came also.”

There was one let down. That summer, he also worked on a design for a Catholic cathedral in Baltimore. In March, another member of the Carroll clan, Bishop John Carroll had asked Thornton to submit a design. The bishop had asked for designs from several architects, and likely had no ulterior motives. After some confusion and miscues, he saw Thornton’s design on August 24. According to Mrs. Thornton diary, the bishop “was much pleased with the plan and took to consider it a day or two.” Neither the bishop or the plan was mentioned in her diary again. The bishop eventually chose Latrobe’s design for the cathedral.

It cannot be assumed that the plans Thornton drew in 1800 invariably pleased. In 1805, when work began on the main house for Lewis, the builder despaired because Thornton had sited it too close to the slope of the hill. Although she thought Law’s house adequate, Mrs. Adams faulted the stables as too small for the president. There are no known complaints about Carroll’s houses but he was unable to sell them in January 1801. In his advertisement, Carroll said more about the size of the lot inviting more building than about the houses already built. On the basis of Thornton's letter to James Madison written in the summer of 1801, C. M. Harris claims that Thornton "supervised the construction" of the house next door to his that he arranged from Madison to rent. Thornton claimed that he gave directions to the contractor: "I have directed the third Story to be divided into four Rooms, two very good Bed-chambers, & the other two smaller Bed chambers. The Cellar I have directed to be divided, that one may serve for wine &c, the other for Coals &c—and for security against Fire a Cupola on the roof...." Madison expressed his gratitude.3 Thornton certainly made a rhetorical show of it but there is evidence that Madison was disappointed in what he found in October. In August, he had emphasized to Thornton that he needed a good stable. In June 1802, Madison finally signed a rental agreement with the builder on condition that he build a brick stable and "what remains to be done to the dwelling house shall also be finished."

Citing diary entries noting every time the Thorntons went to see Tayloe’s house, usually with an out of town visitor in tow, may not as Harris suggests make evident Thornton’s mastery. The amateur architect may have been checking to see what part of his design had to have been changed. However, while things did go wrong, the diary excuses analysis Thornton’s role. Mrs. Thornton wrote enough about Tayloe to prove that their relationship was based on horses not oval rooms.  

On January 24, while bargaining about horses at the nearby seat of another Virginia sportsman, Thornton got a message from Tayloe to meet him at the Union Tavern in Georgetown. That did not lead to entries in Mrs. Thornton’s diary about Tayloe’s house. On February 15, Thornton got a letter from Tayloe. On February 16, she accounted for their 23 horses and noted that their imported racing horse Driver would be “sent to Mr. Tayloe’s to run.” That meant Driver would race Tayloe’s horses. On March 13, Mrs. Thornton celebrated their slave Joe Key taking Driver and a slave boy as a jockey to meet Tayloe’s people in Dumfries, Virginia, where they would then be taken to Mount Airy to be trained.

Judging by her diary, no news came from Tayloe’s horse training and horse racing complex just north of Mount Airy until the day the Thornton’s entertained the secretaries of State, War, and Navy along with local luminaries. Secretary of State John Marshall lingered to hear Mrs. Thornton play and sing. Despite the rainy day, as she put it in her diary, "Driver returned from Virginia in the Afternoon, lame and in bad plight." That was all she wrote about their dreams of triumphs on the turf being dashed. So far that year, they had not gotten any money from Tortola and her husband had to ask his Aunt Jane for help. A few days later, Joe took Driver to their Maryland farm, and did not mention him again, nor did she mention Tayloe. But her entry on Driver’s plight allows a way to abstract Thornton’s relationship with Tayloe making it unnecessary to question why, as they met all the leading men of the nation, in Mrs. Thornton’s diary didn’t reveal who designed Tayloe’s house.  

In April 1801, Tayloe lost his election for a seat in congress. Defeat must have stung because he arranged another way to add eclat to his making the federal city his family's winter home. Evidently, at the time, merely moving into his home, despite its unique design being so prized today, wasn’t enough. 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 1801.

Thornton could not accept the challenge. Driver was in no shape to race. But first appearing in early April 1802 and periodically published through June, a newspaper advertisement offered Driver as a stud. For $16 and 5 shillings for the groom, a mare could share Driver’s stable until August. Next year Driver was scheduled to stand in North Carolina. As all ads touting a stud must, Thornton shared Driver’s impressive English pedigree and the races won by his sire and grand dam, who was a “running mare.” His great, great, great, grand dam was got by a full brother of a horse got by Godolphin Arabian, who was the gold standard in English breeding. Governor Ogle, Tayloe’s father-in-law certified Driver’s pedigree. Horses are generally put out to stud after an impressive racing career which, thanks to a mishap when under Tayloe’s direction, Driver didn’t have a career. However, in his ad, Thornton bragged about two heats that Driver lost. His description gave a different impression of the horse than Mrs. Thornton’s plaintive June 18 diary entry. 

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. 

Thornton offered no eyewitness testimony. He put it this way: “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.” He explained why Driver’s racing career ended and didn’t blame his coming home “lame and in bad plight.” As he put it, “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.”

However, Thornton had not entered Driver in the Alexandria races in November 1800, when Tayloe won all three races. Thornton was there but not one of his horses. One newspaper report described a post race parade down the streets of the city with the three winners and the admiring throng. Also, Driver did not race in the first Washington Jockey Club races in November 1801. Obviously, Driver had been in bad plight since June 1800. To the uninitiated reader of Thornton’s ad, Tayloe was merely the host of Driver’s one race. But those in the racing fraternity knew the rumors about Driver and could draw their own conclusion. Later in the article, Thornton tried to influence their deliberations by quoting 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, and not to Tayloe, then he would have beaten Tayloe’s horse at the Alexandria races and Sprigg’s horse at the Washington races.

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 was in the process of founding the Washington Jockey Club. Other than history’s say-so, there is no evidence that Thornton had anything to do with it. Thornton's advertisement undermined Tayloe’s mission and would challenge the results of his match race in May. Would Thornton have tried to embarrass Tayloe in the spring of 1802 if he had designed the just opened Octagon?

However, thanks to the last entries about the house in Mrs. Thornton’s diary, both Harris and Ridout could cite her husband’s interest in Coade chimney pieces just imported from London as evidence of Thornton’s involvement with the Octagon. On November 27, 1800,  “Dr. T. came at one o’clock for us to go to see he chamber pieces at Mr. Tayloe’s house.” But she had to take care of a sick servant. On December 2, she wrote “took Miss Brown with us to Mr Tayloe’s house to see the chimney pieces of artificial stone.” Harris thinks they, as well as an iron stove from the 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 the most photographed decorative element in the house. 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 stoves of his rich friends. Lovering had worked in London. Harris notes that in a 1797 letter to Nicholson, Lovering mentioned using Coade stone in a house he built on Greenleaf's Point. As for Andrews, since May Andrews 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. When Mrs. Thornton saw the chimney pieces, she wrote nothing about them, the interior of the house, or her husband having anything to do with it. There is evidence in her diary that Thornton was interested in the chimney pieces per se, and not only how they fit into the Octagon. Back in May, she noted that her husband previewed a sale of chimney pieces at Tunnicliff's hotel.

That Thornton insulted Tayloe in the spring of 1802, and perhaps for good reasons, is verified by how Tayloe tried to make amends. If she had a diary in 1801 and 1802, it has gone missing. Beginning then, in notebooks, Mrs. Thornton kept track of expenses, income, and briefly noted visits and visitors. On March 7, 1803, she noted that 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.

The Thornton-Tayloe friendship blossomed and endured, but so did the rivalry. In 1821 Thornton bought Rattler who was bred by Tayloe, trained by Virginia’s top “colonel” in that regard and had a string of victories. Then Thornton’s Rattler came up lame at the Washington Jockey Club races which were closely watched that year as the South looked for a horse to beat the New York champion Eclipse. Thornton was crestfallen. In 1822, he offered Rattler as the best stud in America and superior to Tayloe's Sir Archy, since judged the greatest 19th century American stud. Thornton’s analysis of Rattler’s pedigree proved that he had a “double cross... Rattler is doubly descended from old Highflyer." There is no evidence that Tayloe ever 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.

No one lived in the Octagon before the end of the year which may have excused Mrs. Thornton from commenting on its designer and builder. By February 16, Law "was fixed in his new house and quite pleased with it." (p. 108, 180) On August 19, she noted that he had leased the house. Conrad and McMunn ran a boarding house for congressmen and the vice president. Mrs. Thornton noted that her husband visited Jefferson twice. She didn’t mention his take on the oval rooms, nor did he mention them in his correspondence. If Lovering had designed the house, the rooms were easy to ignore, but not if his friend Thornton had designed them. On one visit, he clearly showed he expected to influence Jefferson in matters of design. He had the plasterer  George Andrews make stucco ornaments for which Thornton suggested designs to enliven the interior walls of the President’s House. Exactly how the president expressed his displeasure is not known. But the day he arrived, 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 Andrews under his wing and tried to show samples of his ornaments to Jefferson.

Meanwhile, an effort by Blodget to make Thornton’s famous for designing the Capitol fizzled. In October 1800, an anonymous letter writer hailed, “the most elegant building in the world, [that] does great credit to Mr. Thornton's taste." Then the letter extolled Blodget’s hotel which betrayed Blodget as its author. Otherwise, in newspaper commentary about the Capitol, there was no mention of Thornton. One report attributed the Senate chamber’s “very magnificent appearance” to its "being handsomely painted and furnished.” Its columns were “lofty pillars,” neither ancient nor modern ionic was mentioned. In December, the National Intelligencer printed Thornton's February letter to Blodget about on the "massy rock." Then to aid Law’s lobbying to get some memorial built in the Capitol, Thornton offered himself as an expert. The Intelligencer reported on December 31 that several cost estimates had been submitted for the Equestrian statue of the General, "among which was one in writing submitted by Dr. Thornton which states with confidence that the expense ... would not exceed from 8,000 to 15,000 pounds [$25,000] currency." That was well under the cost of the mausoleums offered by Latrobe and Benjamin West who had sent a design from London. Judging by Mrs. Thornton's diary, he did not forget his Capitol design. On December 19, she wrote "I began to copy the ground plan." On December 20, she added: "did all I could with Dr T's directions to the plan of the Capitol." Presumably, he was trying to fit in a memorial to the General; then Congress lost interest.

In January, a fire spread from a fireplace in the Treasury Building and did extensive damage. Congress investigated and blamed “wooden bricks.” They were also found behind a stove in North Wing and in newspaper reports “the Capitol’s architects” took the blame, but evidently not Thornton. Gustavus Scott had died on Christmas Day which made Thornton the senior member of the Board of Commissioners. Congressmen were more realistic than General Washington and couldn't imagine a man like Thornton overseeing actual work. Congress did not abolish the board. The legal complexities arising from the ownership of lots after the failures of Greenleaf, Morris and Nicholson, as well as paying the interest and principal on loans from the State of Maryland deterred congress from simply taking over the city or even just the public buildings. After all, the sale of lots was supposed to pay for everything. Just before they left town, congress appropriated another $10,000 to be under the control of the president for more necessary improvements. They had better streets and sidewalks in mind, but at last, Thornton led the board and had the president’s confidence.

 

Go to Chapter 12 

1. Harris p. 528, in his memoir of GW's death, WT refers to Law's brother as Lord Ellenborough. He became a lord in 1802; Diary p. 90-1, 97; WT to Lear 20 January 1800, Harris pp. 531-2.

2. Harris pp. 242 & 333 footnote 11; Last will and testament ; Annals of Congress, 6th congress p. 208.

3. WT to Marshall 2 or 6 January 1800 Harris p. 526, Harris dates the letter four days before AMT wrote that "in the afternoon wrote to Genl. Marshall...." p. 92 - Harris strains to give WT a leading role but Lear to Adams 1 January 1800  covers issues raised by Thornton in his letter to Marshall; 

4. Mrs. Thornton's diary, p. 92; Stoddert to Commrs., 3 January 1800, Commrs to Adams, 7 January 1800, Commrs. records; White to Adams, 15 January 1800;

4. Diary pp. 141, 215, 217; Harris pp. 586, 593; Ridout pp. 90, 123; National Intelligencer 27 May 1801; The Cabinet 9 January 1801 p. 3.

5. Harris p. 586; Scott, Creating Capitol Hill p. 129; Diary pp. 90, 94, 97.

6. WT to Fothergill, 10 October 1797, Harris pp. 424-27; Mount Vernon Museum, "Particular description..." 

7. Ridout pp. 29-30 , 61-5; Diary p. 116; National Intelligencer 5 January 1801, p. 4 & 1 February 1802 

8  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.

9. Diary p. 102; Stoddert to WT 20 January 1800; reply 30 January 1800, Harris p. 532-4; Bryan, History of National Capital, vol. 1, p. 346; WT to Madison, 2 September 1823.

10. Diary p. 112; Law to Greenleaf 9 April 1800, Adams Papers.

11. Diary pp. 129, 99,

12. Diary pp. 99, 107, 113, 116, 138; Cohen pp. 117-8; Federal Gazette and Baltimore Daily Advertisers, 7 April 1800, p. 4.

13. Diary pp. 130, 157, 181, 200, 209;

14. Tayloe ad Washington Federalist 22 December 1801; Sprigg ad 16 & 29 January 1802.

15. National Intelligencer 5 April 1802 p. 3; 

16. The 1801 Washington Races were called "City Races" and used rules of Annapolis Jockey Club (Federalist 11 November 1801). The November 1802 were called "Washington Jockey Club Races" and used rules of that club. Tayloe was the top officer listed as vice-president. Thornton was not listed as an officer. (Federalist 24 November 1802) -- 

17. AMT notebook Vol. 1 image 133; Washington Federalist 29 April 1803 

18.  Thornton v. Wynn 25 US 183; Amer. Turf Reg, vol. 1, April 1830, p. 381;Tayloe, In Memoriam, p. 100; Rattler Broadside; Henry Clay Papers, Clay to Mrs. Thornton, 2 November 1828; American Farmer no. 6 vol. 10 p. 28 

19. Hunsberger p. 69; Julia King, George Hadfield: Architect of the Federal City

20. Harris p. 523; Diary pp. 88-9----

21.. WT to Madison 8 September 1801; Madison to Jefferson 16 September 1801; WT to Madison 16 March 1801, 15 August 1801; Madison to WT 8 August 1801; Harris pp. 560-1, 581; “Agreement with Voss 26 June 1802” Madison Paper, Founder online ; National Intelligencer 8 December 1801;

24. WT to Blodget 23 February 1800, Harris p. 535-8; Latrobe to Robert G. Harper, 24 April 1800, Correspondence p. 160.  

25. Diary p. 102, 107; Harris, p. 490

26. Jefferson to WT 23 April 1800;  WT to Jefferson 7 May 1800;

27. Mrs. Thornton's diary p. 146; Genius of Liberty 1 January 1801

28. WT to Adams 19 February 1798, Harris p. 437; Diary p. 152.

29.  Commrs to Andrews 1 November 1800; Diary pp. 208, 222

zz. The Kennebec Gazette 6 March 1801; Bryan, pp. 384-5; on problems with speculators see John Thomson Mason to Jefferson 31 March 1801; on problems with Maryland loan see Commrs. to Jefferson 28 March 1801; on $10,000 appropriated for local improvements see Inhabitants (Thomas Law) to Jefferson 21 March 1801; on congressional committee report on its difficulty comprehending problems commissioners’ faced see Annals of Congress pp. 1350ff.    

 

2. Ridout p. 47; Manasseh Cutler Life and Letters, vol. 2, p. 143; Ryan Smith,  Robert Morris's Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder, 2014;.