Epilogue: John Quincy Adams' Diary
After returning from diplomatic missions in 1801, John Quincy Adams called on President Jefferson. Then, at a social gathering, he met Thornton and briefly noted in his diary that Thornton “was by turns ingenious and humorous, but all the time very talkative.” In 1803, Adams was elected to the US Senate by the Massachusetts legislature. Once back in the federal city in November of that year, he made obligatory social calls on the Thorntons and received their visits. Finally, on March 5, 1804, after a dinner party given by Justice Bushrod Washington, Adams noted what Thornton said. He explained “his plan for a new confederate system of Government for the United States.” In December, back in the city for the 8th congress's second session, Adams checked on a patent. That brought him to “Dr: Thornton’s Office; acting under the Secretary of State as Commissioner of Patents.” Thornton told him that it was “not a new invention— Which indeed he says is the case of almost all the applications for Patents— And others are for things impossible— In the present state of the Law, a Patent cannot be refused to any person, who takes the Oath, and pays his thirty dollars— The Doctor told me of many egregious impositions on the public, under this system— One particularly by a Clergyman of Bordentown, New-Jersey, named Burgess Allison, who has a patent for improving Spirits by filtration through charcoal, which had been known and practised for many years—.” A few months later on March 12, Adams once again enjoyed the doctor’s ideas: “Dr: Thornton opened to me another of his projects; which is of an universal system of education; the result of which in his opinion would be to produce in fifty years time a greater number of ingenious and learned men in the United States, than in all the world besides.”(1)
— He is a man of some learning, and much ingenuity; of quick conception and lively wit; entirely destitute of Judgment, discretion and common sense. He has been nearly twenty years Superintendent of the Patent Office; a place principally made by Mr Madison to put him in it, and there has scarcely issued from it during the whole time a Patent, for any invention, but the Doctor had a counter claim, as the inventor of the same thing himself. He has a fine taste in Architecture, and a real turn for mechanical invention; but no steadiness to pursue any thing to a useful result— .... In the course of my life I have met with very few men of minds at once so active, intelligent, and weak. Yet he is withal a man of good intentions, and generally harmless deportment. As Superintendent of the Patent Office, he is useful; and fully competent to the place— Though by his interfering pretensions he gives great offence to many of the Patentees.(4)
Adams knew that Thornton’s would never be tapped for a diplomatic mission. In that same entry, he continued:
[Thornton] has very foolishly made himself a fanatical partizan for the revolutionary South-Americans; and has committed the grossest indiscretions in pursuit of this ignis fatuus—.... The Doctor is a Horse-racer too, and often boasts that the South-Americans have repeatedly offered to appoint him a Coll. of Cavalry in their service. He considers himself as the principal author of the South-American Revolution, and that all the principal measures of the Patriots have been adopted at his suggestion—... the President considers him utterly unfit for any such office, and will never appoint him to it; but with him as with other claimants for preposterous things, it is one of the duties of my Office to temper refusal with politeness: the inconvenience of which is that tenacious applicants, return to the attack like flies in dog days; and never will take no, for an answer.
Thornton gloried in the “politeness” which he described In a letter to Adams' father, the former president: President Monroe "admitted every flattering Observation in my behalf, & wrote to me a letter, testifying to my perfect integrity, attention to my Duties, Learning & Ability,..." but "there were objections to me that could not be removed. I was represented as identified with the South Americans, & as having been deeply engaged in the Revolution."
Thornton’s overplaying his role as a revolutionary cast a shade on his claims as an architect. In April 1815, the doctor published "Outlines of a Constitution for United North and South Columbia." He divided the Western Hemisphere into 13 commonwealths and in a manner that would force United States to give up the Louisiana Purchase. He turned his back on the Capitol by putting the future capital "on those healthy hills near Panama" or so his pamphlet put it. In conversations, he was credited for wanting "....One Grand Republican Government, to be placed under the surveillance, and legislation, of a Congress of Deputies from all the Cities, and all the States, not only of South, but also of North America, who should hold a permanent sitting on the top of Mount Chimborazo, twenty thousand feet above the level of the Sea;..." His boasting of leading the Revolution mirrors his claims that he closely instructed Hadfield and Hoban as they built the North Wing. As Adams noted, his claims about South America were nonsense which adds to the evidence that he exaggerated the scope of his work on the Capitol. In 1818, Adams caught Thornton lying in the same way that he lied about the Capitol.
In June 1817, a freebooter named MacGregor enjoyed Thornton's hospitality and unveiled his plan to take Amelia Island off the coast of Florida with a force of 1500 men. Then from that base, he planned to take all of Florida. He would then sell it to the US government for $1.5 million. The Monroe administration was negotiating with Spain to buy it for $2 million. Thornton introduced MacGregor to Attorney General Richard Rush and also sent him to see Charles Bagot, the British minister. The British were trying facilitate the US purchase. In a January 7 letter in the National Intelligencer, Thornton, using his nom de guerre "A Columbian," embarrassed the Monroe administration by revealing MacGregor's meeting with a member of Monroe's cabinet, and that it was “hoped and expected” that the American government would suspend negotiations with Spain while MacGregor took Florida. A Columbian faulted the Monroe administration for damning the Amelia Island Patriots as pirates and frustrating Americans who tried to join them.
The president was incensed and told Adams to find out which member of the cabinet met MacGregor. Adams got Thornton to reveal Rush, who had just left to become the American minister in London. Monroe wrote to Madison “of the absurdity” of what Thornton wrote, “and the impossibility, that Mr Rush, should have warranted it, by any thing on his part, both his character & that of Dr Thornton seem to afford full proof. This intimation, may assume, in the sequel, all the force that Dr Thornton can give it, & perhaps do some harm, in the absence of Mr Rush.” Adams asked Thornton for "the substance of his Conversations” with MacGregor, and Rush. Then Adams challenged Thornton's recollection of his conversation with Rush. Thornton replied that "he was sure his statement was perfectly correct; for after drawing it up, he had shewn it to his Clerk Elliot, and asked him, if it was not exactly conformable to what he had told Elliott at the time; of what Mr Rush had said— That Elliott fully confirmed it; and if necessary was ready to attest to it upon Oath." Meanwhile, Bagot squelched rumors that he cooperated with MacGregor. He told Adams about his chilly reception of MacGregor and his amazement that Thornton sent him. As for Bagot's version of events, Thornton told Adams that Bagot was a liar because “he did not advise M’Gregor to go and see Bagot to talk with him about Florida, but as a Scotchman, because his family estates had lately been restored to him— And he had a great distrust of M’Gregor, as soon as he had heard he had talked with Bagot about the Florida project."
Thornton ever relied on his clerks to be ready to attest. He had used that ploy against Latrobe and would again in 1819 when the National Intelligencer announced that an Army board approved the breech loading rifle of John Hancock Hall. The next day, the editor announced that the rifle was actually invented by Dr. Thornton. Hall retorted that while he had drawings and a working rifle, Thornton had lost his drawings and relied on his clerks to attest that they had once seen them.
When Thornton challenged inventors, he usually bullied them. In 1811, young John Hancock was advised by others in Washington to simply give in and share patent rights with Thornton. Then Thornton made clear that he no interest in making rifles. He only wanted royalties from all that were made. Others inventors simply walked away from the bullying. In her 1808 notebook for August 6, Mrs. Thornton didn't describe his grift but did register the pain it caused: "The Hawkins won't stand to their agreement and are very angry at not getting their patent." Then they left town.
However, when Robert Fulton came to town toward the end of 1806, a rivalry began that lasted as long and was almost as acrimonious as his rivalry with Latrobe. Thornton also lied about the steamboat in the same way that he lied about the Capitol and South American revolutions. Just as he did with Latrobe, Thornton befriended Robert Fulton. They spent New Year’s Day 1807 together. At that time, Fulton was in the city primarily to promote what he called “Torpedo Warfare.” While he didn’t bring a submarine, he did give a demonstration of how a torpedo would work. Of course, Thornton had offered secret naval weapons to both the French and American governments. He also told Fulton about his 20 ton steamboat that was to go to New Orleans under sail and then ply the Mississippi. While in the federal city, Fulton stayed with Joel Barlow, an American diplomat who bought Gustavus Scott’s house and also translated Brissot’s book with its flattering portrayal of Thornton into English. There is no evidence that Thornton was envious of Fulton’s instant fame and of how well he was received by Jefferson and Madison. There is no known reaction from Thornton in the summer of 1807 to Fulton’s steamboat’s round-trip between Manhattan and Albany. It seemed to have been Fulton’s marriage into the Livingston family of New York that ticked Thornton off. Everyone knew that Robert Livingston financed his inventions but marriage assured a life time of support. Thornton and many others thought that guaranteed Fulton a fortune.(6)
In December 1808, Thornton didn’t send a patent application to himself. He sent it to his boss, president-elect Madison. In January 1809, Thornton gave himself a patent for steamboat improvements based on what he did with John Fitch in 1789-90. A day later Robert Fulton applied for a patent for his steamboat improvements. Thornton later claimed that Fulton’s application came as complete surprise. Once again, a friend became a rival. In May 1809, Thornton tried to open negotiations with Fulton. Fitch's steamboat had used a line of paddles. Fulton's had a paddle wheel. However, Thornton credited himself for Fitch's boiler and for suggesting a paddle wheel which was to be on the company's next boat that was never built. In an 1812 letter complaining to Secretary of State Monroe, Fulton traced Thornton's demands from equal thirds to one-eighth of the net profits.(7)
Thornton thought he was entitled to the eclat and fortune due to the inventor of the steamboat. After all, when Thornton was in Philadelphia helping Fitch, Fulton had just left Philadelphia to study painting with Benjamin West. That Thornton soon gave up and Fulton learned about the virtues of the Bolton-Watt steam engine made no difference. Thornton had ideas well before Fulton who had the good luck to be connected with a very rich family. When Thornton asked for a third of the profits, he divided the other two thirds between Fulton and Robert Livingston. At first, Fulton did not take Thornton seriously, and discounted his “embrio and useless ideas.” Then, even though Fitch had pressed state legislatures to give his steamboat monopoly rights, Thornton pressed legislatures to deny Fulton any rights because his patent did not describe anything new. To shut Thornton up, in January 1811, Fulton challenged Thornton to come up with a better design for a boat that would go 6 miles an hour in still water with a 100 ton load. If Thornton made a boat that "proved his principles in practice," Fulton promised to assume all its costs and pay Thornton $150,000. Or, if Thornton convinced Fulton "with drawings and demonstration I will join you in the expenses and profit." Evidently, Thornton reacted by saying his ideas for Fitch’s third boat which was never built were sufficient. Fulton argued back “Was she ever under Sail, Wind and Steam? Or is this not another Thought or Project never proved but being dormant for 20 years proves clearly that it did not present a hope or prospect of Utility, and cannot now in Justice be called up among a thousand Thoughts that pass through the minds of ingenious men.” Then Fulton’s lawyers tried to depose Thornton before a judge and force him to admit that a new patent Fulton received did describe recent improvements to the steamboat. But in July, Thornton was prostrated by rheumatic fever, thought to be near death and didn't recover until September.(9)
Fulton’s attacks were ineffective largely because Thornton made himself and the Patent Office famous. Congress never gave him a raise, but it did give him a clerk and answered his plea for a place to display patent models just as the French government did in Paris. Congress bought Blodget's hotel and Latrobe refashioned it to house the Post Office and Patent Office. The National Intelligencer crowed "as the apartments in this building are spacious and lofty, we may soon expect to see the numerous evidences of the ingenuity of our countrymen in this institution arranged and displayed to advantage." Thornton turned it into a notable tourist destination. In March 1811, he sent a long notice to newspapers throughout the country explaining the patent process and expressed his "astonishment" when viewing the "inventions of his countrymen,... no nation on earth surpasses them in genius." Fulton tried to get Thornton fired for giving himself patents and attacking inventors and their inventions. But his museum made Thornton an untouchable bureaucrat. Plus, he struck the right chords when he defended himself. Because of low pay, he had to give himself patents. When criticizing inventors, he exercised his first amendment right of free speech to battle monopolies to save the American people money. Most important, he garnered support from other inventors working on the steamboat who couldn’t imagine Thornton ever trying to enforce his own patent.(11)
Indeed, he didn’t turn to lawyers in his quest for fame, he wrote a pamphlet with a curious title: "Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats Written in 1810 and Now Committed to the Press, 1814." That Thornton waited until 1814 to make his case public may have reflected his desire to keep open private negotiations with Fulton. Also, it wasn't until 1814 that two crucial witnesses who could challenge his claims died. He had found a prominent inventor who attested that Henry Voigt, Fitch's partner, told him that Thornton suggested using a paddle wheel. Voigt died in early 1814. A fellow federal bureaucrat attested that while in Paris, he was told by the American consul, Aaron Vail, who was Fitch's agent, that in 1793 he had given Fulton a complete set of Fitch's drawings and specifications. Vail died in 1813.
To claim victory in his dispute with Latrobe, Thornton cited the jury's only awarding him one cent in damages. To prove his vindication in his dispute with Fulton, he credited his 1814 pamphlet for killing Fulton, a consumptive who died after getting pneumonia in February 1815. However, his pamphlet did not satisfy Thornton. It gave too much credit to Fitch. A Washington newspaper filled two pages with it and then thanked Thornton for bringing Fitch's achievement to light. Thornton tried to rectify that. In 1819, he tried to enlist the aid of the American consul for a steamboat monopoly in Bahia, Brazil. He explained that Fitch was "a poor ignorant and illiterate man," and his boat was too slow. Thornton "engaged to make it go at the rate of eight miles an hour within 18 months.... In one year I succeeded." As for Fulton, he "had seen my papers describing the steam boat in the hands of one of Fitch's partners in France to whom I had sent them to take out a patent there.... [Fulton] of course succeeded but without having invented a single improvement. Success however give him not only all the profits but the eclat of the Invention, with those who are not acquainted with the circumstances."
Actually, Fitch was a prolific writer and his papers remain in several libraries from New York City to Washington. In a 1794 letter to Thornton, Fitch referred him to "my manuscripts" that he wanted Thornton to revise. He used Thornton and other directors only to improve his prose. However, in a 1791 letter, as Fitch prepared to go to France, a fellow director described to Thornton how he wrote the contract for the agent in France and couldn't resist taunting Thornton: "You still condemn the French scheme."(15)
On April 26, 1819, John Quincy Adams went to the Patent Office to do a favor for an American correspondent in Europe who wanted to patent "a simplification of Fulton’s Machinery." Adams wrote in his diary that Thornton showed him that his friend's patent differed "nothing in principle, and very little in mode from several other models of Patents to produce the same effect." Then Thornton told him "the whole Story of his own Steam-boat, which actually ran upon the Schuylkill several years before Fulton’s, but which failed of ultimate success, merely by his want of Perseverance and pecuniary means..."1
Sympathetic contemporaries half believed Thornton’s stories because, especially in regards to the steamboat and Capitol, they had no force affecting current events. When the Fulton company’s monopoly in New York was challenged before Supreme Court, neither Thornton’s patent nor the Patent Office figured in the decision or any arguments made before the court. Adams believed Thornton’s story but drew the correct pathetic conclusion. He simply could not manage to get anything important done. Adams avoided the downside of that. In the spring of 1822, Adams gave Thornton an advance on his pay after he told Adams that the tax-collector had just "seized all his furniture, for the payment of 220. dollars of taxes for the last three years..." Adams moved next door to Thornton in the spring of 1820. In the fall of 1822, “Dr Thornton called at the Office, with a proposal to borrow money, which I declined—.”2 Adams curt response to a friend in need was a testimony to how well his often facetious neighbor concealed his daily distress. During year after her husband died, she resumed writing a diary principally to account for how she repaid his many debts. After finding a letter he wrote begging for money from Tortola, she lamented: "Oh my god how unfortunate he was - always involved in losses and disappointments, by the failure and dishonesty of others, he became plunged from one difficulty to another - and his mind accustomed to lawsuits, debt and all its dreadful consequences. His heart was good, his feelings good, his principles good, and yet circumstances which in many cases he could not control, (tho' I acknowledge in some he was imprudent and led away by the plausible representations and smooth faced deception of others) made it appear that he was indifferent in his pecuniary transactions to those principles of honor and strict propriety which ought always be adhered to by a man of honesty and correct education."(ZZ)
The two neighbors simply enjoyed each other. For example, "we spent the Evening at Dr Thornton’s where we were entertained with Music— Mrs Thornton performed on the Piano, and sung Handels’ Anthem of ‘Comfort ye my People’—much to my satisfaction." And then there was that evening when "Thornton gave us after dinner a perfect surfeit of buffoonery."4 When he became president In 1825, Adams gave Thornton a chance to make one of the finishing touches to the Capitol. Disappointed by the design for the frieze on the pediment to be raised over the portico of the East front, Adams suggested that Thornton and two others be asked for a design. Thornton did not respond and Adams made the design himself.
Adams was at Thornton's funeral, and noted that it attracted “perhaps” 50 carriages, a very good turn out. In his diary, his brief reflection on Thornton's life did not mention the Capitol. He confided a higher estimation of his friend. He "was a man of learning, of genius, of elegant accomplishments and of very eccentric humours— His last years were of straitened circumstances and afflicted with disease."(21) In that era, “elegant accomplishments” meant impeccable presentation in society and Thornton prided himself on being well tailored with a bearing to match. Only when he began to talk did, as another remembrance put it, ******. Adams kept his eulogy to himself.
Publicly, the American Society for the Colonization of Free Negroes, that stole the idea that brought Thornton to America, struck a bell that would have pleased Thornton. They hailed the death of one of their distinguished board members as a loss that "must be severely felt by Africa and mankind." That said, he never freed his half of the slaves working the Pleasant Valley plantation. His widow got the last payout from Tortola; 131 slaves, 73 females and 58 males, were sold and the proceeds divided with Thornton's half-brother's heirs. In his will he encouraged her to free their domestic slaves, if they were worthy. Then in 1807 and 1808, he did not get money from Tortola. A year after proclaiming that he would never sell a slave, he sold Joe Key to a North Carolina congressman for $350.key 1
A week after he died, the National Intelligencer printed a remembrance that rang out a clarion. "C" hailed Thornton as a founder of the city who had been "a commissioner for laying out this Metropolis" and Commissioner of the Patent Office "during four successive administrations." C also noted that Thornton published arguments that formed popular opinion in support of the Greek and Latin American revolutions. In closing, C exalted the man, not his works: "His temperament was highly sensitive and, of course, his character was not exempt from those alloys that are blended with genius.... He was constant and warm in his friendship open and decided in his enmities. His love of knowledge was great; his love of liberty greater; but his greatest love was that of truth. Truth he incessantly sought in every avenue of science or literature, and fearlessly pursued through the whole course of his career with unabated ardor...." C didn't note Thornton's association with the Capitol.(22)
When his wife wrote a brief memoir of his attainments, she also didn't mention the Capitol. Instead, she regretted his embracing "a greater variety of sciences" because it prevented him from attaining what he truly wanted. She credited him for genius in many fields - "philosophy, politics, Finance, astronomy, medicine, Botany, Poetry, painting, religion, agriculture, in all subjects by turns occupied his active and indefatigable mind." She concluded that "had his genius been confined to fewer subjects, had he concentrated his study in some particular science, he would have attained Celebrity."(23) That the ingenious are sometimes frustrated by being only almost good at everything might be the best lesson to draw from Thornton’s life.
But posterity hails him as a genius, and more. Historians often serve a generous helping of small facts more easily repeated than checked, especially when they are sourced to a genius, even one prone to exaggerate. In his editorial comments on Thornton’s January 1800 letter to John Marshall, C. M. Harris quoted Thornton’s recollection of how he tried to bring the General back to life:
The weather was very cold, and [the corpse] remained in a frozen state, for several days. I proposed to attempt his resurrection, in the following manner. First to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the lungs by the trachea, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb. If these means had been resorted to and had failed all that could be done would have been done, but I was not seconded in this proposal for it was deemed unavailing. I reasoned thus. He died by the loss of blood and want of air. Restore these with the heat that had subsequently been deducted, and as the organization was in every respect perfect, there was no doubt in my mind that his restoration was possible….
Harris then notes that “Tobias Lear recorded that the Laws and WT arrived at Mount Vernon ‘about two’ on Sunday afternoon, 15 Dec. 1799, and noted that WT gave advice on matters relating to the burial and was in attendance at the funeral three days dater.” Certainly time enough to voice his harebrained scheme and not hear a second.
However, as soon as he had time after the funeral, Tobias Lear wrote a detailed account of the death of the General. He did not mention that the corpse was frozen. Jefferson's weather record suggests that the average temperature in Virginia was above freezing. Lear wrote that on his death bed, the General had requested that he not be entombed for two days on the odd chance that he wasn't really dead. To Lear’s suggestion that funeral services be delayed longer to permit more relatives to attend, the attending physician and Dr. Thornton objected. The inflammatory nature of the General's fatal case of croup that stopped his breathing made the corpse susceptible to decay. The funeral had to be held as soon as possible, and he was entombed four days after his death.
Thornton crafted his pretensions as a medical letter but it wound up in the same file as his never submitted dissertation “On Sleep.” Much to the amazement of John Quincy Adams, he did talk about the ideas that informed his plan to work a miracle: "Dr Thornton called this morning, and gave me some of his ideas about body and soul. He is writing a pamphlet or dissertation in which he will broach some of his own strange ideas. He denies the existence of the Soul, but believes in the immortality of the body— And he has a theory of suspended animation in which he vouches certain wonderful phenomena, to support the wildest absurdities."
Another of Thornton’s tales surfaced in his wife’s obituary and embarrassed the memory of both her and her mother Mrs. Brodeau. Incidentally, while his design of the Capitol was not mentioned in his obituary, it was in his wife's. She died in 1865, 91 years old. For just over a decade before her death, the city had been focused on the completion of the New Capitol which swallowed the Old. Thornton was remembered as the architect of the "original Capitol." That was garbled in her obituary as "the original architect of the Capitol." Then he managed to take over her obituary, written 37 years after his own death, with the improbable claim that "...Mrs. Thornton was the daughter of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd, of London, who was executed for forgery in 1777." According to the obituary, her mother "emigrated to Philadelphia, under the name of Brodeau, soon after the death of her husband, bringing her daughter with her." She actually came to the city by December 1775 when she advertised the opening of her boarding school. The obituary cited a source for the revelation that Dodd was her father: "It is not believed that she was aware that she was the daughter of Dr. Dodd, although her husband was, and mentioned it to his friend, the late Col. Bomford."
Thornton certainly knew of Dodd. He was 18 when Dodd stretched and likely read the lurid coverage of the eccentric profligate known as the "Macaroni Parson" because of his too fashionable dress and demeanor. He was famous for his uplifting sermons to the fallen women at London's Magdalen Hospital. Perhaps Thornton missed coverage of Dodd's wife of 22 years who was taken to the insane asylum after the hanging. Thornton also told this story: "when a lad at school he handed his uncle two 5 Pound notes and asked him to select the one better engraved. The uncle selected the counterfeit just made by young Thornton." In an essay published in 1819 that argued for paper currency, Thornton claimed that he had "invented" a test to detect forgeries. All to say, he had a fascination with forgery and fancied himself much better at it than his supposed father-in-law. Just before Dodd was arrested in 1777 for an easily detected forged signature of the Earl of Chesterfield on a bond, he wrote to Benjamin Franklin asking about a woman who had moved to Philadelphia. For American historians, that verifies Thornton's claim that the then 3 year old Anna Maria Brodeau was Dodd's daughter.(24)
The General and Jefferson weighed Thornton’s false pretenses, and managed them to their advantage. Madison seemed to enjoy Thornton's perturbations until he almost turned the most problematic period of the nation's history into a disaster. Monroe had no use for Thornton. Measuring Thornton through the eyes of presidents makes sense because he was essentially a courtier and he knew it. That said, he was also celebrated for testing boundaries that might check his quest for celebrity. John Quincy Adams pitied Thornton and the disorder of his latter days, but always smiled at his flames of nonsense and brilliance.
Thornton's contributions to the architecture of the Capitol and city are overblown. The design he brought to Philadelphia would not do and he was coached on how to make one that would. It embodied the ideas of Jefferson, L'Enfant and Hallet. The Capitol would more or less have looked the same in 1829 even if Thornton had not pretended that he was an architect. The solution to the problem of fitting a house next to an angled intersection was not solved by Thornton. He did embrace it, but his February 1800 design for Lot 17 was never built.
In conclusion, if this examination of Dr. T- does not change the current take on the amateur architect and abiding genius of the nation's capital, the author asks one indulgence. Let future historians be more sympathetic to what Hallet, Hadfield, Hoban, and Latrobe faced at the Capitol thanks to Thornton's vain scorn. As for the Octagon, remember the "ingenious A" who offered specimens of designs suitable for angles acute or obtuse.
1. Harris p. 528; Lear Journal, Clements Library; Harris, p. 528; Thompson, Mary V. "Death Defied" Mount Vernon Museum; Jefferson's weather observations, page 25;
2. Adams' diary, June 25, 1823
3. Adams diary 27 December 1804; Preston, Daniel, "Administration of Patent Office...." Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 331-353; Dobyns History of the Patent Office, Chapter 7
4. Adams diary 23 August 1819;
5. AMT notebook, volume 3, image 47; Dobyns, p. 47; Demerrit, Dwight D., "John H. Hall and the Origin of the Breechloader." American Society of Arms Collector Bulletin, 42; 24-29; National Intelligencer, 25 March 1819, 1 April 1819;
6. AMT notebook vol. 3 page 6; Jefferson to Fulton, 16 August 1807; Fulton to Jefferson, 9 February 1809.
7. WT to Madison, 9 December 1808;
6. AMT notebook, volume 3, image 47; Dobyns, p. 47; AMT Notebook, 10 April 1808; National Intelligencer ad dated May 16, 1808, Key escaped on Alexandria, then, in 1812 was found on the farm next to Thornton’s and sold again; Richard Forrest to Madison 12 September 1810
7. AMT notebook vol. 4 image 10; Legacies of British Slavery, "Pleasant Valley Estate, Tortola, Virgin Islands."
8. AMT papers vol. 4 image 11; Robert Louis Gilmore and John Parker Harrison, "Juan Bernardo Elbers and the Introduction of Steam navigation on the Magdalena River." The Hispanic American Historical Review, August 1948.
9. Alice Crary Sutcliffe, Robert Fulton Google Books;Fulton to Jefferson 9 January and 28 July 1807 ; Jefferson to Fulton, 16 August 1807, ; Century Magazine, vol. 78, 1909 pp. 815ff
10. Fitch to Thornton 1 February 1798 Harris pp. 433-5; WT to James Nourse 7 September 1798 Harris pp. 470-1; New Daily Advertiser, 11 April 1798; Dobyns, pp. 52-53,; for WT letter to Virginia legislature see appendix #2 Thornton, Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats Written in 1810 and Now Committee to the Press, 1814 ; see a photostat of Fulton's patent specifications at (Mostly) IP History blog. See also WT to Fell 21 June 1802, Harris pp. 573-4.
11. Thornton's circular letter to newspapers dated 5 March 1811 is in National Intelligencer 12 March 1811,
12. Dobyns, Kenneth, History of the Patent Office, chapter 9.
13. Century Magazine vol. 70, 1909 pp. 832-3 ; Clark pp. 186-7; AMT papers, vol. 3, 10 July 1811 image 125ff ; WT to Madison, 3 August 1811;
14. Westcott, Life of John Fitch (google books); Burlington Advertiser 15 June 1790; Thornton, Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats Written in 1810 and Now Committee to the Press, 1814 .
15. Dobyns; Tayloe, B.O., In Memoriam p. 98; WT to Henry Hill 20 April 1818, in Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton" pp. 187-8; Adams' diary 26 April 1819; Richard Stockton to WT, 8 December 1791, Harris p. 172; for evidence that he was not illiterate see Fitch, John, and Frank D. Prager. “An Early Steamboat Plan of John Fitch.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 79, no. 1 (1955): 63–80;
16. Madison to Lee et al 10 March 1815; Thornton, "Outlines..." in Cleven, N. Andrew, "Thornton's Outlines...." Hispanic American Historial Review, Vol.12 No. 2 (May 1932) pp. 198-215.
17. James Lloyd to John Adams, 7 April 1815; reply 22 April
18. WT to Jefferson, 9 January 1821; AMT papers vol. 3 image 234; Rush to Madison 2 September 1815; Adams' diary 23 August 1819; WT to John Adams 3 August 1822
19. Monroe to Madison 13 February 1818 ; Adams' diary 27 January, 7, 13, & 23 February 1818; Demerrit, Dwight D., "John H. Hall and the Origin of the Breechloader." American Society of Arms Collector Bulletin, 42; 24-29; National Intelligencer, 25 March 1819, 1 April 1819
ZZ. AMT notebook vol. 4 image 10; WT’s financial woes were complicated by his securing a $10,000 bail for Blodget in 1803 for which he was responsible after Blodget broke bounds in 1806 by returning to Philadelphia. He sold his Lancaster property for pounds sterling which gave him leverage with banks and cachet with friends addicted to British luxuries but it didn’t prevent his almost drowning in debt even though his friends on the Supreme Court preserved the North Carolina Gold Company. Unfortunately, it never paid out any money during his lifetime. See WT to Madison 17 December 1808; Bickley v. Blodget; Thornton v. Carson's Executor, Google Books; and Keeping Philadelphia, the historic nomination documents for Blodget's Greenville Mansion
21. Adams' diary 16 October 1821; November 30, 1819; April 8, 1821; 17 May 1825
22. Adams' diary March 30, 1828; Daily National Intelligencer 4 April 1828; History of African Colonization p. 256;
23. Clark,"Dr. and Mrs. Thornton", p. 199
24. The author of her obituary may have told the tale about Dodd to deflect conversation from Mrs. Thornton’s own brush with history. In 1835, Arthur Bowen, who was the son of Mrs. Thornton's favorite slave Maria, who slept in the same bedroom as her master. Drunk and holding an ax, Bowen entered their room at night and elicited cries of "murder!" Rioters blamed abolitionist pamphlets and attacked free blacks. After Mrs. Thornton begged him to, President Jackson saved Bowen from the hangman. He was sold and sent to Florida where he served as a steward on a Navy steamboat. Berlin, Jean V. "A Mistress and a Slave: Anna Maria Thornton and John Arthur Bowen" Proceeding South Carolina Historical Associationy, 1990; Tayloe, B.O., , In Memoriam. p. 100; Dodd, "Thoughts in Prison...." Wikimedia commons; Dodd to Franklin 29 January 1777 footnote; Clark, "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton", p. 148; Fitzgerald, Percy, A Famous Forgery, 1865, pp. 9, 155ff; See also Claude-Anne Lopez, "Benjamin Franklin and William Dodd: A New Look at an Old Cause Célèbre." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 129, No. 3 (Sep., 1985), pp. 260-267.
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