Epilogue: John Quincy Adams' Diary
Epilogue: John Quincy Adams' Diary
Thornton's claims about designing and overseeing construction of the Capitol have all been examined. His long tenure at the Patent Office relieved him of any power over the Capitol. However, the way he continued to stroke his vanity reflected his pretensions as an architect. In general, he thought there was nothing new under the sun, but he soon gained a reputation for claiming prior invention for anything that was new. Revolutions usually temper the vanity of any one man, but as his enthusiasm for South American revolutions grew so did his claims of leading them. Although he shied from practicing medicine, he couldn't help but fancy that he was a life-giver non pareil:
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.
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. On the day after his death, the attending physician and Dr. Thornton vetoed Lear’s suggestion that funeral services be delayed to permit more relatives to attend. They objected because 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.(1)
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 plans to work miracles: "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."(2)
Adams engaged Thornton as a senator, secretary of state, next door neighbor and president. In his diary, one finds the best documentation of Thornton's way of lying. But in his early encounters with Thornton, Adams duly noted his assertions. He checked on the patent application of a friend and found that Thornton "had got the Patent nearly made out; but told me he thought it 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—."(3)
Thornton had a virtual sinecure. Depending on how quickly he could write up a few hundred patents a year, he had ample time to write philanthropic essays and found the North Carolina Gold Mine Company. But, he also used his office to leverage his claims of prior invention and tried to negotiate a share of profits and fame.
In 1819, after a year of being his boss, Secretary of State Adams assessed Thornton's performance:
— 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)
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." In 1811, citing his 1792 letter to the King's gunsmith and a gun made according his drawings in 1810, Thornton insisted that John Hancock Hall agree to a joint patent for the breech loading rifle. The young Maine inventor was advised by others to give in and he did. Thornton insisted that Jacob Cist change his patent for making printer's ink from anthracite coal and then angled to become his sales agent.(5)
There were mitigating circumstances for his chicanery at the Patent Office. He had lost his personal fortune. In an 1808 letter to a friend, Latrobe pitied Thornton: "the worst that can be said of him is that he is a Madman from vanity, incorrect impecuniary conduct, and official intrigue from Poverty." Adding to the problem, while he did not have enough money, he tried to act like he did. In 1803, his friend Blodget faced a court judgment to pay $21,000 to the winner of the Federal City Lottery to finance finishing the top prize, a "Superb Hotel." Blodget had to sell his properties and that netted Thornton ownership of his F Street home and other real estate. However, Thornton was not a vulture picking at his friend's estate. He also secured Blodget's $10,000 bail. In 1806, Blodget broke the bounds that confined him to the city, and consequently Thornton became responsible for Blodget's debts. Thornton tried in vain to sell his thoroughbreds. The only property he could sell was in Lancaster, England. His surviving aunt moved in with Robert Foster's sister. The $20,000 from the sale soothed his and Blodget's creditors. 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. In December 1808, Thornton briefly fled the city to escape being jailed. On years when money came from Tortola, he splurged. In 1810, he had US Consul Tobias Lear buy and ship home an Arabian horse from Algiers.(6)
A few months after her husband's death on March 28, 1828, Mrs. Thornton now and then resumed keeping a diary. 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." Shortly after writing that she got the last payout from Tortola in 1829; 131 slaves, 73 females and 58 males, were sold and the proceeds divided by her and Thornton's half-brother's heirs.(7)
Her rather spare diary chronicled how she raised money to pay her husband's debts. On August 12 she "sent a letter to Don Pedro Gual and enclosed a privilege for navigating steamboats on the river Magdalena River given to my husband & c. &c." This Thornton scheme was a dream of Thornton's if not a kindly joke of Don Pedro's. She didn't note if somebody actually paid her for the privilege to ply the South American river. In 1824, the revolutionary government had given a German born merchant in the country and on the challenging river exclusive rights.(8) Raising money was probably not Mrs. Thornton's point. She was celebrating her husband's fame in the new Republic of Colombia.
Thornton had no doubt that he was responsible for the first successful steamboat in America. But that boat had not been in the river since 1790 and had been broken up for scrap. It did not impress Pennsylvania born Robert Fulton. He had embarked on an artistic career in Philadelphia, but, in 1786, he crossed the ocean and stayed twenty years. In time, he forsook Benjamin West for James Watt. After trying to impress the British and French governments with his submarine and torpedo, Fulton came to the federal city in late 1806 to promote national defense with "Torpedo War," as he would call his book published in 1810. He also had a pamphlet on the necessity of a network of canals for defense and commerce. The Navy was skeptical. The Jefferson administration embraced him. Thornton spent New Year's Day 1807 with Fulton. In the summer of 1807, thanks to being bankrolled by the Livingston family, Fulton's steamboat made successful round trips from Manhattan to Albany 150 miles up the Hudson River with an average speed of 4 miles an hour. In the fall of 1808, he spent more time in the federal city to work on a patent application for his boat. Thornton's ensuing battle with Robert Fulton mirrored his battle with Latrobe but far more was at stake.(9)
Thornton recognized that Fulton had solved the real steamboat problem. He had money backing him up. Frustrated as he tried to raise money off land he thought he owned in Kentucky, John Fitch killed himself in July 1798. That in April, New York had repealed the law giving Fitch "the sole right and advantage of making and employing a steamboat" seems to have had no bearing on his demise. He wrote his last letter to Thornton in February 1798, mentioning his will that gave a portion of his disputed property to Thornton. He did not mention the steamboat per se. His letter heaped more praise on the company's agent in France than it did on Thornton who would ascribe Fitch's demise to insobriety and strange religious beliefs. No one, least of all Thornton who had left the project just when it began building a new boat, tried to revive the company. Its chief engineer, Henry Voight, had become the key employee in the US Mint. Other directors in the company had gone on to successful careers in banking, law and medicine. In January 1809, Thornton gave himself a patent for steamboat improvements the day before Fulton applied for a patent. In May, Thornton tried to open negotiations with Fulton and Robert Livingston. Fitch's steamboat 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. He asked Fulton and Livingston for equal thirds of their company's profits. Then he whittled that down to one-eighth of the net profits. Fulton didn't take him seriously. Then Thornton attacked, writing letters to state legislatures where Fulton was trying to get a monopoly. His original monopoly for steamboat service on the Hudson was contingent on putting steamboats in service. He had to build and improve to get more passengers. Thornton attested that Fulton's patent described nothing new and thus any monopoly awarded would stifle genuine improvements to the steamboat. In response, Fulton got a patent in 1811 describing improvements he had since made to his steamboats.(10)
In the meantime, 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."(11)
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 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.(12)
Fulton hit on a way to underscore Thornton's inability to apply any of his ideas. 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 such 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 didn't react because Fulton set out to have his lawyers depose Thornton before a judge and force him to admit that Fulton's patents did describe improvements to the steamboat. But in July, Thornton was prostrated by rheumatic fever and didn't recover until September.(13)
Then he resumed his fight against Fulton. To better belittle his patents he published a pamphlet with a curious title: "Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats Written in 1810 and Now Committed to the Press, 1814." That he waited until 1814 to make his case public may 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 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.
In his pamphlet, Thornton explained that in 1787 Fitch's boat only made 4 miles an hour. Then at Thornton's suggestion, it was redesigned and made 8 miles an hour. While there remains no corroborating evidence for those claims, there are several references to the boat going 7 miles an hour. Fitch's boat provided a ferry service on the Delaware River. In June 1790, it made a trip to Burlington, New Jersey. Newspapers throughout the country noted the 80 mile round trip, and gave Fitch and Voight full credit. In his pamphlet, Thornton claimed that he agreed "at once" to Fulton's offer, but since Fulton "declined to write the terms," he could do nothing.(14) Although his patent application was burned in the December 1836 Patent Office fire, presumably already had the drawings and expertise. He didn't have the money. Why didn't he propose the terms?
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." Thornton often repeated the story, even though it high lighted his own shortcomings. As Adams put it in his diary 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..."
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." Thornton did not write the papers that Fitch took to France.(15)
Thornton looked for monopoly rights in South America because he had expanded his horizons. In April 1815, while Americans were trying to convince themselves that they had won the war, Thornton 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 the United States to give up the Louisiana Purchase.(16)
On April 11, 1815, President Madison appointed three other men to be the commissioners overseeing restoration of the Capitol. Thornton celebrated his hemispheric republic. He put its 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;..."(17)
On April 13, 1815, a Mr. Pinto, from Argentina, dined with the Thorntons. In late August, Thornton took Don Pedro Gual to meet Richard Rush, in hopes that the attorney general would facilitate an arms shipment to Colombia. Not a few American’s of the post-Revolutionary War generation looked for other revolutions to fight. John Quincy Adams’s bother-in-law William Stephens Smith was arrested in New York for aiding Miranda, and his nephew William Steuben Smith barely escaped the revolution in Venezuela with his life. Thornton rarely ventured beyond F Street. No matter, in 1821, he would inform Jefferson that “all the great revolutionary Characters of South America have considered my House, as a place of friendly Consultation.”
Thornton cast himself as a great inventor and revolutionary at the same time. In the 1819 diary entry in which he looked askance at the Patent Superintendent, Adams regretted having anything to do with the revolutionary:
He 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.
In a letter to Adams' father, the former president, Thornton claimed that 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."(18)
That he was a liar also kept him in the administration’s dog house. He wrote a series of articles under the name South Columbian and then just Columbian. In June 1817, a freebooter named Gregor 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 Rush and also sent him to see Charles Bagot, the British minister. That would give the impression that Britain was also bargaining for Florida. In a January 7 letter in the National Intelligencer, "A Columbian" revealed MacGregor's plan, his meeting with Bagot, and that a member of Monroe's cabinet supported MacGregor. The purpose of the article was to ridicule the Monroe administration for not closing a deal to buy Florida.
Monroe and Bagot were incensed. Bagot told Secretary of State John Quincy Adams about his chilly reception of MacGregor and his amazement that Thornton sent him. Then Adams got Thornton to reveal former Attorney General Richard Rush as the cabinet member, and he asked Thornton for "the substance of his Conversations with M’Gregor, and with Mr Rush." That the latter succumbed to MacGregor's wiles was unbelievable. 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." As for Bagot's version, Thornton called him 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."
Of course, it was Thornton promotion of MacGregor months after he met him that stunned the administration. As for Rush's supporting the scheme, 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 gun, Thornton had lost his drawings and relied on his clerks to attest that they had once seen them.(19)
Periodically, there was a test of Thornton's vanity, and that he so often lost mollified the community's opinion of Dr. T. Because his overweight jockey was unable to control Eclipse Herod, he was the laughing stock of the 1811 November races. The ramifications of his Rattler coming up lame at the 1821 races amused sportsmen all the way to the 1827 Supreme Court decision in Thornton v. Wynn 25 US 183. It set a precedent for consumer rights. The court sent a judgment against Thornton for not paying for Rattler back to the lower court. Meanwhile, despite his shameful condition in 1821 when Thornton bought the horse, in 1822 he advertised Rattler's stud services as superior to those provided by Tayloe's Sir Archy, since judged the greatest 19th century American stud. 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.(20)
By race day 1821, Adams had been Thornton's next door neighbor for over a year. The first item in his long October 16 diary entry, that ended with a letter from the president, was "First day of the Washington City Races, and Dr Thornton’s horse Rattler, lost the race, to his great disappointment. I was not there...." Thornton forged a cordial relationship with Adams, e.g. "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 the evening when "Thornton gave us after dinner a perfect surfeit of buffoonery."
When he became president in 1825, Adams gave Thornton a chance to design 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 he noted that it attracted 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)
Adams kept that 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." 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 architecture, but she did understand what he incessantly sought. It wasn't truth. She regretted his embracing "a greater variety of sciences" because it prevented him from attaining the fame he truly wanted. She credited him for genius in many fields - "philosophy, politics, Finance, astronomy, medicine, Botany, Poetry, painting, religion, agriculture, in short all subjects by turns occupied his active and indefatigable mind." She concluded that "had his genius been confined to fewer subjects, had he concentrated his study in some particular science, he would have attained Celebrity."(23)
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." At least her mother could keep a secret. She moved in with the Thorntons in 1795 and died in the F Street house in 1835.
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 seemed to have a fascination with forgery, and was 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.
However, 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, 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
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
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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