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

When Mrs. Thornton began keeping a diary on January 1, 1800, she refrained from describing what must have been her husband's difficult adjustment to the loss of his patron and friend. He had arrived at Mount Vernon with the Laws a day late, and would long regret that he had not arrived soon enough to perform a tracheotomy, not that there is any evidence that he had ever slit anyone's throat. Sometime after 1802, he would eventually write a fantasy claiming that he offered to bring the General back to life but "was not seconded." In January, she merely noted letters from Mount Vernon. On January 3, Tobias Lear wrote that "Mrs. Washington had consented to give up the body of her late husband to be placed in a Monument to be erected by congress in the Capitol." After dinner on Saturday January 4, Thornton took his wife and her mother inside the General’s houses. Then 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 associate the news from Mount Vernon with their strange interlude in the Capitol. Unless Hoban's report was a complete fabrication, all the rooms had been "laid out" and built.

While Mrs. Thornton didn’t connect the dots, historians have and some have found evidence that her husband designed Law’s and Tayloe’s and at least superintended the General’s houses. However, the evidence doesn’t hold up. On January 3, 1800, Lear asked Thornton for his accounts of the General’s payments to Blagden. In her diary, Mrs. Thornton reacted to Lear’s letter by observing that “the money to the undertaker of them having all gone thro my husband’s hands, he having Superintended them as a Friend.” If Thornton was superintending their construction, he had more work to do. But she didn't mention his doing anything until January 20 when he "wrote out the account of the money he received and paid" for the houses. That same day, he wrote to Lear that Blagden thought the houses would be completed by April 1. He claimed that he had Blagden write up a report that had been given to the executors of the General’s estate. He offered “to aid the fulfilment of the objects contemplated by our great and good friend…,” but judging from his wife’s diary did nothing more in regard to the houses except on January 21. He “sent Joe very early in the morning," to get receipts from Blagden to be sent to Mount Vernon. Joe Key was the Thorntons’ slave.

As for the Octagon, Harris points to seven visits to the house in 1800 mentioned in Mrs. Thornton’s diary. 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. He 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 was nonsense.(6)

Harris and Ridout also make much of Thornton's interest in one feature of the interior. 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 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. In early December, Mrs. Thornton found time to see the 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 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.

On January 12, she and her husband visited Law's house along with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Peter. Harris shies from quoting the diary and merely opines that "Thornton's role... is partially but substantially documented by his wife's diary for 1800." Pamela Scott quotes five words: "It was designed by William Thornton, and was 'a very pleasant roomy house' according to Anna Maria Thornton.” She wrote more about their inspection of the house. 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….” Her only other mention of the house came on February 17: "Mr. Law is fixed in his new house and is quite pleased with it...."

Certainly, that Thornton climbed through the kitchen window to get inside suggests he had some authority, though his friendship with Law and his touring with Mrs. Law's sister might have given him sufficient license to do that. But how does one account for Mrs. Thornton's criticism of the oval drawing room's low ceiling? Her husband likely informed it. In 1797, Thornton had written to Dr. Fothergill about the future Capitol's "broad prominent lights and broad deep shadows." He originally called the grand oval vestibule “the dome.” Perhaps, when he saw the floor plan for Law’s house, he did not understand that its oval rooms would be 12 and 10 feet high. Fitting oval rooms into a five story townhouse was alien to Thornton's sensibilities. By the way, Tayloe's oval room also had a 12 foot high ceiling.

Ridout found evidence that Thornton did design houses for other gentlemen. 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.” 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." Two weeks later, the Thorntons walked up to the Capitol with Thomas Law to see what work had been done on Carroll’s houses. They might have been able to ascertain that the houses would be bigger than the Genereal’s but little else. She doesn’t note his visiting the houses again or inspecting their interior. That raises the possibility that the builder did not follow Thornton’s design. When Carroll tried to sell them in 1801, the advertisement described them as “finished in a plain but substantial manner, and built of the best materials.…" and then went at greater lengths to describe the building lots that were big enough to invite more building.

While her March 1800 diary entry suggests that other gentleman recognized Thornton’s talent for design, 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 gentlemen may have had an ulterior motive. 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 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. 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 tentatively 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.

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." That is the square across New York Avenue from Square 170 where Tayloe’s house was then being built. Thornton had bought most of the lots in Square 171 shortly after Tayloe bought his lot his Square 170. 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." 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 his Lot 17 in Square 171. Thornton designed a house to rival Tayloe's and Law's.)

Dorsey accounts, from Ridout p. 151

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. 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 out do it with a nobler house which he effected by not falling into the Georgian trap of lining the streets with windows. He had one window in the two large rooms that paralleled New York Avenue and 17th Street. An elevation he drew several years later for another residence, Tudor Place, shows his Neo-classical ideals.

In his February 1800 design, he domesticated his Capitol design. 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 suggesting that a second floor might model his Grand Vestibule. The mark offset inward from the four columns fronting the semicircle might mark the position of columns in an upper floor that raised a dome similar to his arrangement of columns in his West Front elevation.

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.

Two days before he finished the design, he replied to a personal letter from Navy secretary Benjamin Stoddert who had 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 to 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 not in this case Thornton's preposterous design would be uncongenial to anyone who had to live in it. That 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.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Thornton noted his interest in the Capitol, but judging from what she wrote, she was most excited by Law’s stables. On February 27, 1800, she wrote "Dr. T- received a note from Mr. Law enclosing a rough Sketch of a plan for a Stables & c. behind his house which is five stories before and three behind, which Dr. T- had promised to lay down for him as he had suggested the ideas - The Stables and Carriage house are to be built at the bottom of the lot and the whole yard to be covered over at one Story height, and gravelled over, so as to have a flat terrass from the Kitchen story all over the extremity of the lot.... Dr. T- engaged in the evening drawing Mr. Law's plan." That was her only description of a Thornton architectural drawing. In his April 9 letter to Greenleaf, Law described his stable “for 5 horses, a good coach house, hay loft &c, &c.” But didn’t mention a flat graveled terrace.

Tayloe entered Mrs. Thornton's diary on January 24, 1800, on his way from Mount Airy to Annapolis. He 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. 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.

Joe and Randall were slaves. 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."

If Mrs. Thornton kept a diary in 1801 and 1802, they are no longer extant. They might have revealed her and her husband’s 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, he 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 newspaper advertisement 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 old 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 was in the process of founding the Washington Jockey Club. Thornton's advertisement undermined that. Would he have aimed to embarrass Tayloe if he had designed the house? Their friendship had ended on June 18, 1800.

Tayloe made amends in 1803. On her almanacs, 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.1 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. The horse came up lame at the Washington Jockey Club races which were closely watch 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." Sir Archy’s dam did not have that benefit. After Thornton died, Henry Clay almost bought the horse. The Kentucky sportsmen who did soon complained that Thornton inflated the list of Rattler's victories. The fraternity shrugged.2 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.

In 1800, the Capitol design was Thornton’s only claim to fame as architect. Not that he didn’t try to keep his hand in the game. Thanks to an August 1800 entry in his wife’s diary, Thornton is credited for designing Lawrence Lewis’s house Woodlawn. Clearly, the death of the General coincided with Thornton's condescending to design houses. But work on the central portion of the house with two wings didn’t begin until 1805. C. M. Harris has no interest in it: "the house as it appears today has no resemblance to Thornton's other designs." It had no oval rooms. In an 1817 letter to Jefferson who was about to begin building a college campus in Charlottesville, Thornton recalled that to save money on the four Tuscan columns at river side entrance to the Lewis house had been made of bricks plastered over to look like stone. He noted that “they have stood above 12 years, & I did not find a single crack or fissure.” Cheaper expedients that lasted a dozen years impressed him. If the he had approached the building arts in that way in 1798, the General might have asked him to design his houses.

Harris is impressed with how he helped James Madison with his housing problems. In his 1896, article on Thornton, Glenn Brown had credited him for designing Montpelier, Madison’s country seat. But when Thornton visited in 1802, he had only drawn picture of what was already built. Faced with having to live in the federal city, Madison asked the president to find a house. Thornton took over that task and in August advanced rent for a house being built next to his. He also extracted an agreement that the builder would pay $1,000 if the house wasn't ready on October 1. In early August, the builder had advertised that he wanted to hire laborers to work until November 1.

Thornton also claimed that he gave directions to the builder, telling Madison that: "I have directed the third Story to be divided into four Rooms, two very good Bed-chambers, & the other two smaller Bed chambers. The Cellar I have directed to be divided, that one may serve for wine &c, the other for Coals &c—and for security against Fire a Cupola on the roof...." Madison expressed his gratitude. On the basis of Thornton's letter, C. M. Harris claims that Thornton "supervised the construction" of Madison's rental. 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."

His wife only mentioned the Capitol in passing. However, in letters Thornton wrote at the time, he did describe his vision of the Capitol. He had long planned to accommodate the General’s body in the Capitol, but it’s not clear that the General approved or that anybody understood Thornton’s idea or even that he was quite sure what should be done. In his 1793 explanation of his design, he placed the Equestrian statue of the General, mandated by a 1783 congressional resolution, under the dome. He also had a "great repository under the floor of the dome." What else would make a repository great but the General remains? In his November 1795 letter to the president defending a basement from Hadfield's attack on the plans handed to him by Hoban, he almost pinpointed the General's resting place "in a large mass of rock nearly the height of the arcade." But, he crossed that out. Ironically, on July 9, 1799, just after Thornton spent three nights at Mount Vernon, the General signed his last will and testament. He wanted Mount Vernon's family vault rebuilt on a different spot that he designated. He wanted to be entombed there. On December 23, 1799, congress resolved "that a marble monument be erected by the United States, in the Capitol, in the city of Washington, and that the family of General Washington be requested to permit his body to be deposited under it; and the monument be so designed as to commemorate the great events of his military and political life."

On the January 6, Thornton wrote a long letter to John Marshall, who chaired the House committee that wrote the resolution. Thornton had never met the General's close friend but he wrote as if Marshall must know of Thornton: "I doubted not [congress] would deposit his body in the place that was long contemplated for its reception; I accordingly requested that it might be enclosed in lead. It was done and I cannot easily express the pleasure I feel in this melancholy gratification of my hope that the Congress would place him in the center of that national temple which he approved of for a Capitol...." No other recollection of preparations for the funeral credits Thornton for the arrival of a plumber along with the undertaker. Also, after the 1795 debacle and constant shortage of funds, the president postponed any discussion of the center of the building.

But, in his letter to Marshall, Thornton described the Capitol dome in a way that made its completion seem crucial. 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. Thornton particularized it. He explained to Marshall: "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." Marshall replied a month later and evidently only acknowledged receiving Thornton’s letter.

Finally, someone in Philadelphia asked Thornton what he thought. In his reply to Blodget, Thornton described his idea for a tomb under the dome. He recalled an engraving he had seen in Scotland of the monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg. The Czar was mounted on a horse rearing up on a massive rock with a long snake below its hooves. Thornton sketched and described a "massy rock" inspired by that monument. Sculptures on the rock featured the General on foot climbing to heaven with Eternity “leading him to the pinnacle.” She would have “a girdle around her waist containing the signs of the Zodiac and round her neck a rattle-snake biting its tail.” The snake was an “emblem of eternity.” There is no evidence that Thornton’s proposal had any influence on the on-going congressional debate that was soon focused on a pyramidal mausoleum to be placed near the President’s house, for which Benjamin Latrobe drew a design. Thornton didn’t show how his “massy rock” would fit into his “grand vestibule” or “great repository.” If he ever made a drawing or sketch of the interior of any room he designed, it is no longer extant.

Thornton also worked on his Capitol design. 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 explain what his suddenly restless genius was up to. Otherwise, he came up with a way to make his mark as designer of the Capitol. 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.…".

Then 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. 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 plan 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, but an hour after the appointed time, Adams' chariot and four rumbled by the house and didn’t stop.

The politicians with power over the project seemed to be adverse to seeing plans. They saved themselves from making decisions about buildings already seven years in the making. Even Jefferson preferred to take Thornton at his word. Meanwhile, he came up with a way to impress the president. He found a plasterer in Baltimore, George Andrews, who could also make stucco ornaments better than Kearney. 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.

While Thornton hoped that his friend Jefferson would win the election of 1800, in regards to politics, Thornton behaved correctly and was rewarded. Adams had been warned that he was pro-French, but then in 1798, Thornton offered the same secret naval weapons to the American navy that he offered to the French in 1794. He did not campaign for either candidate, and supported Adams's appointment of his nephew William Cranch to fill out the board. Gustavus Scott had died on Christmas Day which made Thornton its senior member. Thornton was one of Adams’ midnight appointments that incoming Secretary of State Madison tried to annul. But thanks to a decision written by Chief Justice John Marshall, Thornton remained one of the District of Columbia's 28 justices of the peace until he died in 1828. Thornton was the perfect courtier. In early 1800, he had offered then Secretary of State John Marshall a room in his house. In 1801, he would make the same offer to Madison.

As the government moved into the city, Thornton greeted the newcomers and prospected for a better paying federal office. On Inauguration Day, he applied to the president to fill any vacancy. In the meantime, Thornton had befriended the Treasurer of the United States, a virtual sinecure worth $3,000 a year, and learned when he planned to retire. In September 1801, after arranging his rental, Thornton asked Madison to send and endorse his application for the job to the president. But, the president replaced the retiring Treasurer with a Virginia M. D. who was also a Revolutionary War veteran.1 Thornton likely assumed that the president simply wanted him to continue what he had been doing as a commissioner.

Thornton was quite full of himself. In an August 1801 letter to Madison, Thornton shared his excitement as only he could: “like Cadmus of old, after I have presumed to invent Letters for the Americans, I was sent hither to build their great City! (The mythological figure Cadmus also built the Greek city of Thebes.)
There’s a Stroke of Vanity—
It lives in all my Doings!———To descend,
I who lately was nothing less than a Commissioner or Edile, am now reduced to a High-way Man. You will remember we are engaged in making Highways. The City improves rapidly.”

Perhaps, for good reason, Cadmus did not mention the Capitol. In October 1800, an anonymous letter writer tried to make him famous for its design, “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.

However, congress lost interest. Meanwhile in November a fire spread to the War Department, then in a private house. In January, a fire spread from a fireplace in the Treasury Building and did extensive damage. Congress investigated and blamed “wooden bricks.” The same were found behind a stove in North Wing and “the Capitol’s architects” took the blame. 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 the public buildings. After all, the sale of lots was supposed to pay for everything without congressional appropriations. So, congressmen left town leaving another token $10,000 under the control of the president for more necessary improvements. They had better streets and sidewalks on their mind, but at last, Thornton led the board, had the president’s confidence, and, with his advice, at least $10,000 to spend.

In November 1799, 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, when he set out Tayloe’s lot, Thornton might have been doing Tayloe a favor that he repaid by training Driver. 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. Offering a house design is a dangerous favor to give. New houses can be costly and problematical, but bending a rule?

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 in 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. However, there is no other mention of Lovering or the never built house in her diary. Thornton’s rivalry with Tayloe centered on horses.12If Mrs. Thornton kept a diary in 1801 and 1802, they are no longer extant. They might have revealed her and her husband’s 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.(22)

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 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.(25)

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. The horse came up lame at the Washington Jockey Club races which were closely watch 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." Sir Archy’s dam did not have that benefit. After Thornton died, Henry Clay almost bought the horse. The Kentucky sportsmen who did soon complained that Thornton inflated the list of Rattler's victories. The fraternity shrugged.(ZZ)

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.(26)

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; Ryan Smith, Robert Morris's Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder, 2014;. WT to GW, 19 April 1799

3. The National Republican 2 December 1869 p. 4

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

5. Lovering to Nicholson 4 & 27 December 1798, 22 January 1799; Edward Fox to John Miller, 16 February 1799. Historical Society of Pennsylvania

6. Ridout, pp. 62-5; Diary p. 116; National Intelligencer 5 January 1801, p. 4 & 1 February 1802.

7. 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.

8. Tayloe to GW 26 March 1799; GW Diary 17 April 1799;

9. for GW's contract see GW to Commrs, 27 October 1798; Lovering to Nicholson, April 17, 1799; for another view of Lovering debt problems see Tunnicliff to Nicholson, 9 April 1799; Lovering to Nicholson 22 April 1799.

10. Law to GW, 25 April 1799; Sarson, Steven, The Tobacco-Plantation South in the Early American Atlantic World pp. 11-2; April 27, 1799 entry in notebook or Almanac in Thornton's papers in Library of Congress, reel 7; for problems the board's surveyors faced see Robert King, Sr., to Jefferson 5 June 1802; Tayloe to GW 29 April 1799;

11.National Intelligencer, ad dated 1 May 1800; Ridout p. 123.

12. Washington Federalist, 28 February 1807 p. 3; John Tayloe letterbook, quoted in Kamoie dissertation p. 200 footnote; Tayloe may also have been angry at McDonald for buying the lot next to his and building a small house on it, 1804 ad; Callcott, Margaret, editor, ...Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, p.29.

13. Natl. Intelligencer 8 May 1801; Alexandria Daily Advertiser, vol. 4, no. 1060, page 4, 11 August 1804 ; American Commer. Adv. 17 June 1809; Poulson's Amer. Daily 23 September1809; Diary p. 181; Baltimore City Directory. 1810, p. 117;

14. DC Preservation Society, "Octagon House (John Tayloe House)"

15. Harris, p. 585.

16. Mrs. Thornton's diary, p. 92, the diary was given to the Library of Congress in 1904 and printed the CHS in 1907; Stoddert to Commrs., 3 January 1800, Commrs to Adams, 7 January 1800, Commrs. records; White to Adams, 15 January 1800;

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. Diary p. 129.

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

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

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

23. National Intelligencer 5 April 1802 p. 3;

24. The 1801 Washington races were call "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)

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

zz. 20. 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

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

27. National Intelligencer 7 September 1814; Journal of Columbia Historical Society, 1916, "Mrs. Thorntos Diary Capture of Washington" pp. 177, 181; Monroe to Hay, 7 September 1814 ; National Intelligencer, September 8, 1814, September 10, 1814; WT to Col. WT, 24 June 1815, Gilder Lehrman Institute, (no longer available without registered log-in);

28. WT to Madison 3 March 1817; The Madisons did not stay in the Octagon for the remainder of his term. They found the house unhealthy and left it for one of the Seven Buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue, see Dolley Madison to Hannah Gallatin 29 December 1814;

Search This Blog

William Thornton Re-examined by Bob Arnebeck

Chapter 11 Mrs. Thornton’s Diary

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Table of Contents: Case of the Ingenious A

Introduction

Chapter Nine: The Case for the Ingenious A