(PDF) MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE VOL. 55, No. 2 JUNE, i960msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5800/sc5881/000001/00… · mond, by Ellen Hart Smith Belknap, American Colonial Painting:

MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE VOL. 55, No. 2 JUNE, i960

CONTENTS PAGE

A Facet of Sovereignty James High 67

Life on the C. & O. Canal: 1859 Ella E. Clark 82

Mount Air: The Story of an Early Maryland Estate Martha Sprigg Poole 123

Sidelights 138 Jonathan Boucher, Toryissimus Richard M. Gummere

Reviews of Recent Books 146 Hopkins and Hargreaves, eds.. The Papers of Henry Clay,

Volume 1, by Bernard Mayo Davis, Doctor Kelly of Hopkins, by Alan M. Chesney Gumming, Kaie: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse and Wiley,

ed., A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Rich- mond, by Ellen Hart Smith

Belknap, American Colonial Painting: Materials for a History, by Grose Evans

Wainwright, George Croghan, Wilderness Diplomat, by Rhoda M. Dorsey

Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intel- lectual Life, by Verne E. Ghatelain

Rayback, Millard Fillmore; Biography of a President, by Fred Shelley

Whitehill, Boston—A Topographical History, by Douglas H. Gordon

Merritt, ed,. Proceedings of the Provincial Court of Maryland, 1678-1679 (Archives of Maryland, LXVIII, Gourt Series 13), by Eric McDermott, S. J.

Juet, Juet's Journal. The Voyage of the Half Moon from 4 April to 7 November 1609, by Fred Shelley

Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary, by N. G. Hughes Allen, Covered Bridges of the Middle Atlantic States,

by L. B. Holdridge Dowling, On Chesapeake Shores, by G. A. P. Hopkins

Notes and Queries 162

Contributors 163

Maryland Historical Society Report for 1959 .... 164

Annual Subscription to the Magazine, $4.00. Each issue $1.00. The Magazine assumes no responsibility for statements or opinions expressed in its pages.

Richard Walsh, Editor

C. A. Porter Hopkins, Asst. Editor

The Magazine is entered as second class matter, at the post office at Baltimore, Maryland, under Act of August 24, 1912.

PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY Add 25 cents for mailing and

Maryland sales tax where applicable.

His Lordship's Patronage: Offices of Profit in Colonial Maryland, by Donnell M. Owings. 1953. (Studies in Maryland History No. 1) .. $6.00

Baltimore as Seen by Visitors, 1783-1860. Raphael Semmes. 1953. (Studies in Maryland History, No. 2) $4.00

The Dulanys of Maryland, Biographical Study Daniel Dulany, the Elder, and the Younger. By Aubrey C. Land. 1955. (Studies in Maryland History, No. 3) $6.00

William Buckland, 1734-1774. Architect of Virginia and Maryland. By Rosamond Randall Beirne and John Henry Scarff, F. A. I. A. 1958. (Studies in Maryland History, No. 4) $7.50

The Star-Spangled Banner Manuscript in Facsimile. Encased in handsome folder $1.00

The Star-Spangled Banner. Illustrated booklet. Description of the writing of our National Anthem. By Harold R. and Beta K. Manakee, 1954 $ .50

Indians of Early Maryland. By Harold R. Manakee, 1959. 48 pp Cloth bound $1.80

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MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

A Quarterly

Volume 55 JUNE, I960 Number 2

A FACET OF SOVEREIGNTY: THE PROPRIETARY GOVERNOR AND THE

MARYLAND CHARTER

By JAMES HIGH

< < 'Tp HE most interesting and the least known period of Mary- JL land's history is that which preceded the War of Inde-

pendence. The political and material development of a Province founded under peculiar circ*mstances and a unique form of government, were determined by causes in many respects unlike those which operated in the other colonies. . . ." 1 Maryland's charter, granted to Cecilius Calvert, second Baron of Baltimore, June 20, 1632, was certainly unlike any other one; and the tenure in America of the Lords Baltimore under its terms was longer than any other proprietary group. The Calvert family remained " the

1 William Hand Browne, Maryland: The History of a Palatinate (Boston, 1884), v (preface).

68 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

true and absolute Lords and Proprietaries of the Region aforesaid " until 1116?

This tenure was, however, at the expense of ever decreasing power; and its corollary, increasing colonial sovereignty. The grip of the proprietors had been temporarily loosened during the English Civil War, when parliamentary power in England supplanted that of the crown. The charter was again suspended after the Glorious Revolution when the Orange King William represented British constitutionality. Each time that the descendants of George Calvert regained their colony some of the " abso- lutism " had been shorn away, until by the middle of the eighteenth century when the sixth and last Lord Baltimore inherited the Calvert patrimony, only the name of "" absolute Lord " remained, along with one essential element—a princely income.

Although by 1765, this last Baltimore actually retained very little authority beyond the ability to collect his quit-rents and distribute patronage, he never did fully admit his changed status. He continued to press his " rights by Charter grant'd " until his death just before the Revolution.

At the very moment when both proprietor and king (by no means in complete accord) were being challenged in Maryland by the colonists's refusal to pay the stamp duties, Reverend Thomas Bacon published the collected Laws of Maryland. The essence of this book was to make available the constitutional body of legal thought that had been produced by the colonial Assembly; a most palpable step toward provincial sovereignty which could be fully obtained only at the cost of the proprietor and the crown. The editor was a member of the group of middle-class men in Maryland who were much concerned with the Lockean principles of " life, liberty and property." Protection of property was the philosophic core of their political thinking; by nature and its laws the land and product of the New World were theirs. Bacon, himself a conservative man, was neither willing, nor foolish enough, to fly in the face of tradition; he wanted no anarchic levelling.3 He was only stating fact in the preface to his Laws

'Laws of Maryland at Large, compiled by Thomas Bacon (Annapolis, 1765), d (preface), hereafter cited as Bacon, Laws.

3 See Thomas Bacon, Sermons Addressed to Masters and Servants . . . (Win- chester, Virginia, 1813), first published in 1743; Two Sermons Preached to a Congregation of Black Slaves . . . in the Province of Maryland (London, 1749, 1784). Both of these books carry the message of masters, property owners to their servants: stay in your place—get your reward in heaven.

A FACET OF SOVEREIGNTY 69

when he recounted that there had been "... several Revolutions of Government in this Province," that law and order were supreme, and that Baltimore's rights were intact. How else could he get the proprietor to subscribe £100 sterling toward its publication? Bacon, thinking on an entirely different level from that of his feudal overlord, could write in perfect honesty that the " Proprietaries having never forfeited those private Rights by any Act of Disloyalty, or illegal Resistance to the established Power," need have no fear of democratic pretensions on the part of the Assembly.*

Only a few years later there was no question of the proprietor's having given up any " rights " of political control. He simply never had any. Magna Carta was paramount to the Maryland Charter in that respect; and so far as "" private Rights " were concerned, they were precisely those of any man: the natural right to life, liberty and property. Finally, in 1783, the heir to the proprietorship was granted £10,000 by the Maryland legislature in payment for his claims to land only. The British government gave him £90,000 for his claim to the proprietorship, even though England had lost the American colonies, and the person in question, Henry Harford, had moved to Maryland and had become an American citizen.5

A cleavage in thinking so complete represented the extreme on both sides of the question of colonial sovereignty that had seethed in Maryland, as well as in the other colonies, for over a hundred years; yet respect for, and interest in, property appears on either side at the very bottom of the struggle for control of the political structure of Maryland. By 1765, such a man as Bacon was only beginning to think in terms of both liberty and property; he was still willing to respect the colonial income of Lord Baltimore, but he and his friends were beginning to question the public rights of an absentee political proprietor. The frontispiece of his edition of the Laws was a copy of the Maryland Charter of 1632.6 The emphasis here was on Magna Carta and the private rights of the proprietor. Proprietary property was still sacred—so long as it was property. '" Jonas Green, Printer to the Province," published the

4 Bacon, Laws, preface, followed by a list of the subscribers with Baltimore in first place, succeeded by the names of Horatio Sharpe and the Council.

5 Browne, op. cit., p. 285. ' Bacon, Laws, preface.

70 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

work, and the chief subscribers were Governor Horatio Sharpe and certain members of his Council—John Ridout, Daniel Dulany, Benjamin Tasker.

Twenty-two years later, '" Frederick Green, Printer to the State," son of Jonas, published another set of the Laws of Maryland. His volume contained no list of subscribers, no patron; the sovereign state of Maryland authorized and paid for the project. The sense of property was just as evident as it had been before, but now the frontispiece was a quotation from Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws: " The natural Place of Virtue is near to Liberty; but it is not nearer to excessive Liberty than it is to Slavery." 7

A revolution had intervened during the years since the Stamp Act. The Sons of Liberty had not forsaken the standard of life, liberty and property; these must all be protected, not from proprietor and king, but from the "' mob." The old supporters of prerogative had been sifted from the ranks of the '" country party "; Dulany, Tasker and Galloway were gone. In their stead were John Ridout, Major Jenifer, Upton Scott, now loyal Ameri- cans, the conservatives of Maryland.8 They had gone along with the Revolution, but they had maintained their property and their stake in the government of the new state. They were all men who had been elevated to office by Governor Sharpe; and they all believed in liberty with law and order. Sovereignty was now in the hands of those local property owners where it had been thought to belong for a long time—ever since this group of landed middle-class merchant-planters had begun to rise from the obscur- ity of penury at the start of the eighteenth century. This is clearly a beginning, not only of the quest for American sovereignty, but also of middle-class American thinking; making it appear that perhaps the two things were interchangeable from the outset.

The charter of 1632 granted the proprietor the right of holding a principality in the wilderness; he was a feudal lord owing allegi- ance only to his monarch. His colonists, in turn, held " of him their land in meane," as of a feudal prince of the middle ages. The lord's " services of arms " were discharged at Windsor Castle every year by the presentation of " two Indian Arrows of those Parts." The inhabitants of Maryland, for their part, were required to pay homage to their proprietor " in free socage," that

7 Laws of Maryland . . . Passed since 1763 (Annapolis, 1783), frontispiece. 8 See notes 12 and 28.

A FACET OF SOVEREIGNTY 71

is, their services were discharged by an annual money payment called quitrent. Baltimore might have feudal concepts of land tenure and political rights, but he and his descendants knew the value of a pound sterling!

Proprietary rights included power to make and adjudge laws, " Remit, Release, Pardon, and Abolish, all Crimes and Offences whatsoever against such Laws, whether before, or after Judg- ment passed." 9 In short, his power was as absolute as it could be made by charter. The only restraining clause in the whole document was the final admonition to administer Maryland "(so far as conveniently may be) agreeable to the Laws, Statutes, Cus- toms and Rights of this Our Kingdom of England." 10 Here was the point upon which the whole structure of constitutional opposition to the proprietor was built. Baltimore, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was still insisting on the Stuart interpretation of the constitution, but in reality John Locke's teaching was taking on a new slant; the alliance between property and government in the New World was becoming all too apparent. Magna Carta combined with a doctrine of '" natural laws " made a formula that could be summoned up by the Maryland Assembly through the very medium of the proprietor's instrument of right—the Maryland Charter—and verbalized as the rights of Englishmen under the British Constitution.

By the original terms the proprietor had the right of " any Captain-General of an army " to declare and wage war, even to the extent of invading a " foreign country," or executing prisoners at discretion. He could found towns and cities, designate ports, set up boroughs, counties and parishes. All maritime rights—prize courts, control of navigation, curing fish and reserving timber were granted by charter. This charter suspended the statute of quia emptores terrarum, and granted the right to establish " Courts- leet," and to "" hold View of Frank-Pledge . . . for the Conserva- tion of Peace and better Government." " It was a remarkable document, hedged around with safeguards for the proprietor's interest, anticipating every contingency—except one: the behavior of people in the New World.

8 Bacon, Laws, e. 10 Ibid. 11 Browne, op. cit., pp. 177-178, has some curious cases of courts-baron and

courts-leet. "Views of frank pledge" were held on some manors up into the ninteenth century.

72 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

From 1634 to 1649, Maryland had as governor a member of the Calvert family, either the proprietor or his deputy; and he was assisted by a Council of State, usually composed of close friends or relatives. The Puritan Revolution was felt in the colony, and the Council turned into the Assembly, based on a franchise of sorts. The charter was suspended for a time, and the province was left to develop its own version of " parliamentary rule " with or without commissioners. When the third Lord Baltimore was reinstated after 1660, the Assembly remained although it was of little significance during the Restoration. The fourth Lord Bal- timore lost his colony again during the reign of William and Mary, and Sir Lionel Copley was appointed first royal governor in 1692. He ruled with the aid of a royally appointed Council and the locally elected Assembly. The pattern of Governor, Coun- cil and Assembly was now set for the remainder of the colonial period.

In order to regain his province, the current Lord Baltimore renounced the faith of his fathers and became a Protestant in order to be able to accept the Act of Supremacy and the Test Act; accordingly he received back his old charter intact in 1715. He was soon succeeded by Charles, fifth Baron of Baltimore, a man of small talent and little ambition who delegated the governorship of Maryland to his brother, Benedict Leonard, and showed little interest in the New World. After Benedict Leonard's time (1727- 1731) no further proprietary interference of consequence took place in Maryland until after the sixth Lord Baltimore came into power at the time of the French and Indian War.

In the meanwhile a new era had dawned in the field of constitutional development. The Stuarts were gone forever, and the new ruling house of Hanover was well fenced about with Parli- amentary restrictions. The British Constitution was being wielded by Parliament and its English middle-class constituents. Sir Robert Walpole was in the ascendancy, with the landed Whigs in league with the town merchants.

In Maryland a counterpart of constitutional reform took place. A " country party " began to emerge, built first on resistance to the radical dissenters of Cromwell, then as opponents of the stringent royal control under Queen Anne. At the turn of the eighteenth century the strength of this group was beginning to be felt in the Assembly. These men were acquiring property and

A FACET OF SOVEREIGNTY 73

gaining wealth; they were the rising class of merchant-planters who were to dominate Maryland for over half a century. It was they who held Maryland to a moderate course in the Revolution, who helped ratify the Constitution in 1787.12

By 1731, although the charter remained unchanged, its interpretation was modified, despite the original intention of Charles I, beyond possibility of its return to the feudal pattern of 1632.

The proprietary deputy governor who contributed most to solidi- fying these changes was Samuel Ogle, almost continuously in office from 1731 until his death in 1751. Charles, fifth Baron of Baltimore, died the same year. Ogle, an English army officer, came to Maryland to serve the proprietor and to enforce the terms of his charter; but he soon became involved deeply in the affairs of the New World—by way of marriage, economic interest and politics. He married a daughter of Benjamin Tasker, prominent member of the local legislature, and later, President of the Council. Besides the name of Tasker, Ogle's memory is associated with those of Dulany, Jenings, Tilghman, Lloyd, Henry —middle-class wealth. As these men increased in numbers and wealth they gained strength against the proprietor; each step up in material consequence was accompanied by a further accretion of political importance. Ogle, as one of them, sacrificed the proprietor's privileges and allowed popular precedents to be set which later on proved impossible to overturn. At last, in 1751, when Frederick, sixth Baron of Baltimore, became proprietor, the Assembly was made up of these men, and it was supreme in political fact, if not in name.

The first right stripped from the charter privileges was that of founding towns and counties. In 1650, only sixteen years after the first settlement, the legislature set up Anne Arundel County, adding others as it saw fit. In the first half of the eighteenth century the Assembly founded villages by the score, aided and abet- ted by the governor and the Council, in the hope of profitable land speculation.13 One right followed another, until only the name of proprietorship remained—and the income. Those disappeared in 1776.

12 See Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation (1940, 1948), pp. 223-224, 236-237, for the activities of such a man as Major Daniel St. Thomas Jenifer at the time of the American Revolution.

13 Aubrey C. Land, "The Genesis of a Colonial Fortune: Daniel Dulany of Maryland," William and Mary Quarterly, 3 of ser., VII (April, 1950), 256-269.

74 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

The situation faced by the new proprietor and his governor, Horatio Sharpe, in 1753, was complicated by an Assembly, over- weening from thirty years of appeasem*nt on the part of the proprietor, and fat from the product of their control. They were " recalcitrant " to the new lord who was intent upon enforcing his " ancient rights and prerogative." The Council was apathetic and complacent as an honorary adjunct to the Assembly. In the case of Sharpe, the Board of Trade, for the first time, exacted a stringent oath from a governor of Maryland, which was accompanied by a large bond, executed similarly by Baltimore and Sharpe." The crown no longer thought of Lord Baltimore as the absolute arbiter of a distant corner of the empire; certainly the people of Maryland did not.

To complicate the problem even more. Great Britain was faced by the possibility of a death struggle with France in the New World that would certainly require all the cooperation among the colonies and mother country that could be mustered. The Maryland Assembly took the exigencies of the war as opportunity to further its constitutional gains. At every attempt of the crown to exact support for the war, the Assembly advanced its grievances to be settled first. One historian has called it the " champion of popular control. Stubbornly and persistently it fought ... to free Maryland from proprietary rule and external control." 15

Sharpe came to Maryland in 1753 firm in his loyalty to the proprietor and bent on upholding the prerogative. He was unaware of the local ramifications of politics that had altered the feudal relationship of old between lord and colonists. His instructions were clear that the charter rights of the Barons of Baltimore must be maintained; it was only intimated that a local faction of mal- contents might try to divert the Assembly from its duty.

What he actually found was an administrative arrangement that had grown up through the years and had the sanction of custom and time. As he reported to the Board of Trade, " The Legis- lature consists of three branches, . . . the Governor; an upper

14 King in Council at St. James, March 11, 1752, Miscellaneous Letters, American- British (Library of Congress Transcripts).

15 Paul Henry Giddens, " Governor Horatio Sharpe and his Maryland Govern- ment," Maryland Historical Magazine, XXXII (June, 1937), 174. See also St. George L. Sioussat, Economics and Politics in Maryland, 1720-1730, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, XXI (Baltimore, 1903), for the institutional foundations of the Assembly's later supremacy.

A FACET OF SOVEREIGNTY 75

House of Assembly (of which there are twelve Members nomi- nated by the Lord Proprietary, who commonly continue for Life); and a Lower House composed of 58 Members, chosen by the People to represent them; four for each county, and two for the City of Annapolis." 16

This arrangement had developed through usage, since the charter did not provide for any legislature. At first, probably, all the colonists sat in council with the governor who was also the proprietor; but soon, only four years after their initial landing, in 1638, writs were sent out by his lordship for the election of representatives in " Place of all the Freemen." " The number of Assemblymen from each county, and the manner of their election was never set down in law or charter; only the precedent of former years, modified by expediency, and by the proprietor's fiat, established the tradition of a popular Assembly, elected every three years on the basis of a freehold franchise among Protestants only. For example, in 1670, through a piece of executive legislation reminiscent of a Tudor statute, the franchise was restricted to those males owning fifty acres in freehold or the equivalent of property valued at £40 sterling.18 It was necessary at another time to invoke the old custom of assessing a fine on all qualified voters who failed to cast their ballots. One hundred pounds of tobacco was forfeit on such occasion. Since the " Inhabitants shall have all their Rights and Liberties according to the Great Charter of England," it was argued reasonably that they must exercise these rights in order to keep them. This lay at the very basis of the long struggle between the proprietors and the colonial Assemblies.19

Despite the fact of the Assembly and its long history of growth, Sharpe described the administrative machinery in the

16 " Copy of the Answers of Horatio Sharpe Esq1 Lt Gov. of Maryland to the Queries proposed by the Lords of Trade," in Sharpe to Board of Trade, January 14, 1762, King's Manuscripts, British Museum (Library of Congress Transcripts).

17 Bacon, Laws, 7 Caec, Ld. Bait., ch. III. The deliberative body here considered was not properly an Assembly, but was more in the nature of the later Council, a proprietary body. Some confusion persisted on this point in the minds of the English ministers down to the middle of the eighteenth century. The Secretary of State ordered Sharpe to call the Assembly and raise funds before the outbreak of the French and Indian War, and he wrote, " to assemble the Council," which was later altered by a strikeover to read "General Assembly" (Holdernesse to Sharpe, August 28, 1753, Public Record Office, C O 5/211:15, Library of Congress Transcripts).

18 Newton D. Mereness, Maryland as a Proprietary Province (New York, 1901), p. 199.

19 Bacon, Laws, 1 Caec, Ld. Bait., ch. II. f. 27.

76 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

middle of the eighteenth century as it appeared to the proprietary interest. He explained that the '" Establishments, as well Civil as Military, within this Government depend on the Powers granted by the Royal Charter to the Lord Baltimore, under whom all the Officers (except the Collectors and Surveyors of His Majesty's Customs) hold their Places. . . ." The factor to balance the appointment of these officers, which was the proprietor's prerogative, was the Assembly's insistence upon paying their salaries. As in the case of the House of Commons in England, the Mary- land Assembly had long since established the precedent of holding the purse power, a distinguishing feature of popular control.20

The principal officers and their salaries in this organization were: the lieutenant governor " including all Perquisites and Fees as Chancellor, £1,200 ";21 a deputy secretary (the secretary resided in England) who kept the chancery and supreme court records, at a salary of £300; a commissary general at £250, "". . . to whom the Probat of Wills belongs ";22 an attorney general at £50; two treasurers, £80 each; two judges of the land office "' whence war- rants and Patents for land issue," their importance being certified by the salaries of £300 each; three commissioners of the paper currency office paid £50 apiece; five " Naval Officers from £50 to £150 each";23 two surveyors-general at £130 each; an "Ex- aminer General (whose business it is to examine all Certificates returned by the Land Surveyors) ";24 and a clerk and sheriff in each of the fourteen counties at salaries of £80 to £200 each, ". . . but the Sheriff's office cannot be held by any person more than three years." 25 In each county there was also a deputy

20 Sharpe to Board of Trade, January 14, 1762, King's Manuscripts, British Museum (Library of Congress Transcripts). During the eighteenth century the Duke of Newcastle, with his large patronage in the House of Commons, also had control of the appointments in the American Customs Service. When Sharpe wanted to get one of the offices for his friend John Ridout, he had to apply through his brother William to the Duke. He was unsuccessful.

21 Ibid. Figures for the governor's salary vary from £1,000 to £2,000. The higher figure seems more likely.

22 Ibid. This office of civilian commissary is not to be confused with the military office which was concerned with supply, nor with the episcopal office which represented the bishop in all matters save ordination. See Howard Kimball, " The Commissary of the Bishop of London in America," doctoral dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles, 1957.

23 These were provincial customs officers, mainly interested in collecting the proprietary dues on exported tobacco. In most cases the work was actually done by low paid proxies.

24 The office of " Examiner General " was purely a perquisite of the governor. 25 Sharpe to Board of Trade, January 14, 1762, King's Manuscripts, British

Museum (Library of Congress Transcripts).

A FACET OF SOVEREIGNTY 77

surveyor and deputy commissary to take care of the actual survey and recording of land. Sharpe commented that " several of the Deputy Surveyors' Offices are of very little value, some of them not £10 a year; but three or four of them, who live in Counties, where there still remains a good deal of vacant Land, may get from £50 to £150 pr Annum." 26 The deputy commissaries earned from £10 to £20. Just before the Revolution this office became so important, and its officials so numerous that a book was published setting forth their duties, and the intricacies of the local courts in which their transactions were carried out.27

At Annapolis there were also patronage clerkships in each of the important offices: Council, Assembly, provincial court, commissary, paper currency, and land office. Each of these positions carried a salary of from £50 to £300 a year. Usually the holder farmed out the actual work for a fraction of that sum, retaining the rest as the right of "" perquisite." For example, Upton Scott, Sharpe's physician, was supported for years by the office of clerk of the Council.28

Sharpe concluded his recital of the administrative offices with the comment that " as the Value of these Offices (except the Naval Offices) depends on the price of Tobacco, they are some Years much more lucrative than in others; but Communibus Annis, they may be rated " as shown above.29

Unlike the judiciary of Massachusetts, where the courts had been traditionally the responsibility of the electorate from the beginning, in Maryland the courts were firmly established in the interest of the proprietor. The judges were appointed by him, and their incomes were not dependent on the Assembly's action. In Massachusetts, it will be remembered, the attempt to make the courts more subservient to the crown after 1765, resulted in near revolt; the ancient privilege of paying the judges could not be taken from the General Court. In Maryland no such initial situ-

26 Ibid: 27 Elie Vallette, Deputy Commissary's Guide within the Province of Maryland

. . . (Annapolis, 1774). Among the useful bits of information to be found in this book are tables to " reduce sterling to currency [p. 41]," a very important pro- cedure in colonial commerce and law.

28 Dr. Scott came over with Sharpe in 1753, and by 1763 he had married the daughter of Council Clerk, John Ross, and succeeded him in that office. See Arch. Md., edited by William Hand Browne and others (Baltimore, 1884), XXXI, 535; XXXII (1912).

29 Sharpe to Board of Trade, January 14, 1762, King's Manuscripts, British Museum (Library of Congress transcripts).

78 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

ation existed, but with the Stamp Act and cessation of legal business, the courts, although proprietary appointees, were just as outspoken in their criticism of royal control. One might conclude that American independence sprang more from dislike of a whole system than from hatred of certain infringements of " liberty," as might have appeared to be the case at the time.

Governor Sharpe's description of the Maryland judicial system is both concise and clear:

The Courts are the high Court of Appeals and Errors, consisting of the Governor and Council; the Court of Chancery; the Court of Vice Ad- miralty (which scarcely ever sits) ; the supreme Court of Law, called the Provincial Court, which is held twice every year at Annapolis, the judges thereof being seven in number, are impowered by Commission under the Great Seal to hear and determine concerning Pleas, whether real, personal or mixed, and all manner of Crimes Capital or not Capital; In civil Actions where the Matter in Dispute exceeds the value of £50 Sterling, Appeals are allowed to the Governor and Council. There are four County Courts, or inferior Courts of Common Pleas held every Year in each County by the Justices of the Peace; no original Action, exceeding the Value of one hundred Pounds sterling, can be brought in these Courts; but must be commenced in the Provincial Court, as must all real and mixed Actions; the Justices at these Courts can try and determine all criminal Matters not affecting Life, or Member, & even Capital Offences when committed by Negroes. Both the provincial, or Supreme, & the County Courts have been held almost ever since the Province was settled by virtue of Acts of Assembly;29 The Rules of proceeding in these Courts are conformable to the Rules observed in the Courts of Westminster; the Judges and Justices are appointed by Commission from the Lord Proprietary under the Great Seal.30

Any revenues necessary to the support of government other than that arising from the fees of administrative and judicial officers, had to come from legislative action. For the support of the naval officers, who were appointed and paid by the proprietor, there was by an act of 1661, a " a Port-Duty of fourteen pence per Ton on all Ships and Vessels trading into this Province, and not owned by Residents." 31 The amount was increased by three pence per ton in 1694, to give the lieutenant governor an added perquisite.32

After 1704, education received provincial subsidy in the form of a "' perpetual law " assessing twelve pence per hogshead on

"•Ibid. 31 Bacon, Laws, 1661. 8!! Bacon, Laws, 1694.

A JFACET OF SOVEREIGNTY 79

tobacco exported. The same year " another perpetual Law was made for laying a Duty of twelve pence current Money on every 100lbs- of dried Beef and Bacon, and twelve pence on every Barrel of Pork and Beef undried, exported by any persons not Inhabi- tants; the Money raised by virtue of this Act is applied to the maintaining a Free School." 33

In 1715, 1717 and 1723, impositions of various kinds were added, including increasing duties on " every Negro and Irish Papist imported into this Province." 34

To meet the needs of the expanding commercial society and its consequent higher costs of administration, in 1732, the Assembly passed an act " whereby a Duty of fifteen pence sterling was laid on every Hhd [hogshead} of Tobacco, which should be exported during the Space of Thirty one Years next ensuing the 29th day of September in the Year aforesaid, for supporting the Credit of, and sinking £90,000, emitted, and then made current by Bills of Credit." 85

This proved to be the precedent for raising money during the French and Indian War. The one law that met the approval of both houses and the proprietor was passed in 1756, appropriating " the Sum of £40,000 Currency." The Assembly, taking advantage of the leverage furnished by Braddock's misfortune on the frontier, included an item of the proprietors prerogative in the taxable list in this measure; the tavern license fees and liquor taxes were diverted to the use of the colony, and Baltimore was forced by British public opinion to acquiesce.36 Baltimore's right to collect the " Hawkers and Pedlars Licence Fines " was known from the seventeenth century, but the act of Assembly in question gave it the ambiguous and innocent-sounding title of a "' Duty ... on all spirituous Liquors consumed in the Province," and included it in a long list of taxes on " Batchelors, on Billiard Tables, and on all Horses imported, a Land Tax, a Stamp-Duty; also an additional

33 Bacon, Laws, 1704. 34 Sharpe to the Board of Trade, January 14, 1762, King's Manuscripts, British

Museum (Library of Congress Transcripts). Taxes on transported convicts were prohibited by the British government, but both Virginia and Maryland passed several duty acts on the importation of Negroes. See, for examples. The Statutes at Large; being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, compiled by William Waller Hening (New York, 1823), VII, 363, 339-642.

36 Sharpe to Board of Trade, January 14, 1762, King's Manuscripts, British Museum (Library of Congress Transcripts).

36 Instructions to Sharpe, 1755, Calvert Papers (Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore).

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Duty on Negroes, Pitch, Tar, and Turpentine imported." The list was ended with the provision that all the accounts were to be audited by a committee of the Assembly.37 This law was the springboard from which was launched a campaign by the Assem- bly against the ancient rights of the proprietor, and which during the French and Indian War constituted the basis of a relentless struggle between the representatives of Maryland property and the lieutenant governor of the Baron of Baltimore, Horatio Sharpe. Sharpe finally succumbed to the pressure of reality and deserted his lordship, being supplanted by a governor who was knighted for his royal service at the time of the Revolution, Sir Robert Eden. But Eden, in his turn, returned to America after the war and ended his days in the sovereign state of Maryland. To this day a member of the Eden family is an honorary member of the Maryland Historical Society, the present one being Sir Anthony Eden.

During the eight-year political battle that followed Sharpe's assumption of office in Maryland, the Assembly, whose members received one hundred forty pounds of tobacco a day while they were in session, spent as much money on their own salaries as they did in support of the British war effort against the French. They were intent on establishing a colonial sovereignty based on middle-class control which had been developing since the beginning of the century, and a war, even with their age-old enemy the French, was not going to deter them.38

Since the governor had the right to assemble, dissolve and prorogue the Assembly, as well as to disallow its acts, Sharpe at first was inclined to take a high hand with the legislature; he thought that they did not execute their duty as loyal subjects; and because the Council was dilatory in supporting his stand, condemned them out of hand, replacing them whenever he could with " better men." 39 He was to learn, however, that the colonial spirit was stronger than his own, and still more, that he himself would embrace that colonial spirit rather wholeheartedly before his retirement. By the time of the Stamp Act, 1765, he was almost one of the " Assembly party " that at first he had all but

87 Archives of Maryland, XXIV, 85. 38 Samuel Ogle to Board of Trade, October 16, 1734, Public Record Office,

C O 5/1268:145-146; Maryland Gazette, edited by William Parks, 1728-1734, passim.

39 Giddens, op. cit.

A FACET OF SOVEREIGNTY 81

hated. This was a far cry from his position in 1754, when he had been the first man to suggest a Parliamentary stamp tax for all the colonies.40 After Braddock's defeat when he had bitterly asked for British legislative action to force the flagging provincials to combine against France, he learned that the words of the legis- lators upon his arrival had contained a core of iron-like hardness beneath their polite expression. The upper house at that time had voiced the sentiment that was to become monotonous through reiteration in the next few years:

. . . We promise Ourselves that nothing in the power of a Gentleman of your Character will be wanting, to make this Country flourish under your Administration: And altho' Men will often differ about the Means of attaining the End all must wish for, yet we hope, when that End is well understood, and steadily kept in view, that, upon a candid and frank Communication of their Sentiments to each other, and a sincere Desire of being truly informed, it will reconcile all Differences about the Means.41

Faced on one side by this politely veiled threat from the Mary- landers, on another by the peremptory orders of Sir Thomas Robinson and the ministry, and on yet another by Baltimore's insistence on '". . . Quick dispatch of his Rentals," 42 Sharpe regretted having given up the relative ease of a soldier's life in an English regiment.43 It is to his credit that in spite of all the obstacles he successfully steered Maryland through the French and Indian "War, and dealt with the Assembly for sixteen years with comparatively little friction. He mastered the intricate political organization of the colony, and, more important, he understood how it synchronized with the whole problem of sovereignty in America.

It took a century and a half before the " End " was " well understood," and it finally took a revolution to emphasize that the end was to be a free economy with a free political structure. Sovereignty in each colony based on the popular conception of the greatest good for the greatest number emerged after a long struggle with the old forces of Europe, and at length resolved into an American sovereignty which has, in accordance with the unwitting prediction of the Maryland Council in 1753, reconciled " all Differences about the Means."

t0Arch., VI, 17. 11 Maryland Gazette, October 11, 1753. 42 Arch. Md., VI, 17. "Ibid., IX, 440.

LIFE ON THE C. & O. CANAL: 1859

Edited by ELLA E. CLARK

A CENTURY ago, in the summer of 1859, a man from New England whose name is now unknown made the round-trip

voyage along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal from Cumberland, Maryland, to Georgetown, D. C.—and farther. At that time, the canal barge went from Georgetown across the Potomac by aqueduct and down a canal to Alexandria, Virginia, from where the writer traveled by ferry to Washington, D. C. Out of work because of the Panic of 1857, he had found employment on a canal boat. About thirty years later, he wrote his memories of the voyage. At some unknown date the anonymous manuscript reached the City Library Association of Springfield, Massachusetts; in 1923 it was given to the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.1

When this unknown boatman made the journey, the section of the canal near Cumberland, at the eastern base of the Allegheny Mountains, had been completed only nine years. The first section of the canal, that near Georgetown and the tidewater of the Potomac River, had been begun in 1828, President John Quincy Adams having lifted the first shovelful of earth for it on the Fourth of July of that year. At Baltimore, on the same day, a corner stone was laid to mark the beginning of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.2

But the origin of the canal really lies back in the eighteenth century, in the belief which George Washington earnestly held for many years, that through the Potomac River, Maryland and Virginia could secure the trade of the newly settled areas west of the Allegheny Mountains.3 As early as 1754, when Washington

1 The writer apparently gave the manuscript no title. In the Library of Congress it is entitled " Journal of a Canal Boat Voyaging on the Cumberland Canal between Cumberland, Maryland, and Georgetown, 1858." But according to the author's first paragraph, he made the voyage in 1859.

2 Archer B. Hulbert, Great American Canals, 3 vols. (Clevland, 1904), I, 103-110.

'Ibid., 33-34. 82

LIFE ON THE C, & O. CANAL: 18 59 83

was only twenty-two years old, he envisioned '" a system of river and canal navigation along the Potomoc River." 4

By the time of the defeat of General Braddock in 1755, " the trade route by way of the Potomac had become a question of sufficient importance to influence the decision of national and military affairs." 5

Before the end of the Revolutionary "War, "Washington made a long and hazardous exploratory journey up the Mohawk "Valley and concluded because it could avoid mountains, that route would be the competitor of the Potomac River system of his dreams.

After his return from this journey, he wrote Chevalier de Chastellux, on October 12, 1783, as follows:

Prompted by these actual observations, I could not help taking a more extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States and could not but be struck with the immense extent and importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence, which has dealt its favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them. I shall not rest contented, till I have explored the western country, and traversed those lines, or great part of them, which have given bounds to a new empire.

A year later, Washington had carried out his plan to explore the western country.6 In October, 1784, after his return to Mount Vernon, he wrote to Governor Benjamin Harrison of Virginia:

The more then the Navigation of Potomack is investigated, and duely considered, the greater the advantages arising from them appear.7

. . . And all of these tributaries of the Ohio River are so many channels through which not only the produce of the New States, contemplated by Congress, but the trade of all the lakes, quite to that of the Wood, may be conducted according to my information, and judgment—at least by one of the Routs—thro' a shorter, easier, and less expensive communication than either of those which are now, or have been used with Canada, New Yk., or New Orleans.8

. . . but let us open a good communication with the Settlements west of us—extend the inland Navigation as far as it can be done with convenience—and shew them by this means, how easy it is to bring the produce

* Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, National Park Service Pamphlet (Washington, 1955).

5 George Washington Ward, " The Early Development of the Chesapeake and Ohio Project," Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science, Series XVII, Nos. 8-10-11 (Baltimore, 1899), p. 11.

8 Hulbert, op. tit., I, 34-35. 'Ibid., 36. 8 Ibid., 39.

84 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

of their Lands to our Markets, and see how astonishingly our exports will be encreased; and these States benefitted in a commercial point of view— wch alone is an object of such Magnitude as to claim our closest attention—• but when the subject is considered in a political point of view, it appears of much greater importance.9

Following Washington's suggestions, the legislatures of Vir- ginia and Maryland appointed a joint committee to discuss plans for improving the navigation of the Potomac River. The committee, of which Washington was a member, met first in December, 1784. By the following May, the two legislatures had passed laws authorizing the formation of a company " for opening the River Potomoc," and the Potomoc Company had been organized, with George Washington as president.10

When he became President of the United States four years later, Washington gave up his office with the Potomoc Company. Even under his guidance the company had accomplished little, and after his death it became less and less successful. Ten times between 1786 and 1820, the legislatures of Virginia and Mary- land extended the time demanded by the charter for completing the work on the Potomac. In 1819, after $700,000 had been spent, the company asked help from the Board of Public Works of Virginia. In July, 1822, a state commission reported "... that the affairs of the Potomoc Company have failed to comply with the terms and conditions of the charter; . . . that it would be imprudent and inexpedient to give further aid to the Potomoc Company." "

The Board of Public Works of Virginia, soon after its creation in 1816, had suggested to the Virginia legislature that the waters of the Potomac and of the Ohio might be connected by a navigable canal. This is thought to be the first "" official suggestion " of a continuous canal from the tidewaters of the Potomac to one of the tributaries of the Ohio. The idea was dropped at the time; but it was again proposed, and this time acted upon. The Federal Government joined Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Colum- bia in planning and financing the canal.12

In 1823, Virginia and Maryland appointed a commission to examine the route across the Allegheny Mountains that had been explored by Washington in 1784 and to consider the possibilities

9 Ibid., 49-50. " Hulbert, op. ctt., 63-64. 10 Ward, 12-13. 12 Ward, loc. at., 16-17.

LIFE ON THE C. & O. CANAL: 1859 85

"' of constructing a canal from the head of the Potomoc to one of the heads of the Ohio." 13 Later, Army engineers recommended a different route over the mountains.14 In 1828, in the midst of the great canal-building decades in the United States, the Chesa- peake and Ohio Canal Company was organized.15 The United States Government bought 10,000 shares in it for one millon dollars.16 The company and its friends wanted a canal about 360 miles long which would connect Georgetown with Pittsburgh, on the Ohio River, and thus obtain trade with the fast-growing states in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Three years later, water was admitted into the section between Georgetown and Seneca. Soon, financial and legal difficulties delayed the construction; at last those difficulties and the building of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway forced the company to give up the idea of crossing the Alleghenies.17 The Canal was completed at Cumberland in 1850.18

Though the canal was begun as a cooperative venture, Maryland was the dominating force after 1839. The busiest years of the canal were in the 1870's. At that time, as many as 540 boats navigated it, carrying chiefly coal for the new industries in the Eastern cities. Lumber, grains, and flour also were transported by water as late as 1924. But modern methods of transportation finally caused the canal to be abandoned.

In 1938, the Federal Government purchased it and the narrow right-of-way. Soon afterward, the National Park Service began to restore the 22.1 miles between Georgetown, D. C, and Seneca, Maryland. That area is now a part of the National Capital Parks, administered by the National Park Service, providing recreation of various kinds. Along its towpath, park naturalists frequently conduct guided trips for the enjoyment of birds, wildflowers, and rocks. During the late spring and summer, a mule-drawn barge carries sightseers five miles from Georgetown, and lectures are given about canal and natural history. Twenty-three of the original seventy-four locks are on that restored part of the old canal.19

A current proposal before Congress has again brought the old waterway to the attention of the country. Supported by the Na-

18 7^., 66. lelbid., 113. 14 Ibid., 78-80. " Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. "Ibid.. 76. "Ward, loc. tit., 161. 19 Washington, D. C.; A Guide to the Nation's Capital, WPA, American Guide

Series (Hastings House, 1942), pp. 480-482.

86 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

tional Parks Association and by the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Association, " The program for the old Canal includes restoration of the ancient locks and lock-houses, the repair of the towpath, the rewatering of considerable stretches of the canal itself, and the acquisition of additional land—mainly between the canal and the river." 20

In 1858, a man from New England enjoyed the pleasures of nature along the canal when, as he wrote, it " ran nearly its whole distance through an uninhabited solitude." The Cabin John Bridge, which he saw, still stands. '" Until 1900 it was the longest single span, stone masonry bridge in the world and it attracted local attention. The bridge lacked railings in 1859. Construction rock was transported by canal barge and a lock in Cabin John Creek permitted [the} landing [of] materials at the base of the bridge." Some of the mills which were along the canal in the summer of 1859 are still standing.

Later in 1859, on Sunday night October 16, John Brown staged his famous raid at Harper's Ferry, sixty miles up the canal from Georgetown. A tavern which operated across the Potomoc from Harper's Ferry in that year still stands. The tavern and the area above it are now being added to the Harper's Ferry National Monument.21

The early history of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal has been written more than once,22 and there are historical accounts of the communities that were villages along the waterway in 1859. The anonymous manuscript that follows is unique because it was written by one who, temporarily, was one of the crew of a mule-drawn barge a century ago. He delighted in his rambles along the tow- path, he was seeing most of the area for the first time, and he journeyed the full length of the canal a few years after it was completed. Not only did he have the ability to observe closely but also he was quite articulate and nicely describes life on a barge, gives glimpses of Cumberland and Williamsport, of Alex- andria and Washington, together with information about the locks,

20 Anthony Wayne Smith, " C and O Canal National Historical Park," National Parks Service Magazine, LII (January-March, 1958), 32.

21 Grant Conway, President of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Association, Personal Letter, January 29, 1959.

22 In addition to Hulbert and to Ward, already referred to, see Walter S. Sanderlin, The Great National Project: A History of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (Baltimore, 1946). A full-length study.

A Contemporary Picture of the Canal, Left Lock # 33, Harpers Ferry.

(Courtesy of the National Park Service.)

LIFE ON THE C. & O, CANAL: 1859 87

the topography, and the wildlife. In addition he also, though somewhat crudely, illustrated his manuscript with sketches of canal scenes.

Here are his recollections of the voyage as he wrote them.

I was drifting. The financial panic of 1857 had closed the workshops, stopped the hum of the factories, and all kinds of business was nearly at a standstill. The spring of 1858 found me without employment and as a last resort I drifted into peddling, and all that summer climbed up and down the New Hampshire hills, drifting from town to town as fancy or the state of the trade dictated. In the fall I drifted to Washington to take a position in a hotel remaining there until February then drifted on to Cumberland, Md., at the foot of the Allegheny mountains, where I had friends. I then drifted over the mountains into the Ohio valley where I railroaded a little, and peddled a little, drifting as far west and south as Cincinnati. Then I drifted back up the Ohio river to Wheeling, Va., and over the mountains to Cumberland again where I arrived in June, 1859. The chances were that I might drift around Cumberland indefi- nitely, as my friends did not want me to go to New England again, and there did not seem to be any work for me in or around Cumberland.

In a short time, however, my friend's brother-in-law, a canal boat captain, came into port, and it was arranged that he should invite me to take a trip with him. This would amuse me and relieve my friends and perhaps at the end of the few weeks it would take me to make the round trip there might be some place open for me. I accepted the invitation and drifted on. The life on the canal would be something new to me as my knowledge of it was only what I gained in my winter's journey to Cumberland by walking on the towpath from Washington to Point of Rocks. The canal then was only a cold, dry ditch, as the water was drawn oS for winter and was deserted by everyone but a few laborers who were making repairs. The trip would be a change of scenes and I would get acquainted with the life of the canal for I had seen nothing of the live boats and still livelier mules, the barge men, tow boys, cooks and lock- keepers which make up the life of the canal in summer. The trip was not to be a picnic or a personally conducted excursion, and I soon found that it was not to be a junket. I was to go as a boatman, to work, dress, eat and sleep as other boatmen did.

This all happened thirty odd years ago and as I kept no notes, the record of the trip will be the impressions that are left on my memory rather than the incidents just as they happened at the time, and they will probably differ from the impressions one would receive if they should make the same trip today, for no one ever sees the same things the same as another and time has softened the shadows of all the unpleasant things and thrown a halo of light over the pleasant ones. No great event occurred or could be expected to occur to the humble actors of such a trip and I

88 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

have only the sayings and doings, the little episodes and the everyday happenings that made an impression on my memory to record. The names of many of the little hamlets, warehouses and locks and the detail of much of the scenery has now passed from my mind which will account for the brief mention that I make of them .

As I have said, I was drifting. In the same manner I drifted on over the canal spending days in doing the humble work that from time to time fell to my lot, or basking in the sun, watching the passing scenes. On and on we sailed, with rude hills or high steep cliffs forming a wall on one side for the greater part of the distance.

On the other side the bright shimmering river, now rolling swiftly, now placidly, now roaring over some natural cascade or artificial waterfall. Between the hills and the river lay the canal, mirroring on its calm surtacc the shady banks or the clouds above, its edge fringed with a border of green grass and water plants. Alongside lay the long gray ribbon-like tow path, and outside of this, at the foot of the bank, a hedge of wild brush and trees connected us with the river. The canal ran nearly its whole distance through an uninhabited solitude.

Only the almost inaudible ripple of the boat in the water, the distant click of the mules' feet, the purring of the river, the hum of insects, and occasional chirp of a bird broke the stillness. It was almost an ideal state of repose. The days drifted by as a dream and as I look back it was a very tranquil dream, day ran into day, sunshine into sunshine, with no care or thought for the morrow.

We left Cumberland the last of June, stopping at Williamsport several days over the 4th of July, then went on to Georgetown and from there to Alexandria, Va., where it took a day to unload the boat. We then returned, making a short stop at Williamsport, arriving at Cumberland about the first of August.

Cumberland is the mountain city of Maryland. It lies in a narrow valley between the Wills and Knobby Mountains, outlying ranges of the Alleghenys, running nearly north and south. The Potomoc river follows up this valley, crowding on the western part of the Knobbys passed [sic'] the town then breaks through a notch takes a sharp turn to the south and follows the range back on its opposite side. Wills creek, a sizable stream, divides the town in the opposite direction, flowing through a wild gorge in the Wills mountain[,} called the narrows. This gorge is nearly a mile long with almost vertical sides several hundred feet high and was cut by some convulsion of nature through solid rock in nearly a straight line across the mountain. Cumberland at this time had two or three thousand inhabitants and had considerable trade with the back country; it was the center of the eastern soft coal trade known as the Cumberland or George- town coal, it being brought from the mines a few miles back in the mountains by several branch railroads which were connected by a gridiron of tracks to the extensive canal basons [sic'] and also to the main line of the B. & O. R. R. to Baltimore.

Among its industries was a Rosendale cement works with its quarries, kilns and mill for grinding; a small railroad repair shop and not far back

LIFE ON THE C. & O. CANAL: 18 59 89

in the mountains were iron mines and extensive iron works. These in good times made Cumberland a busy place, especially in the summer.

Cumberland was also at the eastern end of the great National Turnpike built by the U. S. Government over the Allegheny Mountains and away across the prairies to the Mississippi Valley passing through the states of Md., Va., Penn., Ohio and Indiana. It was built in the most substantial manner with Macadamized road bed, stone arch bridges and milestones. It cost the Government vast sums of money but was of incalculable benefit in settling the then new states of the West and was the grand thoroughfare of travel until the railroads were built.

I spent most of my time in Cumberland rambling around in the study of natural history, climbing the mountains, paddling in the river and creeks for snails and muscles, searching the woods for land shells, digging in the quarries for fossils and racing across the fields for moths and butterflies. On one occasion I met a black bear in an old barn and had various experiences with the country people outside of the village who could not understand my erratic zigzagging from creek to rock and from rock to wild flower and back to creek again as one thing after another attracted my attention. One man wanted to know if I was lost and others probably thought I was crazy and others probably considered it simply as one of the common habits of those peculiar people called Yankees.

The day after the Capt. arrived I went down to see the boat, which with many others was moored at the ship yard a short distance down the canal waiting their turn to load.

The mules were tethered in a long string at the side of the fence border- ing a neighboring field and were being groomed and fed by the attending drivers. Taking a few steps to get a nearer view of the animals, one of the tow boys yelled, '" take care there, them mules will kick a chaw of tobacco out of a man's mouth three rods off." After that I took good care to keep a reasonable distance from a strange mule's heels. The next morning the boat was towed up to the basin for its load which was put in very quickly as the coal was dumped through the bottom of hopper cars standing on trusties beside the boat, ten tons at a time, a dozen car loads furnishing the one hundred and twenty tons that the boat carried.

I packed my bag with the very few things needed for the journey, bid my friends goodbye and met the boat at the ship yard on its return where, after a short wait for hay, grain and other provisions and for the Capt. who had gone for his boat papers, our journey and my experience as a naturalist on a canal boat commenced.

The crew consisted of Captain Coss who was the commander of our floating palace. Although Coss was no part of his name yet it was the prefix by which he was always known even by the members of his family[;} therefore I shall use it in place of his real name.

For a short time in his younger days he had served as " prentice " on board of a war ship but he soon sighed for the placid waters of his own native canal and took the first opportunity to regain them. Here he had thrived[,] owning a comfortable home in Williamsport and two canal boats. For bows man, the second in rank on the boat, we had a stalwart

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free colored man full six feet tall named Henry Butler[,] who was generally called Pic. A few years before, a man named Henry Butler ran for congress and was for some reason or other nicknamed Picayune Butler and consequently in the height of the political excitement the name picayune was in everybody's mouth and the colored Henry also became Picayune Butler. He made no objections, for a member of congress was a great man and he was willing to be named after one even if the name did mean one of those thin worn-out Spanish silver coins commonly called a four pence in the east and was worth only six and one fourth cents. Pic was strong and trustworthy and made a good boatman and was also the source of much amusem*nt on board for Pic had a lot of vacant shelves in the back of his cranium where he had stored away all the big words he had ever heard in the forty years of his life. These were packed in helter skelter like bric-brac or broken crockery to be brought out whenever his limited vocabulary was not sufficiently forcible to express his ideas. They were used in all manners of ways, the right word in the wrong place, the wrong word in any place and in all the variations and distortions that he was capable of placing them and the more incongruous the word the happier was Pic. Although the words I shall put in Pic's mouth may not always be the exact ones he used[,} yet they are by no means a " gagaration " as Pic would say of the language he used. The writer held the third place on the boat but what it was I can hardly tell as I acted in every position from pilot to tow boy but think I made myself the most useful as cook. We had two tow boys, each about twelve years old. One was little Pic, one of Pic's children who could lay [j/V] on his back on deck and absorb the July sun by the hour; the other was Tommy, a white boy the captain had picked up on a previous voyage.

The list of the crew would not be complete without the four bay mules which were as sleek fat and gentle as a ladies' driving pony.

We are now on our journey down the canal. For the first few miles we were between the railroad and the river with a narrow meadow on the left with hills beyond. Across the river the Knobby mountains raised a row of rough peaks resembling the knuckles of a closed hand. After a time we came in sight of some locks, the first of perhaps eighty, that we had to pass before we got to Georgetown. This was our first level, for the canal consists of a series of short canals called levels connected one with the other by locks. These short canals are narrow reservoirs of still water, perfectly level from end to end, and when built where the natural surface will admit are made by excavating a shallow ditch and building banks on each side of the earth taken out and when they are filled with water will stand one or two feet above the land through which it runs. But very little of our canal was built through natural plains, in fact it required the most scientific engineering skill to find a place in which it could be built, skirting as it does the Potomoc river almost its entire distance, it had to be cut here into its sloping banks, there built bodily at the foot of some precipitous bluff, now crowded out into the river bed, then cut through some projecting spur or built high on masonry walls over a deep ravine, crossing the larger streams on wooden aqueducts and the smaller ones

LIFE ON THE C. & O. CANAL: 18 59 91

over stone arches and culverts. In one place it gives up all pretense of being a canal and the boat glides for a half mile on the edge of a big eddy in the river the tow path being a trail in the edge of the high bluff that forms the shore. At another place it cuts across a band of the river and passes through a mountain in a tunnel three-fourths of a mile long.

Each of the levels, which may be but a few rods in length, or may stretch out for miles, is a complete canal by itself and begins and ends with a lock through which a boat may be lowered to a level below or raised to one above.

The lock is the connecting link between two levels and are {sic] hydraulic lefts or elevators by which the boats are raised up or lowered down from on to the others. They are short canals with sides built of strong masonry with the bottom as low as that of the lower canal and the top as high as the upper one, and at each end is a strong, watertight gate, through which the boats pass in and out. The length of the locks were [wj sufficient to admit a boat about seventy five feet long, ten feet wide, drawing about five feet of water. When the lock is full the water stands in at the same level as in the canal above, and by opening the upper gate a boat can be floated in. The gate is now closed separating the lock from the canal, and small wicket or sluice gates are opened letting the water run slowly out of the lock into the canal below lowering the boat down to the lower level, the lower gates are then opened and the boat floats out. When the boat is going upstream it enters the lock from the lower level and the gate [is} closed after it, the lock is then filled through wickets in the upper gate which raises the boat to the upper level and it passes out through the gate into the canal.

The difference of the heights between the two levels is from eight to ten feet, making the lower gate from fourteen to sixteen feet high. A higher lift would increase the pressure of the water and require stronger masonry and gates than it is economy to build. The gates are made in halves and fold back in recesses in the side walls when open, and in closing strike sills at the bottom and come together at the center of an angle pointing up stream making a brace against each other and against the side of the lock, forming watertight joints. When the difference of two levels [is] greater than ten feet[,] then two or more locks are placed end to end the lower gate of one forming the upper of the one below it; and as a boat passes out of one lock it enters the next and so on to the end of the series, which are like a flight of giant stairs. It is not often that more than three or four locks are placed together without a short canal or basin in between, where boats can pass each other, but on some canals where this can not be done, two sets of locks are built side by side, one used for boats going up and the other for those going down, avoiding the delay that would occur with a single unit.

As we came in sight of our first lock the captain brought out his tin horn and gave several loud blasts. The tin horn was almost as much a part of the outfit as the mule. The horns were made of all sizes and shapes; some were very long, others were bent back and forth like the French horn. The average length was from two to three feet and [they}

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were all of the old-fashioned fish-horn type, where the noise was made by the lips and not by blowing through a reed as in the modern toys used by the boys on Fourth of July and occasionally blown by woman at summer resorts. The horns were used to call up the lockmen and were blown when you were a quarter to half mile from the lock. Some of the boatmen, especially the negroes became very expert in blowing the horn and could play very respectable bugle call on them. The Capt. blast brought the keeper from his house and he had the lock filled and the gate open ready for us to enter.

To enter a lock requires care and experience. The boat had to be steered in a direct line in the center of the canal, for the least deviation would cause a collision with the stone walls that might sink it, for it fitted the lock like a nickle in a slot. The boat must also have sufficient motion to carry it to the end of the lock and at the same time it must not strike the lower gate. The Capt. steered the boat in. Pic stood on the bow and jumped ashore with a line and give it two turns around the snubbing post. At the right moment the Capt. gave the word to the tow boy to stop; Pic tightened the rope on the post and the boat came to a standstill just before the cutwater touched the gate. The friction of the rope around the post has to be carefully governed or the momentum of the boat and its load will break it. This friction and the rubbing of the boat against the side of the lock and the force of the water confined in the end of the lock combined to bring the boat to a stop.

The first time I drove the mules when the boat entered a lock we came near having a bad accident. When the Capt. gave the word to stop I said " Whoa" and stood still and expected the mules would do the same. Instead of stopping they laid back their long ears, rolled out their eyes and sprang into their harness and pulled as I never saw four mules pull before. Whoa is not a part of the canal mules language and they supposed it was a new and awful cuss word and probably would have stampeded if the tow line had been broken. The more I whoaed the more they pulled, and the boat was in fair way of going right through the lock, so I rushed to the head of the front mule, pushed him back against the next and in this manner stopped the whole line in time. The word that they use to stop the mules, as near as I can spell it, is ye-yip-ye, but you must put in all the right accents, inflections and quavers, or the mules will as likely gee off as stop. I took lessons of Capt. Coss, of Pic, little Pic, and of Tommy, and after considerable practice got so that I could pronounce it sufficiently well to stop the mules, but I always imagined that I could detect a smile on the mules' faces when they heard it.

Each lock had its keeper whose duty was to open and close the gates for the boat at any time of day or night. When the locks were connected one keeper might have charge of two locks but if they were any distance apart he could not, as there might be boats that wished to pass each at the same time. Every lockman was furnished a house near the lock where if the ground was suitable he could have a garden and if there were several locks near enough each other to be neighborly it was not an unpleasant place to live[;] and even where they were several miles apart

LIFE ON THE C. & O. CANAL: 18 59 93

the family could easily visit each other riding back and forth on the passing boats. The lock keeper also kept watch of the canal banks in his vidnity[,} and where there were connections with the river he attended the gates that supplied the canal with water. There was also an inspector or tow-path keeper who rode back and forth over his section of the canal to see that there were no breaks, leaks or washouts, and to make light repairs whenever they were needed. At the first lock the railroad passed over the canal and crossed the river to the Virginia side and was not seen again until we reached Harper's Ferry, over a hundred miles below.

There were two kinds of boats on the canal[,} one of very primitive shape, being nearly the shape of an oblong box with great square ends. These boats would carry large loads but were very slow sailors, as the water made a great resistance to the flat end in front and did not leave the boat easily at the stern. There were very few of these boats left and those that were painted at all were covered with a coat of coal tar. The other boats had their ends moulded and formed the same as a ship, making as fine lines as was consistent with the load they were to carry and the slow speed they sailed. All the new boats were built at Cumberland where they had a miniature ship yard employing the various mechanices as ship carpenter, smiths, painter, and calkers to be found in large shipyards.

A boat is divided into three apartments, the center was left open except a narrow walk around the edge and formed the hold where the freight is stored. Over this were placed movable hatches making a watertight covering. At each end of the boat is a cabin with the roof raised about three feet above the deck. The front one is used for a stable and the rear one is divided into a stateroom with berths and cooking galley. The cabin was not so wide as the boat above the deck leaving foot ways on each side. Behind the rear cabin was the tiller deck from which the cabin stairs went down, and under it a kind of co*ckpit, about four feet high, where Pic and his boy slept and no place could suit them better as it was the hottest and least ventilated part of the boat.

When the boat was loaded the water came within a foot of the deck but when it was light it just skimmed over the water not drawing more than one or two feet and would be almost unmanageable outside of the canal as it had no keel to prevent it from drifting with the wind. There were somejhree or four hundred boats on the canal and [they] were of all ages and in every stage of repairs from those that were bright and shiny to those that you could not tell what was the color of the last coat of paint. A hundred or more of these boats were brought from the Erie canal, when that was enlarged, by the canal companies who now own nearly all the boats, the boatmen furnishing teams and outfit, receiving so much a ton for hauling the coal, paying their own expenses and the toll on the empty boat back to Cumberland. The cost of a new boat was from twelve to fifteen hundred dollars.

Capt. Coss owned his own boat, the " Caroline of Williamsport." The boat was new clean and white and the Capt. was very proud of it. By owning the boat he could come and go as he pleased, get a better price

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for carrying the coal and when there was a change he would take in a cargo for any point along the canal.

I was not long on board before I was given a lesson in boat steering, Pic keeping watch with a hand ready to grasp the tiller if by some mis- chance the boat should get the advantage of me and try to run ashore. Boat steering is very simple; you stand with one arm over the tiller and sight across the bow of the boat[;] then pull or push according to the direction you wish it to go, but it requires constant attention and the steersman has to be constantly on the watch for the slightest deviation from the direct line and immediately overcome it by moving the rudder. This soon becomes instinctive, like steering a bicycle, and requires but little exertion but sometimes, by carelessness or otherwise, and you often feel that it was mere wantonness on the part of the boat, it will take a start for one side and, do the best you can it will hardly escape striking the bank, when over it will go to the other side and just miss grounding there, back and forth it will go half a dozen times before you get it calmed down to straight ahead then perhaps for miles it will not deviate a foot from the right direction. This erratic steering reduces the speed of the boat and adds to the pull of the mules, besides, there was the danger of running the boat aground or in some places of bumping a hole in the bottom on a ledge.

The connection between the mules and the boat was the tow line, a strong rope three fourths of an inch in diameter and near a hundred feet long, which was fastened to an eye-bolt on one side near the middle of the boat, and as this was near the pivot point on which the boat turned and drew nearly straight ahead, it had but little effect on the steering.

In canal language the mules were geared together and not harnessed. The mule gearing was of the simplest description possible consisting of a bridle and breast plate with a strap around the body to keep it in place. The traces were chains that hooked into rings on the mule in the rear with spread sticks between each mule and one where the chains came together at the tow line. When we had all four mules hitched tandem they formed a straight line between two long chains that were nearly as rigid as wooden poles[,} the spread sticks keeping the chains a sufficient distance apart as not to chafe them. It took no little power to start a boat loaded with one hundred and twenty tons of coal drawing five feet of water for a standstill and get it up to speed of two miles per hour. A quick pull of an hundred horses would have but little effect except to break the tow-line, yet a boy ten years old could start the boat by making a long steady pull[;] after a while he would feel it yield and perhaps in three or five minutes could make a single step, then another until the boat would move at a slow but steady speed according to the strength of the boy. In the same way the well trained mule could draw the tow-line tight and make an easy pull leaning against their breastplates until the boat began to move, then step after step until the boat was up to speed and all day they seemed to be resting on their breastplates and stopping only to keep from falling forward.

At night, or when we stopped to feed, the boat was hauled up to the

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LIFE ON THE C. & O. CANAL: 18 59 95

shore and made fast, the mules ungeared and the feed trough brought out. This was about a yard long and large enough to hold two buckets of corn in the ear and had but two legs, a tree, post, or fence serving for the others, being fastened to it by a rope which passed through two holes in the back. This made the trough a fixture that could not be tipped over or run away with.

We are sailing on and on making from a mile and three fourths to two miles an hour according to the number of mules in use at a time; occasionally we met a boat going up the canal some of whose crews saluted Capt. Coss or Pic but most of them passed silently by. Some of the boats were drawn by a single mule others had what was once a horse, still others had two or more but none had a better team than ours. We saw very few boats going in our direction either in the down or return trip except when we were tied up to the bank, for the rate of speed was so near the same in all of the boats that the time spent in passing a lock would keep them separate until they came to the next and only on long levels could one gain enough to pass another. We were tied up to no regular hours and lived in Arcadian simplicity. We rose with the early morning light, fed the mules, and when they had eaten their breakfast a pair was hitched up and we started on our day's journey driving them about four hours when they were changed for the other pair; at the end of the next four hours they were again changed, and so on making four shifts and sailing from sixteen to eighteen hours a day, the Capt. Pic and myself taking turns at the rudder while the two boys changed off from time to time and occasionally Pic and myself would drive for an hour or two, walking for exercise ; the boys usually rode the rear mule.

Some days the four mules were hitched tandem, then we drove about twelve hours, with a short rest at noon, ungearing them to let them roll which seemed to refresh them nearly as much as a half day's rest. These might seem long days to work in the present eight and ten hour times, but as far as the work was concerned, it mattered little whether the boat sailed or not. There were the meals to cook, someone must stand at the tiller, and the mules must be driven, and there was about five minutes work for one of the others at each lock, the rest of the time could be spent reading, sleeping, viewing the landscape or telling stories, in which all but the boy driving could take part.

We had several ways of getting ashore from the boat. At the locks we could step off and on as the boat touched the sides. On the long levels there were guard locks made by building dams across the canal with narrow openings for the boat to pass through where we could get off when the boat was in motion. These guard locks could be closed by plank that fitted in a groove in the stone work and were used in case of an accident to shut off a portion of the canal for repairs. At other places we would run the boat alongside the bank, but that took time so instead of stopping we usually let someone drop the end of the plank on shore and the moment it touched [we would] run down. It seemed very simple for the boat could not move far while you ran a dozen feet but the end of the plank on shore was stationery while the other end kept moving with the

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boat and as you ran in a straight line the plank would twist under your feet and you would run off the edge when about two thirds the way down; then you would have to jump, perhaps on shore, perhaps in the edge of the canal. Another way was to take one of the boat poles place the end in the water and with a running jump swing your self ashore. When you wished to get on board again, if the Capt. did not feel like stopping you could trudge along the towpath until you came to a lock.

James Buchanan was president at the time and he spent his summer vacations at Bedford Springs, Penn., a watering place about thirty miles north of Cumberland. He came by rail to Cumberland stopped over night at the Revere house and in the morning took a coach for the springs. Of course the whole town turned out to see him off for it was not every day or every one even that had a chance to see a live president.

It was worth while for anyone to see President Buchanan for he was a noble, dignified looking man, at least six feet and two inches high and in perfect proportion.

Pic went up from the boat the morning we started and with little Pic saw him off on the coach. Pic knew he was a great man, that the President of the United States was the greatest man in the country, and if he went to see him he would have something to brag about to his friends down the canal. After we had started Capt. Coss said, " Pic, did you see the President?" "Yes sar." "What did you think of him?" "Well, I tell you, boss, I shouldn't want to tackle him." That was Pic's idea of greatness.

Along the canal at villages, or important agricultural districts, or where valleys break through the mountains, there were warehouses where mule feed and other boat stores including bread could "be procured, and where goods could be received and delivered by the boats, and occasionally there were basins where several boats could be stored to turned around, for the canal was not wide enough to turn a loaded boat. It was at one of these way side warehouses that we made fast to the side of a low long building. In a few minutes a clerkish looking man said all right through the window and we went on, Capt. Coss said he had weighed the boat but as I saw only the man and the side of the building I did not get any idea how it was done and it has always been a question with me if he did weigh or only gauge the depth of the boat in the water.

Once in a while the boat would take a quantity of hay or grain on speculation and peddle it out to the other boats. We met one who had oats for sale and we bought a few bushels at a discount but found when we used them that they were so light in weight that we had paid more than they were worth. Every boat carries what might be called ship papers, that is a bill of lading which states what you have carried for freight to the smallest item, and the distance it was carried, as the canal charges toll on all freight and also on the boat itself. These papers have to be sub- scribed to under oath. The only extra freight we had was two barrels of whiskey sent from one village to another. Pic. and the Capt. sampled the whiskey by driving down a hoop and boring a small hole with a gimlet and drawing out a flask-full. After plugging the hole they drove

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the hoop back and none but the crew were the wiser for it. On the previous trip the Capt. had a boat load of lumber from some point up the canal to Cumberland.

Our quiet life was occasionally enlivened by some little incident which would give us something to talk about for an hour or two. One such was the collision. Coming up the canal was an old lugger standing high out of the water drawn by a poor old white horse on which Pic. was making a mental calculation on how many more trips it could make. The only person in sight was a mulatto woman at the tiller. She gave us a wide berth and everything seemed all right until we were within a few feet of each other when the boat took a tack and came direct for our port side where a collision with the sharp corner of her boat would have stove a hole in ours and have sunk us, but Pic. with wonderful presence of of mind threw his helm hard over and the stem of ours struck square on the corner of theirs giving a shock that brought us nearly to stand still and fairly raised the boat up out of the water. In a moment the woman's husband appeared from the cabin where he had been asleep. When we passed we saw the cause of the accident, the woman had steered very near the vera side to give us plenty of room and struck on an old tree that had fallen into the canal and sent the boat over to us. As it was, it did not harm but it was a narrow escape for us. We met the other boat on our return with a load of coal and they reported that it had not leaked a drop.

At another time two of the mules fell over board. As Pic was driving them out of the cabin on a narrow gangway of planks one slipped off and both went over into the water. A couple of young boatmen who were standing near sprang in and led them up the steep bank on the tow path none the worse for their bath. If they had got tangled in their harness they might have both been drowned.

The first question asked a boatman is how do you live on board. We had a small cook stove in which we burned the soft coal with which the boat was loaded, a spider, an iron teakettle, plates, knives, forks, and several of the small cooking utensils including a molasses jug. The bread was purchased at the warehouses along the canal and at the village grocery stores. Ham and bread was the standby. Luxuries in the shape of fresh meat and vegetables were occasionally purchased.

It was bread, dried bread, bread and molasses, and bread. Ham, fried ham, and ham that made up the usual variety. By bringing the slices of ham to a boil in one or two changes of water removed much of the salt and smoke and made it much more palatable and tender. Potatoes when we had them were boiled in the teakettle, then the coffee was made and the dish water heated all in the same utensil. I did most of the cooking but shall not brag of any fancy dishes for I lacked that essential for young housekeepers, a cook book. Perhaps an extract from a letter written by a friend who traveled on a canal in Ohio will illustrate canal living. He writes "' I rode on a canal boat to Cleveland, where the captain swore at the cook for breaking all the dishes and the cook swore at the captain because he had never bought any, eat with a one tined fork and did not

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have any appetite." When Tommy the tow boy first came on board, he had a dog. The captain soon disposed of it but not until he had left a number of his messmates, these in the shape of fleas took possession of the berth in the cabin and drove the captain out to sleep on deck in the hay. When I came on board he kindly gave me the stateroom so it fell to me to fight the fleas.

Fleas are very lively animals and more often felt than seen. After a while I arranged a trap and caught numbers of them. Perhaps a description of my trap may be of interest to you. Whenever I felt one of the fleas walking along on the bare skin giving a bite now and then I would put on the teakettle and when it began to boil I would quietly roll the little fellow up in my shirt, take it off and put it in a pail and pour the boiling water over it. When the water was cool enough I would take out the shirt and unroll it and find the flea every time. It was a slow but sure method of catching them. A few minutes in the sun would dry the shirt, which was much freshened by the operation. I do not suppose that I caught them all, probably some jumped overboard but I thined [sic} them down so they did not make life a burden before I left.

When there was nothing else to talk about on board we used to discuss the great bone gathering scheme. Ever since the canal was completed a large share of the horses and mules employed in towing the boats were in their last stages of usefulness. These never left the canal, they paddled on day after day until they dropped in their tracks or were turned out to die in the narrow space between the canal and the river. Here their forgotten bones had been gathering for thirty years and to these were to be added all of those that had been sacrificed in the building and in the subsequent repairs of the canal. I think Capt. Coss first suggested the enterprise, Pic. and myself immediately fell in with the idea and even the tow boys showed considerable interest in it. I was to get a cheap mule and take the Captain's old boat then with another young fellow and a tow boy start from Cumberland and follow the canal down to Georgetown, gathering up all of these bones. The probabilities were that we could get a boat load which would weigh from sixty to seventy tons and that they could be sold for two or three dollars a ton which would make a very good venture. Every time we passed through a zone of perfumed air that told the tale of the disaster that had befallen the motive power of some boat or where we saw the half dried and half dismembered anatomy where the hog and fox had made many a meal or even a single bone cleaned by insects and bleached white and shining by sun and weather then the fruitful subject would come up and whenever we passed a boat Pics, critical eye scanned their team and if there were a care-worn or discouraged looking mule in it he would remark that we " had a morgrum on dat mule " and we can soon add his bones to the load, which was Pics, way of saying that we had a mortgage on it which in all probability nature would soon foreclose.

One day when we were talking it over I asked the Capt. what use they could make of the bones. As the Capt. hesitated a little before he an- swered, Pic said " I'll tell you boss, you know Capt. Coss dat Yank Bill

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dat use to run on the Red Bird?" "Yes?" "Well he done tole me about it. He say dat da take the bones up noff [north] in New Jersey where he lib and grind them all fine like hominy then they put them in a big tank and cover them with oil." "Oil! Pic, what kind of oil?" " Vitriol oil sar." '" Oh! oil of vitriol?" " Yes sar, day put dem in the tank and cover them with vitriol oil, and it sets up a contageous decom- bustion dat confiscates the bones then they are put in a big kettle that goes rolling over and over on gudgeons until it produces a conjection and when it comes out it is a fust-trate of lime which they sell to the farmers for manure at four or five dollars a barrel.' I don't know nothin' about it myself but that is what dat Yankey Bill said, and I saw a barrel of dat fust-trate of lime at a warehouse in Frederick Co. and I should think that it contained the conglomerated essence of de abstract of a whole boat load of burnt bones by the eflubrium it devolved." Again and again was the scheme talked over, and many were the castles we built and the millions we saw in it, but yet we took not the first step of practical work towards it. We did not even explore a single section of the canal to see how many bones there actually were or even ask if there was a market at Georgetown for them and when I arrived at Cumber- land the whole subject passed out of my mind and was not thought of again for years.

I had watched at Cumberland a colony of solitary bees who made their nests in clay pockets in the perpendicular cliff, and the Capt. called my attention to another colony in a rock cutting along side of the canal. These bees were the size and shape of the common " bumble " bees of the field and although they worked in colonies they were not socialists but worked independently of each other, each one having his own separate nest. When the colony had selected a place on the side of a cliff where there was a cavity filled with clay each bee would go to the nearest pool and fill his stomach with water then she would pour it on the clay making a small damp spot. The damp clay is carefully scraped up into a ball about one eighth of an inch in diameter and left sticking to the edge of the place where it was excavated. The bee flies away and gets another drop of water and enlarges the hole by digging out another ball of clay which she leaves at the side of the first. This is repeated and shortly she has a hole the size of her body with a ring of clay balls around its edge. The bee keeps on digging, sticking the next row of balls on to the first forming a tube extending out from the face of the bank. This tube one-half inch in diameter and when finished three or more inches in length extends straight out for a short distance and then bends down making a round elbow parallel to the face of the bank and contains from two hundred and fifty to three hundred clay balls. When the tube is fairly started the bee gathers up the ball with her front feet then passes it to the middle feet and then to her hind feet with which she carries it to the end of the tube and puts it in position. The speed at which they work is wonderful the tube showing the color of wet clay for the space of more than a half inch on a hot June day. After the bees have excavated the holes three inches or so deep they gather a quantity of pollen or other food for

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her future young and [she] lays an egg at the bottom of the hole. The bee now fills up the hole by wetting each ball separately and breaking it off from the tube and carrying it back into the hole, for the tube is no part of the nest but the most convenient place to store material until she wishes to use it again, leaving the face of the wall nearly as smooth as it was when she began. A colony of these bees with one or two hundred tubes in the space of a yard square hanging from the face of a perpendicular rock is a sight not soon to be forgotten and when he has studied their work [he] is inclined to question the idea that only man has reason.

Pic had his idea of natural history. One of these was that frogs rained down. Whenever a person has made up his mind that something is produced by some supernatural cause, no amount of argument or proof that it was produced according to the common law of nature will have the least effect with him. I described to Pic. how the frogs and toads lay their eggs in shallow ponds where they are hatched into polliwogs, and that the polliwogs gradually turned into little frogs and toads by absorbing their tails and growing legs and that when their time comes, generally on some warm, damp day, they would crawl out of the water on to the land where they would begin to breath[e] air and become real frogs or toads. " That all may be so," says Pic, "' but I don seen them rain right down on the brickyard floor where I use to work and da would bound like rubber balls when they struck the ground. I seed it with my own eyes, don't you spose I know? " I gave it up, it was no use to remind him that all around the brick yard were pools of water full of growing frogs waiting for that shower to come and that the bounding of the frogs was only their jumping as they started off on their journey of life. But this is no worse than an otherwise intelligent man in New Hampshire who declared that the common " rose bug " lost off its wing covers and turned into horse flies in July and August. Speaking of horse flies, there were among others a very large species of fly that would occasionally alight on the mules and nearly drive them frantic. In shape it was like a common house fly, nearly black, one inch or more long and broad as your thumb.

Our conversation drifted from one thing to another one day, until someone made a remark about ghosts. I said I did not take much stock in them. Pic's eyes began to roll, '" Dare is ghosts " said he " I've seed'en wid my own two eyes." Are you sure they were ghosts Pic? "" By golly, I knowed they were ghosts! " Where did you see them? "Well I tell you. One evening I was coming home up through the old squaw bog road from Uncle Peters. It was a lonely night and I started just as the moon went down behind terrapin hill. All the evening the ball bats had been sailing around with their boo, boo. As I passed the old mill a partridge flew out of the road with a fearful whirring den at the bridge ober the creek there seemed to be a whole regiment of frogs with more different voices den you eber heard at de colored campmeeting over the de ridge. I went along but I kept both of my eyes and ears open for dare was a kinder of a creepy feeling down my back. I passed the deserted house up through the thick hemlocks to the old cellar hole where they say the squaw was murdered. Just then there was a louder boo then eber and dis nigg*rs

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wool began to straighten out and as true as we are here on the canal dare was a ghost standing on the hearth stone in front of the old fireplace." What did you do, Pic? "" I just angulated my legs and run." What did the ghost do? "'He ran too. He ran after me." Did he catch you? "No, by golly, I outran him. O didn't I run, why I was ready to lie down prostrate in a dead faint and go into convulsions when I got home I was so scared and ex-hoss-tocated."

What did the ghost look like? " Well I can't preterzacly tell, howsome- ever he loomed up awful and spooky like then he kinder spread out a pair of white wings like the cerabibs on the old gravestones then he started for me and I could hear his great hoofs clomp clomp over the stones. Why! he come like de wind taking more den ten foot at a stride." And you kept ahead of him? ""Yes, I did, but once or twice I could feel his breath on the back of my neck and I expected every minute he would put his paw on me and that I should be fugaciously destroyed. But I tuckered him out at last and gotaway, but I do not know how." Says I, "" Pic, was you drunk? " "" No, sar, I was not drunk but I will allow dat I had two or three glasses of whiskey just before I started from Uncle Peters to kinder keep my courage up." Pic did not seem to enjoy the smile that passed over the faces of the listeners and ominously shaking his head said "" that story is true, it is just a [sic] true as I stand here and steer this boat and aint saggerated one mite. And you would not laugh if you had been there that night."

Capt. Coss said he had a little experience in that line once but he would hardly call it a ghost story. I had been to a singing school, he said, and had walked home with a young lady and when I left it was getting late, in fact it was beginning to be early so I hurried along thinking of the singing school and of those that were there so I did not take much notice of the road side, of course I knew when I came to the graveyard and took occasional glances at the white stones and the black posts and the blacker chains that surrounded some of the graves, and the old weeping willow that hung over the hearse house swaying in the wind. I had got opposite the old town tomb and was thinking if I should find the back door unlocked or if I should have to skin up the apple tree and crawl over the shed roof and in at the attic window when I got home. Just then a terrible shriek as if the whole graveyard had broken loose seemed to come right out of the tomb. Every hair on my head stood on end and I jumped more than ten feet and started to run for dear life but brought up against a pitching post that nearly knocked me senseless. While waiting to get my breath and considering what to do next I heard the shriek again, but it did not seem so loud, turning quickly around, I saw two enormous torn cats just in the act of clinching in mortal combat on the very top of the tomb. I stopped long enough to see a wheel of legs, tails and fur whirling in the air. I then went on, but it took a long time to get over the effect of the fright. Pic. scratched his woolly head awhile and then said, "" dat will do. Captain Coss, dat will do, but I done seen a real ghost sure."

A few days sail brought us to Williamsport where Captain Coss and

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Pic's family lived and where we stopped about a week over the Fourth of July Tommy and myself living on the boat.

Williamsport was a quiet village of a thousand or more inhabitants lying a short distance back from the river in the valley of Washington Creek and hidden from the canal by low hills. There was a flour mill, two churches a few country stores, bakery, and blacksmith shop.

The Haggerstown [sic] Pike ran through the town and was probably one of the best-kept roads in the country. Down by the canal was a basin where the Capt.'s old boat was stored, near which we tied up. A small sawmill and an old barn was [sic'] the only buildings in sight except the top of the church spire over the hill in the village. Just above the boat landing, the highway from Williamsport to Martinsburgh, Vir- ginia, crossed the canal and Potomac River. This was one of the roads used by General Lee in his retreats from his raids in to Maryland. There were but few bridges across the river, ferries and fords taking their place. While I was at Williamsport the few people that crossed the river forded it as the water was only about two feet deep.

Just after noon one very hot day an old gentleman and his wife started from the Williamsport side in an open wagon and went bumping over the stones that formed the river bed until about half way across when the whiffle tree bolt broke and they came to a standstill. Instead of taking some of the straps from the harness and fastening the whiffle tree to the cross bar of the shafts until he could pull the wagon ashore he left the team and his wife in the river and waded back and hunted up the village blacksmith. Then he and the blacksmith waded out to the carriage took out the broken part, waded ashore again mended it and then waded out to the wagon and put it in place taking in all about two hours. All this time the woman was holding the horse in the broiling sun with only a small sunshade to protect her from the sun overhead while every wave and ripple reflected the sunlight from below. A little Yankee gumption would have taken her ashore and saved her all the discomfort.

On the side of the hill about half way from where the boat was moored to the road were some oak trees under whose shade the colored women of the village did their washing bringing their water from the canal a distance of ten or a dozen rods. I wondered why they came there, if it was for lack of water or simply habit, or for the sociability as several would come together, but found it was for the soft water that came through the canal from the river as the village wells were all very hard.

One evening Capt. Coss, his brother and myself went a gig fishing. There was a little flat bottomed boat in the basin, which we took over to the river and floated down half a mile or so. The gig or jack as it is sometimes called, was an openwork iron basket set on the end of a handle about four feet long and when filled with pitchwood formed a torch giving a very brilliant light. This torch was fastened to the front end of the boat and lighted up, then we took off our pants and waded into the river, the Capt. going on one side, his brother on the other each with a spear in one hand. I followed behind pushing at the stern while they guided the bow. We took the middle of the river and worked upstream

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the bright light of the gig illuminating the bed of the river. When ever a fish was seen, one would let go of the boat, poise his spear with both hands and strike for it. His success depended on the accuracy of his aim, the refraction of the water and the quickness of the fish, as it was we caught enough for a meal for both families, and frypan full for Tommy and myself on the boat. The fish we caught were the white and common catfish or bullheads, chub and a fish of the perch kind. The only incon- veniences we found was [sW} the sharp snail shells which covered the stones. These hurt our feet so that we had to put on our shoes.

I made considerable study of the shells in the Potomoc River. There was one species nearly an inch long and about one-half inch in diameter that was found below Williamsport and in Washington Creek so common that you could get several specimens on every stone you might pick out of the water yet a short distance above I could not find one. Another a smooth cone about one-half inch in diameter and the same in length was common everywhere below the Cumberland and up the Wills Creek but I could find none in the river above. All the shells in the river had their small ends eaten a way by the carbonic acid in the water while those in the two creeks were perfect.

Before we left Williamsburg Capt. Coss got up a blackberry party which included his daughter. Tommy and myself. We carried the little boat down below the lock and I got a strip of edging from the saw mill to splice out the pointer for a tow-line, for there was only a paddle made from a bit of board to row with. I towed them apiece[;] then Tommy took my place and I sat in the bow and had the grandest panorama of water snakes I ever saw. Before this I had never seen a snake in or around the canal although Capt. had warned me to look out for copper- heads among the brush. It seems that the snakes were along the edge of the canal hid by the low shrubs and water plants and the pole that we used to tow the boat dragged through these and stirred them up and they started for the other side of the canal and went wiggling across about four feet in front of the boat and about five feet apart giving an average of a thousand snakes to the mile. We landed on the vern side a mile or more down the canal and went through the woods and on to a side hill. I followed an old stone wall and in an out-of-the-way corner of a pasture found a considerable patch of vines. The small tin cup I had was soon filled and as the others had disappeared with the pails and were out of hearing, I took off my cap lined it with leaves and picked it full, two quarts or more. I then came back to the canal and found the boat gone and no one in hearing. A short distance below I found a culvert where I could crawl under the canal and get on the tow path side and walked back bareheaded. I found a dish at the boat to put the berries in and sent them up to Capt. Coss house. My berries were about the only ones picked the others getting discouraged went home. I was invited out to dine the next day and we had blackberry pudding for dinner. A few days later when we were below Harpers Ferry the blackberries were in their prime and I stopped off and picked a two-quart pail full along the tow path, overtaking the boat, which had sailed along, after a short walk. They made a fine relish to our ham and bread.

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On the Fourth of July the church that Capt. Coss' family attended had a picnic about three or four miles up the canal. A flat forty or fifty feet long used for transporting gravel for canal repairs was improvised as a barge and was trimmed up with evergreens, flags and banners. Seats of various kinds were placed on it with two arm chairs in the center for the minister and his wife. The sabbath school marched over and filed on board.

The old maids and matrons with the babies occupied the middle of the boat. The young men and maidens took the outside seats, while the deacons and the sabbath school officers patroled the edges to see that no one fell overboard for there was no railing. Someone loaned them an old white horse for motive power and our boy Tommy held the place of Honor being delegated as driver of which he felt very proud and had spent most of the day before fitting a new cracker to his whip.

After the first half mile Tommy was called in to sample the popcorn and lemonade while some other kid mounted the tow-horse. To insure perfect safety to the excursion Capt. Coss held the tiller and piloted them to their journeys end. It would seem to be hardly worth the while to be to so much trouble to go so short a distance but then it was an hour or an hour and one half journey which would be equal to twenty five or thirty miles by rail or excursion boat and with a chance to see as much or more of the scenery and with no danger of accident. Pic with his young Pickaninnys had their celebration with the members of Zions Wesleyan First Colored Methodist Episcopal Church of Williamsport, while I spent the day alone in the boat thinking over the declaration of independence, how all men (except negroes) were made free and equal.

One afternoon I walked out on the Haggerstown Pike beyond Williams- port village where I found great numbers of tumble bugs rolling up their balls. In one place I counted one hundred and twenty five in the space of a rod. They were of different species from those I had seen in New England being nearly round with thin black wing covers while the northern species are more angular in shape and have thicker wing covers which are often rough in texture. There are also those that have bright green and others mahogany brown wing covers, but these are not very common. All I saw that afternoon were of one species and were about one-half inch across and were making their balls out of horse manure found in the road. These beetles worked in pairs although there were sometimes three at one ball which was nearly round and from five-eighths to three-fourths of an inch in diameter and after it was shaped it was rolled to some place where it could be buried for the road bed was as hard as a stone. It was very interesting to watch them roll the ball. The male climbed up on one side clinging to it with its claws so as to throw the ball out of balance and pull it over toward him. The female went behind the ball and placing her front and middle feet on the ground with her head down pushed and guided the ball with her hind feet. Thus they pushed and pulled the ball, little by little, both going backwards until it arrived at its destination, often two or three rods distant. On the smooth road it rolled comparatively easy, but even here every little pebble formed

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an obstruction; at the edge of the road the serious work commenced, there was the ditch where often the ball and beetles would go rolling down together for they never let go. Then came the road side bank, often steep and obstructed by stones, grass and twigs. Up this they would tug and push, rolling this way and that, but always striving to keep in the same direction, now getting part way up and then rolling back, over and over again but never giving up. Now and then they would make a short reconnoitre to select the best path and then at it again. On they pushed it, across the road, through the ditch, up the slope, under the fence, out into the field where they had selected a soft spot, there they would dig a pit five or ten times their own depth and roll the ball into it and fill up the hole. In the meantime the female had laid an egg on the ball which was to serve as food to the grub when the egg hatched and as a single ball would furnish food to one grub only, a pair of beetles would probably have to roll up several hundred balls in the course of the season.

I did not have the time to watch one pair of beetles from the com- mencement of a ball to its final deposit in the ground, therefore could not tell how long a time was occupied or how many balls a pair would roll up in a day, but I saw then in all the different processes, the forming of the ball from the fresh manure, the roll across the road, the exciting tumble down the ditch, which might be compared to two men rolling down a fifty-foot cliff clinging to a barrel, then all the various stages of climbing up the bank, a mountain in size to them, and rolling back down again, the journey through the field and the digging of the pits where they were buried.

I was on the shore grooming the mules when a strange object came walking down the canal carrying a fiddle under its arm and went on board the boat. It had a drabbled calico dress with skirts hanging straight down which was more noticeable as hoops were then in the height of fashion. Tommy was aboard and entertained the visitor but I kept an eye on the object. After talking with Tommy a while it played him a tune or two and went on its way. I afterwards learned its history. It seems that when it was born it was a serious question whether it should be called Abby or John, but it was finally decided to call it Abby and by that name it was christened and the mistake was not found out until it was too late, but from the time the child could speak it protested by word and action and now grown to full stature it was a veritable vagabond traveling around the village with fiddle, a palm-leaf hat, whiskers, heavy bass voice and dressed in petticoats.

Those people whose knowledge of a hog is limited to one confined in a dirty pen six feet square and fed regularly all he can eat three times a day have but little idea of the real nature of a hog that has unlimited range and who has to get most of his living by foraging. Really there is hardly any animal that shows more cunning, energy, perseverance and neatness than the hog when he has his liberty. Everywhere in this part of the country the hog has free range, even in Washington the hogs were at that time as common in the streets as dogs, and you could frequently find them asleep on the walk with their nose over the curbstone and their

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tail curled through the front-yard fence. When a Lady came along she had her choice of punching him up with her parasol or going around through the mud or dust of the street. We did not often see them along the canal unless we stopped to feed the mules, then a hog was sure to appear even if it was miles from any habitation. They would seem to come up right out of the ground. I had more experience with them at Williamsport than at any other place. The mules were picketed out by the side of a barn daytimes and at noon were fed with corn on the cob. I would carry out a bucket full and put it in the manger before one pair. Not a hog would be in sight. I would then return to the boat and fill the bucket for the other pair and by the time I got back there would be a hog standing on his hind legs with one fore foot in the manger eating the corn while the mules stood back and looked on. When I came up the hog would turn his head and with a kind of merry twinkle in his eye look at me as much as to say, "" What are you going to do about it? " Of course I would drop the bucket and give a jump for him, then with a grab for the corn, getting at least two ears in his mouth away he would run and I after him. He would take an easy gallop with first one eye then the other looking over his shoulder keeping about a rod ahead of me whatever speed I ran, circling about until he stumbled over something and dropped his corn which I would pick up and bring back in triumph while the hog turned around and trotted along behind me. My triumph would be of short duration for another hog by this time would have arrived and would be interviewing the bucket I had left behind. ... As long as I remained they kept busy, rooting around, turning over stick and stones, but always had an eye on me and [were] ever ready to make a forage if opportunity should occur until the mules had eaten the last grain of corn. Then they disappeared as suddenly as they appeared. . . . Hogs soon learn when and where they are liable to find food. At Piedmont, Va., the village hogs, a drove of perhaps forty or fifty, spent most of their time feeding on the side of the mountain, but when they heard the whistle of the freight trains they would come scampering down to the station, where they would follow from car to car the man who greased the axles. They would put one foot on the frame of the truck raise the box cover with the gristle of their nose and scoop out the grease with their under lip. After a dozen hogs with different sized and shaped lips had been through a box there was little grease left. You could not drive them away; if you tried, they would run under the car and by the time you had crawled over they would have the boxes cleaned out on the other side and were coming back under the car again. After they had extracted the grease to their satisfaction they would go to sleep under the cars and when the cars started which they always did with a jerk there would be rather a startling appearance of a drove of hogs coming out among the wheels. Occasionally one lost a leg and went hopping around on three feet the rest of his life.

When I came up the canal in February they were at work making repairs. At one place there was an old man with wheelbarrow and shovel digging out a sand-bar formed by a little rill that ran into the canal. As I

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came near him I saw something moving on the outside slope of the tow path and a step or two brought me in full view of a good-sized pig rolling a tin pail over and over but had not succeeded in getting the cover off as it was tied on with a handkerchief. The old man, perfectly unconcerned, was busy with his work. " Look here, old fellow " said I, " you will lose your dinner." He straightened up and looked at with surprise and said, " Why? " " There is a hog— " He dropped his shovel and exclaimed, " O, my Lord! " sprang across the bottom of the canal and scrambled up the bank on to the tow-path without stopping to hear any more. The pig heard him and stopped rooting to see what was coming. As soon as the head of the old man appeared above the bank, the pig gave a grab, caught the pail by the bail in his mouth, and was off like a flash with the old man after him. It was one of the most exciting races I ever saw. The ground was nearly level about three rods wide between the canal and driver and six or seven feet below the tow path where I stood, and was filled with small clumps of bushes with clear spaces around them. The hog kept about six feet ahead, with one eye on his pursuer. On they went first around this bush and then around that circling this way and then the other according to the way the pig's eye was turned, cutting regular figures of eight and not getting more than two rods from the starting point. The old man was bent nearly double to grab him, his gray hair flowing out behind; every time he overhauled him the pig would make a tack around a bush and go galloping off in another direction, so it went round and round, back and forth, until the pig stubbed his toe over a rock and dropped the pail, then the old man came puffing up the bank and thanked me over and over again for he said, " that pig would have had the pail open in another minute and I should have had to work all day without any dinner, for I am three miles from home." As it was all that saved it was the handkerchief tied on the cover.

There is an amusing side but sometimes it has a more serious aspect as one has experience with the hog. A boy about a dozen years old in Washington concluded that he could have some amusem*nt at the expense of a good sized hog that acted as scavenger on C street. He provided himself with a pocket full of corn which he dropped grain by grain along the gutter thereby getting the confidence of the porker. When he got the hog opposite a carriage stone he would with the dexterity of a cow-boy vault on to the animal's back, grasping him by both ears. Away they would go the hog taking tremendous strides at the same time squealing at the top of his voice, up C Street into Seventh out of sight the boy clinging for all he was worth, going, how far I never knew but could hear squeal after squeal until they died out in the distance. The last time I saw the performance the boy was the one that suffered for the hog did not take more than two leaps before he made a short turn t[h}rowing the boy with great force against a stone that bridged the gutter. The boy took up the cry where the hog left off, picked himself up and went home holding on to his side. The hog crossed the street and was immediately absorbed in a mute study of a cabbage leaf. The other incident was at Wheeling where I ventured too near a hog with a litter of pigs.

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This ended in a foot race where I came in only one length ahead. I would have been glad to have been two or three lengths ahead for it is not a pleasant sensation to feel that an enraged hog is only six feet behind you with every bristle standing on end, his mouth wide open with two long tuskes [J/V] ready to gnash you and his face covered with foam and froth and at every leap is giving one of his peculiar puffs of sound which is neither a grunt or a growl.

The Williamsport vacation came at last to an end and we geared up our mules and were off down the canal again. While waiting at Williams- port the Capt. had made an awning of cotton cloth covering the steering deck and Cabin. It was high enough to clear the pilot's head and gave plenty of room to sit under on the cabin roof. It was kept in place by cleats screwed to the sides of the boat and did not have to be lowered for any of the bridges on the down trip and only occasionally on the return. This awning made the boat very comfortable through the long hot days that followed.

There were four or more species of turtles along the canal: the common spotted turtle, three or four inches long with bright red and yellow spots. The painted turtle, an inch or so larger with red blotches on its head and feet and a stripe around each scale of its shell; a black turtle, and the snapping turtle. The three first were very common, floating on the water or sunning themselves on the banks or the canal. The snapping turtle was not easily distinguished from the black at a distance on the water but at a near view the big head, thicker hump backed shell and pugnacious disposition was easily recognized. The snapper is the game fish of the turtle kind. The black turtle is some [times] eaten but the spotted and painted ones never except perhaps sometimes by the blacks. Capt. Coss had from time to time given me lively descriptions of turtle hunting and of the big old snappers to be found in the river and told me of the turtle harpoon he had at home. I never expected to see the harpoon or a turtle caught with it, but just before we left Williamsport he brought it out and had the blacksmith sharpen it and took it back with us down the canal. The harpoon was made by putting a pointed socket on the end of a strong hickory stick and a steel hook on the other the whole being four or five feet long. The pointed end was used to probe in the mud holes along the bank of the river and at the mouth of the creeks. We could tell by the feeling what he struck; if it was mud or sand it went in easy; if it hit a log it would stick, on a stone it would jingle but if it hit a turtle's back it gave a dull thud and rebounded like rubber. A day or two after we started the Capt. remarked that he thought it might be a good day for turtles and jumped ashore with his harpoon and followed along down by the river bank. Pic. was at the helm. Tommy was driving, little Pic was on his back asleep in the sun, and I was sitting on the cabin looking back along the tow-path wondering what success the Capt. was having. All at once he appeared about a quarter of a mile back with some black object in his hand hollooing like a loon. We ran the boat ashore to wait for the Capt. but soon found that he was calling for Pic

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to come back and help. At almost the first hole, the Capt. struck a thirty five pound turtle and hauled him out with the hook on the harpoon and brought him up on the tow-path, but he was a slippery fellow to carry so Pic. went back to help him. Pic grasped the turtle by the tail and held him at nearly arm's length, for he was in mortal fear of the turtle's jaws, which kept snapping like a steel trap, never letting the head which kept twisting around get within two feet of his legs. We had to laugh at poor Pic. who was straining every muscle to keep his balance with this heavy weight at the end of his arm keeping the turtle twice as far from him as there was any need of. " By golly, boss, if dat durned hummock back cotch hold of me wid them grappling irons I would be just spontaneously annihilated!"

Pic. was not far from right for I have seen a snapping turtle grasp on to a steel shovel blade with sufficient force to be lifted from the ground, and they will often hang on to a stick and be drawn on their backs for rods. We put the turtle in the bottom of a flour barrel which was just large enough to hold him but he could not run his head out only by raising himself on his tail. We kept him several days and then dressed him having meat enough to fill a common water pail full. We parboiled the legs and then fried them making a meal that I long remembered, but whether it was my good appetite or the change from ham or the extra good flavor of the turtle I do not know but presume it was part of each. The rest of the meat was given to Pic who took it home and had a feast with his family. To illustrate with what tenacity the turtle sticks to life I will describe the Capt. experience in dressing it. He cut the head off the night before, then the next day cut off the under shell and took out the heart, liver and intestines, then began cutting out the flesh while I held the shell steady on the deck. He had cut out the two fore legs and one hind leg leaving the last hind leg and tail. When he began to cut this the turtle drew back and kicked with sufficient force to draw blood on the Capt.'s hand.

As we sailed along one hot afternoon we turned from the river and came face to face with a mountain and soon found ourselves at the mouth of the tunnel. The Capt. blew the horn and as the tunnel was clear we entered. The canal through the mountain narrowed to a single track but a few inches wider than the boat with vertical walls on each side. A shelf on one of the walls about four feet wide formed the tow-path and the whole was arched over with brick giving plently of head room above. The space was so narrow that the boat required no steering so we all sat around the edge of the cabin and listened to the sharp clicking of the mules feet and the crack of the tow boys whip, which echoed and re- echoed through the long walled room. We could see a point of light dimly in the distance[;] this was the far end of the tunnel which grew larger and brighter as we sailed slowly, very slowly along, while the end we entered grew smaller and smaller. Around us was a dusky twilight and the mules were the outline of a deep dark shadow. In spots the dampness oozed through the walls and occasionally small gray stalactites hung from the arch above formed from the lime in the cement. We were

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nearly an hour sailing through, although it was only about three fourths of a mile long, for it is so narrow that the boat fitted it like a loose piston that crowded the water up into a wall in front of us, making hard pulling for the mules. So there was no room for boats to pass each other those that were coming in the opposite direction had to wait at the entrance until we came out and if there had been a half dozen boats following us, as they sometimes do, so near together that each could get into the tunnel before the one in front got out it would cause a long delay, but the great essential of a boatman's life is patience[;] time is of little account to him, as it was there were none to follow and we met no boat for a considerable distance below. The air was clear and of a grateful coolness in the tunnel, but the gloomy light and hollow sepulchral sound of our voices gave us a feeling of loneliness and we were glad to leave the dreary cave and come out again into the sunlight where the world is full of life and activity, not but what the tunnel had life for on the walls grew green moss, diatom and fungus made their homes in the cavities, bats fluttered here and there, while the water below was teeming with multitudes of living things, but this was not the life like that of the birds, insects, and flowers, the life of the sunshine and fields. Coming out, we passed through a deep cut, rounded a short curve and was soon hugging the river bank again.

In contrast to the tunnel there was a short reach of slackwater navigation where we were locked down out of the canal into the river which formed a bay or eddy extending up to the steep side of the mountain along the foot of which a path had been cut for the mules. The boat kept some distance from the shore making a pleasant change from the narrow canal although they sometimes have trouble in a heavy wind especially with a light boat that rides high on the water as they have no keel or center board to keep them from drifting. At the end of the reach we were locked into the canal again for there must be a lock to and from the river for the water in the canal must always be the same height while that of the river changes everyday. The height of the water in the canal is maintained by sluice gates and short canals from the river or stream that will bring it from a higher level. There are also overflows or [weirs] along the bank every mile or two to let out the surplus water, which in case of an accident to a lock or a heavy shower, or a long storm, might be sufficient to cause a break in the bank.

There were a dozen or more dams across the river between Georgetown and Cumberland for furnishing water for the canal. Some of these had names and others went by number. A few of these were well built, but most of them were very rude structures made by building square cribs of timber, cob house fashion, and filling them with boulders from the river bed. The intervening spaces were closed by stretching timber from crib to crib and sheathing them with plank. Each year some of the cribs would get undermined or tipped over by the spring freshet, and a section of the canal would be dry until they were repaired. The dam at Little Falls furnished water by which extensive flour mills were run in George- town, this section of the canal being kept full the year round. At Great

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Falls the Government owned the dam it being the source of the water supply for the city of Washington, and they have spent nearly half a million dollars on a new one since. At Harper's Ferry the U. S. Armory and the canal were joint owners of a stone dam and a new one was in process of building just below it. This was stopped by the war and I think never finished.

Of the birds I saw on my summer trip I have no distinct remembrance as at this season the birds were raising their young and did not make themselves conspicuous. In the winter I saw a great many—I should say thousands of Whistler ducks which flew up in great flocks at every bend of the river between Georgetown and Point of Rocks. They are a wild bird and have sharp eyes, and my appearance on the tow path was sufficient to send them off long before I was in gun shot of them. I also at the same time saw a number of bright red birds, probably grossbeak, in the thickets beside the river and were particularly noticeable among the leafless branches.

When we sailed after dark we lighted a square lantern and hung it on the bow of the boat for a head light which lighted the canal for a considerable distance and gave warning to those coming in the opposite direction. One damp night not far below the tunnel we ran into a perfect storm of May flies, or shad flies as they are called along the Connecticut River. They are a class of insects called ephemera which means an insect that lives but a day. They were a soft insect, with gauze-like wings that spread about one and one half inches and came up out of the water in countless numbers crawling over everything and sticking wherever they touched. So many crawled through a small hole broken in the corner of the lantern that they were three inches deep in the bottom. For miles the next day the surface of the canal was covered with th pupa skins out of which the insects came. You would get hundreds by dipping a pail of water. It is supposed that they live during the larva or grub state in the water for one [year] at least and probably for several years, and when they have arrived at maturity they seem as by appointment to all rise to the top and at almost the same moment burst their pupa skins and fly away in the world of air where they mate, lay their eggs and die. Some species seem to live only a day or two, others may live for a week or more. . . . These insects are seen more or less every season, but only in such prodigious quantities at rare intervals.

One of the great pleasures of canal boat travel is [that] you never feel hurried. If you want to stop and fish, hunt, sketch, botanize or geologize, all you have to do is to step ashore and stop as long as you wish and a brisk walk will bring you to the boat again probably at the next lock. Near Antietam I went over to the old ironworks but saw little to interest me. It was near this place that the calico rock, so called, is found. It is a formation of stone broken an inch or so square, blue and red, cemented together with some white material making a peculiar check of the crazy patchwork pattern. Opposite Harper's Ferry I waded out to a small island and made a rude sketch of the notch through the Blue Ridge Mountains

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and as this was only a few weeks before the John Brown raid, probably some of the villagers who saw me there afterwards associated me with him, and to this day tell their children and grandchildren how they saw one of the raiders sketch the town.

We were now nearing the Blue Ridge Mountains and the celebrated Harper's Ferry notch and as we entered it, the mountain on the north called Bolivar Heights crowded more and more on the canal until it had to be built in the edge of the river. Opposite this mountain is the town of Harper's Ferry, built on two slopes of a very steep hill one house rising above the other in terraces. At the foot on one slope at the side of the Potomoc River were the U. S. Arsenal and gun shops, the other slope ran down to the banks of the Shenandoah river which came rattling in from the south through a narrow valley at the foot of the western slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. After we round Bolivar Heights and just before we get opposite the Shenandoah the mountains fall back a little giving room for the highway and railroad which crossed the river together on the old wooden bridge to Harper's Ferry and for the few houses that formed the hamlet of Bolivar.

The young men of Harper's Ferry use[d} to amuse themselves by gathering at the bridge evenings and waylay such darkeys as were caught out after 9 o'clock without a pass and as they called it " wallop them." It might be funny for the boys, but it was not so funny for the victims as they dared not complain. It was also across the bridge that John Brown, whose soul goes marching on, marched his little army. This bridge was destroyed the next year by the rebels. As I now recall it the mountains on the Virginia side from the mouth of the Shennandoah to the Point of Rocks, twelve miles below, rose direct from the water steep, black, half wooded, from one to two thousand feet high, a wild uninhabited wilderness. On the Maryland side the mountains were divided into ridges leaving openings between in some of which were small hamlets, as at Weaverton, where the water power had been developed and a large pile cutting establishment built only to be deserted and fall into the river.

Knoxville was in another valley through which a branch railroad has been built since the war finding its way out through some notch to Hagers- town on the west. It is a wild, picturesque ride from the Ferry to the Point of Rocks. Dark mountains on either side crowd the river which rolls and tumbles over its rocky bed. Here and there the mountains interlock and seemingly form a barrier against further progress, then as we round some point the vista opens again only to close and open again. Point of Rocks is at the east gate of the Harper's Ferry notch. On the north shore the river washes the foot of a near-by perpendicular cliff several hundred feet high. On the top of this cliff was a boulder from which the place took its name. At the foot of this cliff they first built a carriage road, then came the canal which cut partially into the mountain and partially filled in the river sharing the tow path with the highway and last the railroad which had to cut still further in and wall up the slope of the canal to get through. This place was the end of my winter journey although I had intended to continue my walk through the notch to

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Harper's Ferry, but forty-eight miles in two days with a thin film of clay mud on the road that would pile up on my boots until they were very heavy was sufficient exercise for one time. To pass the time the next forenoon while waiting for the train I climbed up to the big boulder. It was eight or ten feet high and as large in its other dimensions and so nearly poised on the slope that a wall of masonry had been built on its lower side to prevent it from accidentally rolling off on to the road or canal below. One night during the rebellion some persons dug out the props and set the stone rolling over the bank where it went thundering down, just passing the railroad, which it was intended to destroy, into the canal but by good luck it fell near the edge on the vern side where it now stands with the top two or three feet out of water covering a space half as large as a freight car but not interfering with the passage of boats.

The village itself consisted of half a dozen whitewashed cabins and two hotels one on each side of the tracks; from each when the trains arrived came a stalwart negro with bells as big as two quart jugs which they rang lustily while the train stopped, but there were no passengers to reward them for their labor. The night I stopped there they had a grand ball in the warehouse as the building was called that served for the freight house. Point of Rocks was noted as a hard place, and one of the guests at breakfast was bragging that the ball had redeemed the name of the place, as there had been no fights, or at least only one or two misunderstandings, during the whole evening.

A short distanct below Point of Rocks we came to a little glade where standing some twenty rods back was a small cabin fifteen or eighteen feet square where the Captain said there were at least half a dozen children all of a size, so we kept watch and they came out one by one to see the boat until we counted thirteen. Twelve did not vary three inches in height and were dressed in a single garment, a cotton nightgown which once might have been white, the other was a boy a few inches taller and wore pants, with them were two women. As they were all colored we concluded that it was the young stock department of some plantation and they would have made a very artistic group for an amateur photographer or painter.

Before the Rail Roads small packet boats ran on the canal in opposition to the stagecoach and would make nearly as good time where there were not to [w] many locks. One of these boats had survived the changes of time and was used for excursions. We met the boat with a private party going up the canal between Harper's Ferry and Washington, sailing at the rate of four or five miles an hour. What attracted our attention the most was one of the party who stood on the roof over the cabin with a dip net on a long pole with which Tie was scooping up the floating turtles and dropping them into a barrel. Undoubtedly they had turtle soup for dinner.

Seneca Locks are about twenty-four miles from Georgetown and not far from Ball's Bluff and Edward's Ferry where one of the battles of the rebellion was fought. On my foot journey in the winter I stopped over

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night here at a canal hotel. I was told at a lockkeeper's below that I would find a hotel here so I walked the plank over the lock and went across a field to what I found to be a plantation residence. My idea of a plantation was taken from novels and was rather highly colored. The " beautiful green lawn " of my mental picture was without a tree for shade and had been plowed and replowed by a drove of razor backed hogs. The veranda floor was frescoed with the tracks of a generation of clay covered brogans and the surroundings were directly opposite to my impressions of Southern life. I was directed by a white boy to a smaller house which he said was the hotel.

I climbed a seven rail fence and crossed a creek on a round log and applied at the "" office " for food and shelter and received a favorable answer. The "' office " was in a small wing of the house and its furniture consisted of a four-legged bench with the top made of a slab, a chair without any back, another with a dilapidated seat and a sizable box stove with a cracked lid and a broken hearth. A niche was fenced off on one side with a lattice work of lathes behind which the landlord immediately went and opened a small gate and beamed on me, but as I did not respond he soon closed it and went his way about his chores. I was furnished a very good supper of fried ham, small river fish cooked in Southern style with head tail and fins on, eating with the family. . . . The cooking was done somewhere in the rear of the house and we were waited on by a small colored girl whose head was a perfect ball of knotted wool. After supper we heard the click of horse hoofs and one of the young country gentleman who said he had been to town that day came in to tell the news. Just below the locks lying on the bottom of the dry canal was a stranded boat. The owner had been caught here when navigation closed and as his boat was his home this was as good a place as any to spend the winter. The boatman had also heard the click of the horses hoofs and arrived nearly as soon as the country gentleman whom we will call Chivalry. The little gate in the lattice work was again opened and this time for a purpose for Chivalry immediately ordered his favorite drink concocted and the boatman did not wait for a second invitation to help and had his whiskey straight. Then Chivalry invited the stranger to join and have a smile. I very politely declined. This Chivalry took as an insult to the blue blood of Maryland and demanded to know if I refused to drink with him. I humbly begged his pardon stating that I would drink with him as soon as with anyone but I did not drink at all. " Aw, you are a tee-to-tee-lar then, I presume[.} If I had been a teetoteelar when I was a young man I might by this time have been the president of the Sons of Temperance." I assured him that there was no doubt about that. In a short time Chivalry and the Boatman took possession of the bench both astride with a pack of greasy cards between them. Standing on his knees at one end of the bench was the older boy, and at the other end in the same position was the younger boy. They were getting their education. The landlord stood by making frequent trips to and from the bar. This was their position when I left them for the triple bedded room over the dining room. When I came down the next

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morning Chivalry was just mounting his horse while the Boatman and Landlord were talking over their night's work. Chivalry, Boatman, Land- lord and boys had kept their respective places until daylight. The Boatman was five dollars richer and would have been seven if one of the boys had not said something. The Landlord had done a thriving trade, and the boys—well, they had not missed any of the tricks of the game.

Great Falls are about fourteen miles from Georgetown and are the source of the water supply of the city of Washington.23 The Government has spent large sums of money in building the dam and aqueduct. For the first few miles below the aqueduct is a wonderful piece or engineering it being built in the face of a rocky cliff and in some places it is a com- bination of tunnel and bridge one commencing where the other leaves off. The Cabin John bridge, 220 feet long and 90 feet rise, the longest single arch in the world, is one of the wonders of this aqueduct.24 This part of the work had been completed the summer before and a great number of small storehouses which were radiant with whitewash gave the appearance of a small village but there was but one house besides the lockkeeper's. This house was a hotel supported principally by fishermen from the capital. I took my dinner here on my winter trip and particularly remember the yawning fireplace. Here Senators, Diplomats, Judges, Secre- taries, and notable men of every degree have, for the last seventy-five years, sat before the big log fire to dry their boots and tell stories of their day's sport.

And I remember the ringing of the big bell—large enough for a small factory—that called me to the leg of cold ham and the slices of white bread that formed my dinner. I had to do my own carving. I asked the landlord what town this was. He said "' this aint no town, them's government shanties, the town is three miles off." I realized that town had a different meaning in different places. Here it meant a collection of houses, and all land outside of the houses was county; with me it was the land that formed the town with or without houses. I began to feel that I was three miles from anywhere. Little Falls is about four miles above George- town at the head of the last level which continues across the Potomoc River to Alexandria, Va. It also furnishes the power to the flouring mills at Georgetown the water being taken from the canal. These falls are a wild rapids but as their name indicates are not so large as the one above. They are also at the end of the steep bluff, the country below being more

28 " The canal at Great Falls was about 6 feet deep and 25 feet wide and had 5 locks measuring 12 by 100 feet." It is now a narrow ditch running the length of the Great Falls Park. Part of the distance it is grass-grown; part of the distance it is a waterway. (Washington, City and Capital, Federal Writers Project, WPA [1937}, p. 819).

24 Court records indicate that Cabin John Creek was named before 1750 for " a mysterious hermit who lived in a log cabin near the spot. In one legend he is an Indian; in another, the more generally accepted version, he is a pirate with a plentiful supply of stolen riches. So seriouly was the latter story taken that until recent years purchasers of land in the neighborhood were required to sign an agreement to surrender half of any buried treasure found on the property" (Washington, City and Capital, p. 810).

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rolling and coming to the river with a gentle incline. Not far below the falls is the old chain bridge over which so many gallant soldiers marched to fight the battles of the rebellion never to return. Not far from this bridge we ran aground on a sand bar that had been washed into the canal by a little brook. Pic. and myself went overboard and sounded with our feet and found the position of the bar then by twisting the boat back and forth and with some hard pushing got it off and was on our way again.

At Georgetown the canal crossed the Potomoc on a long wooden bridge or aqueduct built similar to a carriage bridge but instead of a roadway it had to support a box filled with water through which the boat sailed.25

This required that the sides should be braced and made sufficiently strong to keep the water from pressing them out. At the very top was a narrow tow path and rail to keep the mules and driver from falling into the river below. After the river is crossed, the canal runs through a nearly level country some distance from the river but makes many a turn and crook before it reaches Alexandria a distance of about twelve miles. We arrived at Alexandria towards evening and ran into a spacious bason [J/C]

where several boats were waiting to unload. The town is not very interesting, as many of the buildings which showed signs of past respectability were going into decay, the stores were closed, the grass grew in the streets and very few inhabitants were in sight. In summer there was a little businss, loading coal from the canal boats into schooners which either came empty or had carried a load of ice or lumber to Washington. In the evening I was much amused at a young darkey dancing on a neighboring boat, he kicked up his heels, cut pigeon wings and went through break- downs and into contortions that would have astonished a professional. The Capt. reported the next morning that the boat would be unloaded that day and that it would take several hours, as they were unloaded by longshoremen into buckets and hoisted on board the ships by horses. So I took the day off and spent the day in Washington meeting the boat at Georgetown towards evening and started on our home voyage. At this time the Government paid all their bills in gold and while I was in Washington a department store clerk received five twenty dollar gold pieces for his month's pay which he slipped into his vest pocket and while crossing the ferry to his home in Alexandria [he] looked over the rail at something in the water and at that moment heard a splash and saw to his sorrow his five eagles fast flying to the bottom of the river.

East of the Blue Ridge the country is more level and better adapted

26 When the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was being discussed, Georgetown, Alexandria, and Washington could not agree on its location. Georgetown saw no reason why it should extend farther than Rock Creek. Washington, having a system of municipal canals designed by L'Enfant, wanted the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to connect with their system. " In Alexandria the citizens turned up their noses at the possibility of using the broad Potomoc itself, and eventually organized a separate canal company which threw a viaduct across the river at Georgetown, and brought the canal down the Virginia side to Alexandria."

The feeder canals below Georgetown were soon abandoned, for in the early days the trade was not great enough to support them (Frederic Gutheim, The Potomoc, Rivers of American Series [Rinehart, 1949}, p. 261).

LIFE ON THE C. & O. CANAL: 18 59 117

for plantations than west of the mountains and being farther from the free state line of Penn. the slave population was much larger but as there is [jvf} very few houses near the river we saw little of it. One evening as we sailed along up through this part of the country Capt. Coss remarked that we must be on the lookout for Montgomery County merchants. ""What is a Montgomery County merchant?" say I. "'If you hear a whistle or any peculiar sound stop the boat and run it over to the vern side and you will see," says the Capt. "" but don't ask too many ques- tions." We kept our ears open but heard not a sound; either the merchants were not abroad or they did not like the looks of us as customers. A day or two after the Capt. made an explanation. It seemed that the colored people occasionally felt the want of a little money to spend and were not long in finding some commodity for which the boatmen were willing to exchange it. Our Capt. did not encourage stealing by any means but if the white eyes of one of these M. Co. merchants were seen glistening through the shadows of the trees loaded down with a bag of corn or oats a few dozen of eggs or a ham or even a pig tied by one leg, he would not pass him by but would stop and take pity on him and not even ask him if he was free or a slave. If he considered the question at all in a moral point of view he would come to the same conclusion that many a one has come to before that the one that worked and raised an article ought to own at least a share in it and probably the fellow was not getting more than his share. One night as Capt. Coss was coming up the canal he heard a whistle and stopped the boat. After a while an ancient colored man put in his appearance and after considerable parleying on both sides and when the merchant was satisfied that everything was safe he led out a one hundred and fifty pound pig which he offered at a very reasonable price—in fact, a very extremely reasonable price. The offer was accepted and the money paid while the pig stood calmly by giving grunts of satisfaction. But when they came to put him on board he made decided objection and the merchant had to throw him on his back and carry him, the pig squealing as only a pig can squeal. The Capt. asked him if he was not afraid they would hear him up at the house. ["}Oh, no, massa. There is not a living person within two miles of here.["} The pig was dropped in the hold, the darkey disappeared in the darkness and when the sun rose the boat with its living freight was twenty miles away. The darkey ran but little risk in the business for neither the slaves or the poor whites had any interest in stopping it and if he was caught his master might whip him, take away some of his liberties or change his work. The amount of punishment would depend on the master and somewhat on the slave and the chance he might take in running away. The only disgrace the darkey would feel would be that of the lack of success in his commercial undertaking. With the white man it was very different. There was nothing that was considered so mean by the slave holders as to purchase anything from a slave, and the law took the same view, for the judges were all slave holders consequently there was more or less friction between them and the poor whites. Along the canal in the season it was open the poor whites would hold up their hands in innocence

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laying every case of disappearance of personal property to the boatman and perhaps with good reason for there were some, in fact to [J/V]

many, whose perception of the right of property was very dim. It is a common saying that certain persons would not steal anything they could not carry oS but this did not hold good with the canal boatmen for they would steal anything they could hitch a mule to. A person on the canal has to use as much care about his personal property as he would in the Italian quarter of a city. Every bit of rope has to be brought in at night and put out of sight and it was always deemed best to picket the mules on the vern side when left out at night for fear they might steal their halters and let them loose. A boat left for any length of time without an occupant would be stripped of every loose article about it and when they are gone they will begin to tear off the iron work. Capt. Coss had a boat stored at Williamsport. He had taken off everything he supposed to be movable and locked them up but when he arrived there great was his surprise to find that somebody had stolen the sheet iron chimney. This is not the place to record the remarks he made as he gave his opinion of boatmen in general and of the one that stole the chimney in particular. . . .

At one place we were what might be called blockaded. We were going up and had run the boat into the lock. The keeper shut one of the gates but the other would close only part way leaving an open space a few inches wide between the two. After making several attempts to close it the keeper opened the sluice gates above thinking that the water might force them together but it did not and the space was so wide that after the water had raised a short distance it ran out as fast as it came in, besides the gates not being supported were being dangerously sprung out of place. So the sluices were closed and the water ran out of the lock again while all hands stood round in a quandary what to do next. I volunteered to dive down to see what was the matter. They made no objection or gave any encouragement to the suggestion. I went back a little ways under a bridge and took off my clothes, for the lock was right in front of the lockkeeper's house and some women sat in the window, then with a run and a flying leap [1} dove to the bottom of the canal where I found a piece of water-soaked timber against the sill. At about the third dive I succeeded in getting the block of timber out. I then crawled up the bank put on my clothes and was ready to join the boat as it sailed out of the lock no worse for my bath.

A little incident happened to our homeward voige {//V} that solved what had been to me a mystery in natural history. Years before and a thousand miles from the place I had found under a pile of boards a peculiar nest of some insect. It was in the shape of a tiny barrel three eighths of an inch in diameter and one inch long. The outside was formed by rolling up leaves and the inside was packed full of circular disks also cut from leaves and the end of the nest was neatly finished by rolling the outside over the edge of the disks. I took this nest apart piece by piece and wondered what insect would have made it, for each piece was as clean cut as if made by a tailor.

We were in the lock slowly rising up between the walls when a small

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green bee flew past me and alighted on one of the stones, ran a few steps and disappeared in a crevice. It carried one of those green disks in its mouth. It was but a moment in view but that was sufficient to finish the story of the nest and tell me what was the builder. I have since found that this is the insect that cuts the round holes so often seen in the leaves of the rose bush.

When we left Williamsport on our return we took as a passenger a young man from up in the mountains beyond Cumberland who had been at work harvesting and as the season here is several weeks earlier than at his home he had taken the chance to earn a little money and see some of the world besides. Among the money he had received was a five dollar gold piece that seemed to interest him very much and he showed it to me with the remark "' that was the kind of money to have." As I had two ten dollar gold pieces in my pocket I was sorely tempted to draw them forth with the remark that I thought these were the better kind, but I resisted the temptation and suggested the propriety of not showing his money around the canal. Gold was nearly as common as bills in this part of the country as the old state banks were not very reliable.

From time to time Capt. Coss gave me items about the canal which with those collected from other sources I have compiled the following account: The early settlers, here as elsewhere, followed the lines of the waterways and as there were no roads except mule paths the river was used to trans- port their produce to market and bring their supplies home. Light flat boats were first used propelled by poles in the level stretches but they had to carry their goods around the falls and rapids. A canal was proposed as early as 1784 and various surveys made. A few years later a company was formed and several thousand dollars spent in locks and dams to improve the river. In 1823 the Government engineers made a careful survey for a canal from Georgetown to Pittsburg[h], Pa. making an estimate, which included a tunnel four miles long through the Alle- gheny Mountains, the cost of which seemed almost fabulous in those days. The Potomoc River rises far up on the eastern slope of the Alle- gheny Mountains, while on the western slope nearly opposite its head- waters is the Youghiogheny a branch of the Monogohela which empties its water into the Ohio at Pittsburgh making nearly a complete chain of waterways. But the lowest notch on the mountain was 2000 feet above tide water requiring some 200 locks to get up and 150 or more to get down the western slope to the Ohio. But then there were the faster growing states and the fertile prairies beyond the mountains to be connected with the seaboard. This was before the days of the Railroads. Various sizes of canals were proposed from one three feet deep to that of six the depth of the present canal. In building a canal a very important point is to have a supply of water for it is a very thirsty thing. It evaporates in the sun. It is continually being absorbed into the ground and it leaks at every culvert and aqueduct besides a lock full is used whenever a boat passes in or out of a level, and this water must be supplied to the highest level and if not furnished by natural streams it must be stored in reservoirs back in the mountains. The canal as now built was commenced in

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1828 and cost over twelve million dollars to which has been added some three millions in repairs before the general work caused by the storms of May 31, 1889, which took nearly two years to repair and which will long be remembered by the terrible disaster at Johnstown, Pa. The distance from Georgetown to Cumberland is 186 miles and the height of rise is about 800 feet requiring some 80 locks.26 The canal was built by a joint stock company in which several towns and I think the state took part.

The Railroad coming into use so soon after this part of the canal was built took away all need of extension, and for its coal trade only has it remained in existence until now. For slow heavy freight there is nothing equal to the canal but the Railroad can be built almost anywhere up hill or down regardless of water supply and at a far less cost and can be run so much faster that they have supplanted all the canals except in a very few particularly favored places. As this canal connects the soft coal mines of Maryland with tide water it furnishes return cargoes to the schooners that bring ice to Washington and at the same time served as a regulator of the price of transportation. At the time of the break in 1889 the price of coal went up several dollars on a ton along the line of the canal which had much to do to arouse the people to rebuild it.

Boating was a profitable business when they had a lucky season. If I remember rightly they had about one dollar a ton for transporting the coal when you used your own boat and somewhat less in the company's boats. With a good team two round trips could be made in each month from April to December and the expense was for the help, board, team, and seven dollars toll on each return trip. It was easy to figure a profit on this basis especially in the dull times and low prices that followed the panic of 1857, but the "' ifs " were so many that the margin for profit was very small. Sometimes they had to wait for their load at Cumberland as you had to take your turn with the other boats, or there might be an accident at the mines or on their railroad as they might be filling a special order by rail and there is always the possibility of a strike. Then the delay at the other end of the canal was often longer for a storm or head wind sometimes prevents the arrival of any schooners sometimes for weeks. You might wait in Georgetown or Alexandria for a chance to unload while your neighbor made two round trips for one of the other lines. Still worse than these were the breaks and wash-outs on the canal that detained all the boats alike [;} these sometimes caused months' delay. Almost every year there was a break somewhere, part of one of the rude dams would go out, a local storm would gather and come rushing down undermining a culvert or sweeping away an aqueduct wrecking all the boats on that level. They could not be repaired in the same way as they repair a railroad by carrying around or trestling over but have to be built anew from the foundation up. That seemingly harmless animal the musk-

" " There were 74 lift locks between Georgetown and Cumberland, each having the capacity to lift or lower a boat approximately 8 feet. Twenty-three of these are located on the restored Georgetown division. The locks measure 100 feet long, 15 feet wide, and about 16 feet deep." {Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, National Park Service.)

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rat often causes thousands of dollars damage by boring their channels through the banks starting a leak that will sometimes make a break rods in width. On some canals they employ hunters and give bounties for all that are caught within a certain distance of it. In some season these breaks will follow one after the other until the whole season is used up and in the fall the boatmen will not have enough money to pay expenses. There was more or less freight to be carried besides the coal but as Washington was not a commercial city a larger share went to and from Baltimore. Sometimes the boatmen and warehouse men would pick up a boat of fruit or grain to be sold on speculation and after harvest there was considerable wheat and corn delivered to the mills at Georgetown but when all the local freight was divided among the three or four hundred boats it amounted to very little to each. At the end of the season the navigation is closed. It is desirable to keep the canal open as long as possible and not have the boats freeze in or the locks freeze up and burst. When freez- ing weather grows near a day is appointed giving a few weeks' notice when the canal will be drawn off, then there is a hurrying around with their last load and getting their boats home or in some place where they can lay {JVVJ in safety until spring. There would of course be a few who would be belated like the boatman of Seneca locks and find themselves stranded along the canal.

Sometimes on the more northern canals nature will close the canal before the appointed time catching hundreds of boats in transit. On the day appointed the [illegible word] gates are closed and the water drawn off from every canal except the one at Georgetown which supplies the mills and during the winter the canal is cleaned and the many needed repairs made. The next spring soon after the arrival of the bluebird the water is turned in and as the canal is free from ice the navigation is resumed.

We were near our journey's end and we overtook a boat on our line which we wished to pass and I was sent out to drive past the boat. It was one of the hottest days of the season. To the right of the canal was a steep sandy slope, to the left was the river and overhead the hottest kind of midday sun with hardly a breath of air stirring. We were soon alongside and their tow boy, a sleepy kind of a fellow who did not turn out far enough so one of our spread sticks that keep the traces in place caught his harness and turned the horse end for end. I stopped and let the boy get untangled and then started on only to catch the next stick which nearly threw his horse to the ground. I stopped again and this time he gave me room to pass. If he had not it would not have been the fault of the tow boy's captain who used the most forcible canal English to impress on him his duty to get out of my way.

There was a law of the road, the same on the canal as on the land, which had to be arranged to accomidate [sic'} both the mules on the tow path and the boats on the water. When we met the boats passed to the right of each other the one at the tow path side having the right of way the other team stopping and let its tow line sink to the bottom of the canal while the moving boat and team passed over it. When both boats were

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going in the same direction the rear boat had the right of way and passed on the tow path side the front team turning out to give room for the other to pass between it and the bank. If the front team does not turn out and give them the track the other will pass on the outside and the tow line will sweep them into the canal. Sometimes when the bottom of the boat is rough or has projecting slivers the tow line has to be un- hitched or is carried over the boat.

At last the journey was ended. We had passed the last lock sailed over the last level and were again back at the shipyard at Cumberland. Here I packed my things and bid the boat and its crew goodby, and returned to my friends.

When the trip was ended, the spell was broken and a feeling of unrest overtook me. I felt that I must be up and doing. Finding nothing for me at Cumberland I faithfully promised my friends not to go farther east than Baltimore, packed up my things and started. A single day at Balti- more was sufficient to send me on without inquiring for employment. Eastward by slow but by economic means I proceeded, stopping but once for work where I made at least thirty applications without result, until I reached my starting place in New Hampshire. Here after an absence of about eight months the wheels of industry were just beginning to move, and I was met at the door of my former place of employment with the cheerful salutation that there was a place waiting for me. The tide was turned and the spell was truly broken and I stopped drifting.

MOUNT AIR:

THE STORY OF AN EARLY MARYLAND ESTATE

By MARTHA SPRIGG POOLE

SUMMER days in Charles County, Maryland, are sometimes hot and humid. On such a day even a gentle in-shore breeze

blowing across the water is a welcome relief. Perhaps such a pleasant experience came to Luke Francis Matthews one day as he returned from his tobacco fields to his home on an elevation above the Potomac River where Port Tobacco Creek makes into its broad waters. If so, Mount Air would have seemed to him a very appropriate name for the land which his more prosaic ancestors had called co*ckshott? The Addition and Matthews Purchase.

Luke Francis Matthews was born in 1772, the son of Jesse Matthews and his wife, Margaret Pye. Jesse in his will, written November 27, 1774, and probated January 30, 1775, left to Luke Francis, his infant son and only child, his tracts co*ckshott and The Addition. Jesse's widow, Margaret, married Joseph Simms and no doubt Luke Francis spent his boyhood in Simm's home. In 1789, when Luke was 16 years old, he chose Joseph Simms as his guardian, and the Charles County Court appointed appraisers to estimate the annual value of the orphan's land.2 They found the following improvements:

1 dwelling house 28 x 18 weatherboarded with poplar plank and covered with cypress shingles; has a brick chimney with two fire- places; also adjoining it a small piazza on one side and two small sheds at one end; altogether 7 small glass windows very much broken and out of repair

1 old clapboard dwelling house 16 ft square with a shed on one side and another at one end

1 Various spellings—co*ckshutt, co*cksute, etc. "Charles Co. Wills WF No. 1, f. 292; Al No. 10, f. 101; ibid. N4, f. 149.

Simms or Semmes, both spellings used.

123

124 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

1 old kitchen 28 x 16 with an old and damaged brick chimney in the middle

1 good negro quarter 16 ft sq about 8 years old (logged) 3 old and sorry (?) logged 2 old clapboard ditto 1 tobacco house 32 x 22 tolerable good—with a shed on one side and

a small prize ditto at one end 1 small granary or wheat house 12 ft sq 2 old logged houses the one 20 x 12, other 16 x 12 1 old clapboard meat house 12 ft sq 1 old clapboard milk house 5 ft sq 1 good pigeon house 8 ft sq About 100 scattering fruit trees of peaches, cherries, pears and apples 300 panels of good fence 300 panels of old and sorry fence Little timber on land

Annual rent of 3000 pounds of inspected crop tobacco Sept. 29, 1789. G. B. Causin and Hoskins Hanson3

From this estimate it may be assumed that Negro slaves were living on the land, producing crops of tobacco and wheat. "We can only wonder who had built the various buildings and why they had become run down. We may also wonder how prosperous was a lad who owned an estate worth the annual rent of 3000 pounds of crop tobacco, with its many " sorry " and " old " buildings.

In any case, by 1800 things were looking up for Luke Francis. He had married Rose Causine of a neighboring family and they had acquired a number of slaves.4 Also, Luke Francis had purchased more land—Matthews Purchase 6 and Warthen's Adven- ture.6 Thus when in April, 1801, Luke had his property resurveyed, it was found to contain 654 acres. No Patent was issued, probably because no vacant land was found. The tract was called Mount Air.7

With an estate, a wife and prosperity, Luke no doubt built a fine house where it stands today. From interior evidence, it is likely that the new house was added on to the little 16-foot square clapboard dwelling called " old " in 1789.

To reach Mount Air, now owned by Mr. and Mrs. J. Edward

•Charles Co. Wills Al No. 10, f. 435. 4 Charles Co. Deeds IB No. 3, f. 197. "Ibid., IB No. 4, f. 104 and 110. 6 Ibid., K No. 4, f. 456. 7 Original Survey, Land Office; Charles Co. No. 340. Unpatented. Warthen's

Adventure was not included; said not to be contiguous.

MOUNT AIR 125

Burroughs, Jr., one turns off Route 301 at sign '" Mt Air Road " 6 miles south of La Plata soon after passing Bel Alton and follows along a winding drive for a mile and a half. As the visitor approaches the house from the land side, he sees ahead of him a modified '" telescope " house of pleasing, though unorthodox proportions. The three-story section has two large chimneys on the left, and a one-story wing to the right. Beyond the chimneys to the left, and balancing the wing on the right, is a one-story structure with the steep pitched roof, chimney and general lines of a very ancient building. A newer utilitarian wing has been added farthest to the left.

The box-wood maze through which he passes is so fascinating that the visitor does not hurry up the rather steep steps of the portico through which he enters the house. The railing and posts with their ball ornaments seem older than the columns and pedi- ment, which, no doubt, replace earlier ones which failed to with- stand the ravages of centuries of salt air.

Once in the hall, its features are momentarily overlooked due to awe and admiration for the magnificent view of the Potomac River which meets the eye through the opposite door. The river is wide here, thanks to the waters of Port Tobacco Creek which joins the Potomac in front of the house. Immediately comes awareness that the house is on an elevation of perhaps a hundred feet above the river.

Turning from the exterior view to the interior, one notices the spaciousness of the twelve-foot wide hall. The stairs going up from the hall are of recent origin. The original stairs are said to have gone up from the land-side drawing room and to have been boxed in, uniquely fashioned to provide protection for modest maidens as they went up and down them.8

On the right of the hall is the library which is small enough to be friendly in atmosphere. The wall opposite the door has a fireplace with recessed shelves on either side, surmounted by semi- circular arched wood trim. No elaborate carving is here, but the wood-work is elegant and well-proportioned.

The doors throughout the house claim attention. They are of a rich walnut of generous proportions, of the Cross and Bible design. The ancient rim locks carry a brass seal with letters W-R and the name James Carpenter, patentee.

"Katherine Scarborough, Homes of the Cavaliers (N. Y. 1930), p. 54-59.

126 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

To the left of the hall are two drawing-rooms of equal size. Between them is a wide opening equipped with folding doors. Over the opening is a fan light leaded in an interesting pattern.

The mantels are interesting and unusual. The one in the river- side drawing-room has a delicately carved frieze in vertical design, using rope and bead motifs, which is topped by two horizontal moldings. Reeded pilasters are well proportioned. The mantel in the land-side drawing-room is similar in design but the carver showed originality by using different motifs. It, too, is unusual and beautiful.

Entrance to the dining-room is through a door leading from the river-side drawing-room. This 16 x 16 room (no doubt an older structure) presented problems to the builder who wished to join on to it his new three-story building. The method he used was to build two huge chimneys (to serve the new part) right up against the old house, the space between the chimneys connecting the old and the new. He then put an arch over the connection, and on each side of the arch built in cupboards against the chimneys. The two original windows on the land side of this oldest part of the house have jib doors placed under them to give access to the porch. These jib doors, as well as all other doors in the older building, have H and L hinges of early design. The chimney of the old house provides a fire-place for the dining-room. Beside the chimney is the door into the modernized kitchen wing.

The three-story main building is of frame construction with brick-nogging filling all spaces between the sturdy framework. Wide-beaded clapboard siding covers all exterior walls. The windows are large, all four panes wide. Those on the first floor have twelve panes in the lower, and twelve panes in the upper sash, while those on the second floor have twelve lower, eight upper sash panes. Those on the third floor are the reverse of those on the second floor. The two-story gallery porches on the river side are of quite recent origin. The second story contains three bed-rooms opening from a hall, each with fire-place and mantel without shelf. The third floor has two bed-rooms.

One's imagination is aroused by the brick basem*nt, divided into cells. These doubtless had many household functions, serving as storage space for wines, preserved foods, small tools and the like. The broad floor beams, all fully exposed, are most unusual, being adze hewn on one side and pit-sawed on the other.

Mount Air, Interior Room.

Mount Air, E , nxtenor contemporary v lew.

MOUNT AIR 127

They have every appearance of having been cut from timber on the property.

The 16-foot square cell under the dining-room may have been the first floor of this ancient house. It has a huge fire-place with crane. The doors are made of 3-ply upright boards with enormous strap hinges and latches. This room was a bastion against possible Indian raids.

In one room is the base of a cistern into which rain water was diverted for household use.9

Regardless of when and by whom the present house on Mount Air or its predecessors were built, it is certain that the land com- prising the Mount Air estate has a long history, going back to the very beginnings of the Colony. As stated above, when Mount Air was resurveyed for Luke Francis Matthews in 1801, it consisted of several tracts: co*ckshott, The Addition and Matthews Purchase.

The history of co*ckshott goes back to John co*ckshott who transported himself, his wife, two daughters and four other persons into Maryland in 1641. The family settled at St. Inigoes in St. Michael's Hundred. John is said to have been a joiner, and he seems to have been prosperous, as shown by the assessment of the inhabitants of St. Michael's Hundred by the Assembly in 1642. By this, Henry Brook was assessed 115 pounds tobacco; next came "" Mr. co*ckshott" and John Hallowes 69 pounds each; five men were assessed 46 pounds each; and 36 men, 23 pounds tobacco each.10

John was present at the Assembly of March, 1641, and attended the session of September, 1642 by proxy.11 A month later he died, leaving a widow, Jane, then aged 30, and daughters Mary aged 5 and Jane aged one year. The widow was made administrator and turned in an interesting inventory on October 28, 1642. John's dwelling house and plantation were valued at only 1800 pounds of tobacco, while his debts were listed as 2000 pounds, and a suit of clothes at 2000 pounds. The usual articles for household use were listed as were quantities of nails and tools, no doubt used at his trade. The unusual items include such things as:

8 The author is indebted to Mr. L. M. Leisenring, Fellow, American Institute of Architects, for checking the description of Mount Air mansion.

"Cert. AB and H, f. 59 and 61. Arch. Md., I, 145; IV, 165. 11 Ibid., I, 116, 118.

128 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

A black suit and coat; a scarlet cap and p silk garters; a suit and cloak; a brown cloak; 13 p of Irish stockings; a black stuff cloak; 6 old hats and a cap; a black suit and leather doublet; a suit; a suit and cloak; a suit; a suit and coat. He also had 3 guns; an old rapier, a sword and a leather belt. On the cultural side were a book-rest; a parcel of English books; six framed pictures. Also a framed table; a turkie-work carpet, and an apple-roaster and a meat-heater. There was a field of corn, by estimate 30 barrels, and a maid-servant valued at 700 pounds tobacco.

This was a large estate for the time and place, in all 14,222 pounds of tobacco.12

By 1644, Jane co*ckshott had become the wife of Nicholas Causine, a Frenchman who had settled in Maryland several years earlier. They had two sons, Ignatius and Nicholas.13

In 1649, Jane Causine demanded a patent for 2000 acres of land due to her daughters, Mary and Jane co*ckshott, as heirs of their father, John co*ckshott. She secured a warrant to have laid out land on the Potomac River between Cedar Point and the head of Port Tobacco Creek and for this a patent dated Oct. 25, 1649 was issued to Mary and Jane for 1200 acres on the east side of the Potomac River adjoining the land of Nicholas Causine. On the same date Nicholas Causine received a patent for the adjoining 1000 acres, called Causine Manor. The girls called their 1200 acres co*ckshott. In the course of a law-suit some years later, it was said that Causine's land was a gift to him from his wife Jane, being her rights to John co*ckshott's land.1*

These grants were miles away from the settlements around St. Mary's City and deep in the wilderness and on the Indian frontier, yet perhaps near the Jesuit Mission to the Indians in that general area. Yet before February 26, 1653/4 when Nicholas Causine made his will, the Causine family had moved to his land near Portobacco in what was soon to become Charles County, and had cleared the land and built a house.15 To this house came Benjamin Gill, where he was cared for by Mrs. Causine until his death on November 22, 1655. Gill was the father-in-law of James Neale, patentee of Wbllaston Manor, who had left the Colony and was presumed dead. Gill had a cousin, Robert Cole, who claimed Gill's estate. But in 1658 the Causine family claimed that Gill

12 ibid., IV, 96. l*lbid. passim; XLI, 169-174. 14 Cert. AB and H, f. 22, 28, 29; Pat. AB and H, 306; Chancery 3, f. 707. •Arch. Md., XLI, 54.

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had left an oral will, leaving his personal estate to them. From the testimony in this case we learn the ages of the members of the family, and that Mary co*ckshott had married Henry Adams. Nicholas Causine had died meanwhile, leaving a will probated in 1656. Jane co*ckshott was not married in 1658. Jane co*ckshott- Causine married Robert Clark late in 1656.16

Jane co*ckshott, the daughter, subsequently married Thomas Matthews. That name occurs many times in the early history of St. Mary's and Charles Counties, and it cannot be said with cer- tainty how many men of that name there were, nor which is which. As to the one that Jane co*ckshott married, we have the following letter:

To the Rt honnorble Charles, Calvert Lieut of this Province of Maryld dd.

St Mary's Sir

Upon Munday last the Indeans of Pascattaway sent to my Brother & mee, word tht they had taken two prisonrs of the Johnadoes upon the North side of patomake river desiring that some of the English would come & heare their Confession & see their pceedings agt them which should be the next day by noone if wee would come or else send thm word or wee tht J would not come where upon I requested my brother Ignatius & Henry More to goe along with mee & wee went thither according to the tyme they appointed & after I came they presently began to Torter the man & gave mee this Relation from him by an Interpreter who undrstood him tht there was sixty of them upon the North side of pato- macke River for to Warr & kill the English & the Indians & doe what mischeife they could & he confessed they had Cutt of one house & tht the English had killed thm six men but what had been don since hee came from them he could not tell & he sd there was a hundred more which were gone to the head of the bay to kill English there & sasqehanoes to if they can light of them & tht this Sumer they did intend to come into our Necke to kill English if they could but passe the Indeans & not be discovered this I thought good to acquaint yor lop wth tht you may use what meanes you can to give thm notice at Baltemore County tht they may looke to themselves, as for the Relacon & maner of their tortering thm I omitt till I shall see yor honor,

from yor humble servt Tho: Mathews

For the Rt honrble the Lieut genrall. These from the Indian Interpreter Mr Thomas Mathewes for the safty of this pvince from howse to howje post hast

My brothr Adams pnrth his service unto yor honnor 18 7^., 169-174.

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This letter was presented at the Council Meeting when it was received; it was dated Portobacco, June 9, 1664. There are several references in the Council Proceedings to "" Mr. Thomas Matthews, the Indian Interpreter " between 1660 and 1666. He must have been Jane co*ckshott's husband to have been the brother of Henry Adams (who had married Mary co*ckshott). His " brother Ignatius " may have been Ignatius Causine, half-brother of Jane co*ckshott.17

Is Thomas Matthews, the Indian interpreter, the same as any of the other men by that name in the records? First there was Thomas Matthews who was brought into the Colony by Father Copley and was actively associated with the Jesuit Community.18

In 1649, Copley assigned to Matthews 5^. Thomas Manor at Chapel Point, which Matthews deeded back to the Jesuits in 1662.19 This Matthews was active in all Catholic activities, serving as trustee on various occasions where bequests were made for charitable purposes. When elected to the House of Burgesses in 1650, he refused to take the Oath of Secrecy prescribed for Bur- gesses because it would have prevented him from " counceling " with his constituents at St. Inigoes, they being the Jesuit Community there. For this, Matthews was expelled from the Assembly.20

Then there was Thomas Matthews who lived on St. George's River who was a Justice of St. Mary's County Court from 1658 through 1662.21 Was he the same man as Thomas Matthews who was Justice of Charles County Court from 1663 until his death in 1675/6? 22 It would seem strange if these men (or this man) were the same as the one who styled himself in 1664 the '" Indian Interpreter " and who is referred to under that designation from 1660 to 1666.

Which one, if any, of the above was identical with the Thomas Matthews styled " Chirurgeon " in 1651? The chirurgeon left a widow, Jane, who was administrator of his estate in 1675/6; later she married John Bread.23 Thomas and Jane had a son William. Before 1721, a William " Mathis " had come into possession of

"Ibid., Ill, 403, 453, 501; LX, 34; II, 11, 14. "Pat. 1, f. 17, 20, 25. 18 Arch. Md., LVII, Iv. '"Ibid., I, 273-277. "•Ibid., Ill, 356; XLI, 88, 589. *s Ibid., LIII, passim; LX, passim. "Ibid., LXV, 684. Inventories and Accounts 2, f. 253; ibid., 4, f. 379.

MOUNT AIR 131

part of co*ckshott, which, in testimony in a Court case, he said " he had by his mother." 24

It would seem as if half of co*ckshott would belong to the heirs of Mary co*ckshott who had married Henry Adams, perhaps the most prominent man in the early history of Charles County. He was a Justice from 1658 (when Charles County was set up) until his death in 1686. At various times he was (in addition to Justice) Burgess, Sheriff and Custodian "' for weights and measures," and was one of the Commissioners to acquire a Court House in 1674. By his will made in 1684 and proved in 1686, he left to his daughter, Jane Matthews " land I purchased of Col. John Jarboe and adjacent to the land belonging to her mother lying upon the East side of Potomac River." It has not been learned what became of this Jane Matthews' land, nor what was the name of her husband.25

The ownership of co*ckshott immediately following Mary Adams and Jane Matthews is obscure. The tract or part of it may be the land mentioned in the will of William Matthews who in February, 1724/5 left to his son Luke (or Lucas) his dwelling plantation and residue of his real estate.26 In any case Luke Mat- thews by his will probated April 2, 1734, left to his son, Jesse Matthews, one-half of co*ckshott, and to his unborn child, if a son, he left the other part; but, if a girl, Jesse was to have it all.27

Jesse did get it all and in 1760 asked for a '" resurvey of the 1200 acres with liberty to exclude such part thereof as may be taken away by navigable water." As a result, co*ckshott showed only 100 acres.28 As noted above, Jesse died in 1775 and by his will co*ckshott became the property of his infant son, Luke Francis Matthews.29

Thus co*ckshott was associated with the triumvirate who ran Charles County from its beginning until the eve of the Protestant Revolution. Henry Adams, Thomas Matthews and Ignatius Causine, staunch Catholics all, were continuously on the Bench, in the Assembly, acting as coroners or sheriffs, trustees or in other

24 Wills 4, f. 204. Chancery 3, f. 707. "Arch. Md., XLI, 169-174 H passim; III, 424, 501, 519; LIII, I, XLIX, LVII,

LX, II, V, LI, passim. 23 Charles Co. Wills AB No. 3, f. 179. 27 Ibid., CC No. 3, f. 927. 23 Cert. BC and GS No. 14, f. 182. 29 Charles Co. Wills WF No. 1, f. 292.

132 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

positions of authority. After 1689, they were no longer in public life, but their descendants continued in Charles County for many, many years.

In addition to co*ckshott, Luke Francis Matthews inherited by will of his father, Jesse, land called The Addition.• A tract by that name belonged in 1701 to Captain Philip Hoskins, whose wife was Ann Matthews, daughter of Doctor Thomas Matthews and Jane. It adjoined the land laid out for Jane and Mary co*ckshott. Capt. Hoskins got a warrant to survey " some vacant cultivated land " contiguous to his tract and assigned the warrant to William Matthews, brother of his wife, Mrs. Ann Matthews Hoskins. William then obtained a patent for The Addition, containing 164 acres.31 This land descended to Luke Francis Mat- thews through the same channels as co*ckshott.

More land came to Luke Francis in 1799, when he acquired by purchase from Ignatius Matthews, 345 acres of a tract called Matthews Purchase. This was part of a tract of 460 acres adjoining the land of Ignatius Causine, the original patent for which was issued in April, 1687 to another Ignatius Matthews, eldest son of Doctor Thomas Matthews and Jane, and brother of Wil- liam. The elder Ignatius married Mary Doyne, daughter of Joshua Doyne; the widow later married Thomas Jameson. Ignatius in his will probated July 21, 1698, did not mention Matthews Pur- chase by name.32

In some way the land became the property of his brother Wil- liam, whose will leaving bequests to his son Luke (or Lucas) has already been mentioned. By the same will he left to his son Thomas one-half of Matthews Purchase and the residue of the tract to his son Joseph. The will provided that if either son died before marriage, his portion was to be divided equally between the surviving brothers. Evidently Thomas died, which gave Joseph % of Matthews Purchase, and gave brother Luke l/^ or 115 acres.

Luke's share went to his widow, Martha, who later gave it to her daughter, Mary Sherburne. It was not a part of Mount Air.

Joseph's share came down through his descendants to the Igna- tius Matthews who sold the 345 acres to Luke Francis Matthews

M ibid. n Cert. DD No. 5, 1, f. 80. "Charles Co. Deeds IB No. 4, f. 104, 110; Cert. 22, f. 321; Wills 6. 154;

Harry Wright Newman, The Maryland Semmes and Kindred Families (Balto., 1956), pp. 237, 240.

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in 1799.33 This completed his holdings—co*ckshott, Addition and Matthews Purchase which were surveyed as Mount Air in 1801.

It is unfortunate that so little is known about the various owners of Mount Air. Several of the Matthews family became priests and nuns. Ann and her nieces Susanna and Ann Teresa established a branch of the Carmelite Order in Charles County, while "William Matthews, brother of the latter sisters, was the first native-born American to be ordained a priest in this Country. He was Presi- dent of Georgetown College and later pastor of St. Patrick's Church in Washington, and was active in founding Gonzaga High School there.34 Presumably they lived during their childhood at

'3 Chain of title to Matthews Purchase Furnished by Miss Katherine Riggs Poole

A. Patent to Ignatius Matthews, 1687, 460 a. (Cert. 22, f. 321). B. Became property of William Matthews (not known by what means). C. Will of William Matthews (1724) ; Charles Co. Wills AB No. 3, f. 179.

1/2 to son Thomas (230 a.) 1/2 to son Joseph (230 a.)

If either die, his share to be divided among his brothers. Thomas evidently died, leaving:

Joseph 1/2 Plus 14 = % (345 a.) Luke (Lucas) K (115 a.)

D. Luke left his share to wife Martha (Charles Co. Wills CC No. 3, 927). She gave it to her daughter Mary Sherburne; it did not become a part of Mount Air.

E. Joseph left his share (Wills 20, f. 925) 1/2 to son William 1/2 to son Ignatius

F. Ignatius (above) deeded to his brother William his share (Charles Co. Deeds A3, f. 255). William now has 345 a.

G. William left it to his son, Joseph, (Charles Co. Wills 41, f. 277). H. It became property of Joseph's brother, Ignatius (presumably due to

death of Joseph, leaving his oldest brother Ignatius his heir-at-law). I. Ignatius sold it to Luke Francis Matthews (Charles Co. Deeds IB No. 4,

f. 104 and 110).

Chart of members of Matthews family involved in title to Mount Air Thomas

I William

Luke (Lucas) Thomas Joseph

Jesse Ignatius William I II

Luke Francis Ignatius Joseph

** Margaret Brown Klapthor and Paul Dennis Brown, History of Charles County, Maryland (La Plata, 1958), pp. 68-71; 107.

134 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Matthews Purchase. Their brother Ignatius was no doubt living there in 1790 when, according to the Census, he was living alone, and had 15 slaves.

No one o£ this Matthews family seems to have been active in the Revolutionary War. But Luke Francis' father-in-law to be, Gerard Blackistone Causine, was very active as a civilian in the Patriot cause. When Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer fell ill in 1780 —an illness " brought on by the great Fatigue he has undergone in endeavoring to procure supplies for the Army " (in Charles County)—his son suggested to the State Council that they appoint Mr. Causine and Mr. John Muschett jointly as Commissary of Purchases in his father's stead. "' They are Gentlemen of Integrity and Industry and most fervently attached to the Cause of America." To this suggestion, Gerard Causine replied:

I think there is very little Dependence to be put in any further Assistance in the Loan Way from this County; at least from the Inhabitants in my District There being but few who I think are able to do more than pay their Taxes according to due Course of Law; & those few who are able, to all Appearance the least willing. As to money, there is very little in circulation with us at present, having had but a trifling Market for tobacco this Summer.

If there was any Chance of Success, your Excelly may be assured I would persevere in the Business with Pleasure; but knowing from Experience there is not I am for that Reason & that only, at present inactive in it.

From the Council records, it is evident that Mr. Causine did procure a great deal in the way of supplies for the Army.35

Not only did the inhabitants of Charles County suffer for lack of money in the Revolution, but they were subject to attack by the enemy. In 1781, Daniel Jenifer reported to Gov. Lee that two armed schooners and a cutter and some barges came above Cedar Point, and plundered Mrs. Young of her most valuable effects. They proceeded to Walter Hanson's, pillaged himself and family of every kind of wearing apparel and carried off Samuel Hanson (an officer in the Maryland regiment) a prisoner, and " exceedingly insulted the whole family." They then moved to the Rev- erend Mr. Matthews's and committed the same '" Devastages "; they were prevented from landing at G. B. Causin's by the appear-

85 Arch. Md., XLV, 53, 93.

MOUNT AIR 135

ance of some militia; thence to the "elegant seat" of George Dent.36

Although in the Census of 1790, Gerard B. Causine of Causine Manor had 75 slaves, he was in financial difficulties. His generous contributions and loans to the Revolutionary Government no doubt added to the debts which he (like many others of his time and station) owed to British merchants. As a result, in 1790 he distributed many of his slaves among his children, and then made over the rest of his estate to Alexander Hamilton, who as trustee was to sell Causine's land, negroes, etc. and return any left after paying his debts to Causine.37

During the War years, Luke Francis Matthews probably was living in the home of his step-father, Joseph Simms. He became sixteen years old in 1789, but as he is not listed in the Census of 1790, he still did not have his own home. In 1799 he purchased Matthews Purchase; after 1790 but before 1800, he married Rose Causine, and in 1801 he had a survey made of Mount Air.

This would seem to place the date of building the present Mount Air house at about 1801. As to the little 16 foot square house incorporated into the new Mount Air, we can only specu- late. It could have been built by Thomas Matthews (died 1676 or 1677); William Matthews (died 1725); Luke Matthews (died 1734) or Jesse Matthews (died 1774). Jesse could almost certainly be ruled out, since the little house was already called "" old " in 1789, only 15 years after his death. Likewise the other house on the property in 1789, size 28 x 18, was said to be " much out of repair"; it, too might have been built by any of the owners of co*ckshott or Addition; we do not know what became of it. Ac- cording to the recent survey made for the present owner, Mr. Burroughs, it is obvious that the house now Mount Air is too near the river to have been on Matthews Purchase.

In 1815, Luke Francis died and was buried on his estate. His grave-stone is there today. It reads:

"i Ibid., XLVII, 172, 173. " Charles Co. Deeds, K4, 43-47.

136 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

I H S Sacred

to the Memory of Luke Francis Matthews

who departed this transitory life February the 19th in the year

1815 Aged 43 years

In all the various relations of life As a citizen Husband Father

Friend and Neighbor He was Exemplary

While Living he Possessed the Esteem of All

and He died universally lamented

Requiescat in pace Amen

Luke's will, dated Aug. 2, 1813, was proved Apr. 4, 1815. It provided that his widow, Rose, should have one-third of his estate; when his son, George Washington Matthews, became twenty-one years old, the estate was to be sold and divided among his children whom he named.38

Thereupon, in 1822, George sold Mount Air (654 acres) to Judge Robert Digges. The latter sold it in 1857 to his brother-in- law, James Neale. James' sisters kept a girls' school in the house. The Neales did not prosper, so after James' death, various credi- tors brought suit against the heirs. Trustees were appointed who sold the Mount Air property at the Court House door in Port Tobacco on May 21, 1864, to Martha E. Wills for $7000. By Martha's will of 1912, Mount Air was left to Miss Kate Robertson of Baltimore and to Miss Wills' brother, T. Wright Wills, sr.

These heirs of Martha Wills sold Mount Air in 1913 to George H. Stevenson and Carl C Porter, who divided the property in 1917, Mr. Stevenson acquiring the Mount Air house and 124 acres.

Miss Katherine Scarborough in her Homes of the Cavaliers, gives an amusing account of the efforts of Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson to rescue the house from " years of neglect which had contrived to impregnate the walls with dampness." To cure this situation, they covered the walls with black stucco!

Discouraged perhaps, the Stevensons eighteen years later sold

" Charles Co. Wills, HB No. 13, 378.

MOUNT AIR 137

the place to Capt. and Mrs. George C. Pegram, who succeeded in making Mount Air a " show place," very much as it is today. After Capt. Pegram's death and Mrs. Pegram's remarriage to Walter Cady, the place was sold in 1952 to its present owners.39

Mr. J. Edward Burroughs, Jr. is a lawyer who practices in Wash- ington and Maryland and has a Southern Maryland background. Mrs. Burroughs, the former Lucy Matthews, a native of George- town, D. C, was fittingly named, but, according to her, is not a member of the Matthews family who owned Mount Air.

Under the present owners, a few changes have been made in Mount Air house in the interest of comfortable living, such as the addition of bath rooms and porches, but these have not de- tracted from the house's architectural interest. The gardens are beautifully maintained;—their loving custodians keep a constant vigil over the boxwood and other planting. The house is tastefully furnished in a manner suitable to its period. Altogether, Mount Air today is a place not to be missed by anyone with an excuse to visit it—a fact apparently known to many if one may judge from the numbers of people who go there on Maryland Garden Pil- grimages and other occasions. All the early Matthews owners would be proud and happy if they could return to visit their former estate.

" Charles Co. Deeds, RM No. 1, f. 566; JS No. 2, f. 119; BGS No. 1, f. 550; Charles Co. Wills, CHP No. 19, 495; Charles Co. Deeds, JHC No. 1, 94; CP No. 31, 322; WMA No. 64, f. 126; PCM No. 101, f. 349; also Homes of the Cavaliers.

SIDELIGHTS

JONATHAN BOUCHER, TORYISSIMUS

By RICHARD M. GUMMERE

There are other clergymen of British sympathies who out-rank Jonathan Boucher in historical importance. Odell, the broadside satirist, and Samuel Seabury, author of the West Chester Farmer Letters which roused the pen of Alexander Hamilton, were more in the public eye. Boucher was pa- rochial ; and yet the reader of his correspondence with George Washington and his thirteen sermons on current pre-Revolutionary issues, feels the force of a driving personality. The man himself was an excellent sounding- board for those exciting days. He held out until he was forced to leave the country; and he ended his life as a vicar at Epsom in Surrey, publishing his Discourses in 1797 and occupying himself with the historical and linguistic studies for which his classical knowledge qualified him well.1

Born in Cumberland in 1738, Boucher, with a local grammar-school education and some experience as a sort of apprentice teacher, emigrated to Virginia in 1759 in the capacity of a private tutor. Returning to England in 1762, he was ordained and then held several positions in the Old Dominion, finally settling at St. Anne's in Annapolis. This church was familiarity known as Gradus ad Parnassum—"" a step toward Heaven," described by himself as NV Plus Ultra—"The last word."

Here he was happy, a friend of the Governor and an articulate member of the " hom*ony Club," where literature was a hobby. He had the edu- cational charge of Jacky Custis, Washington's step-son. Over these years he was involved in many current affairs: agricultural improvements, the first Stamp Act discussions, the Parson's Cause, and the economic problems of the Province. He was by no means a shy person, and at times naive. An instance of the first trait was his free advice to the stock- holders of the Potomac Navigation Company. The second was the questionable taste of his letter to a Mr. Addison, whose niece he wished to marry, comparing the lady to " a little unoccupied plantation " which

1 Boucher's main work is his View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution, in Thirteen Discourses Preached in North America between the years 1763 and 1775 (London, 1797). See also his Reminiscences of an Ameri- can Loyalist, ed. J. Bouchier (Boston, 1925). The Letters of Jonathan Boucher, ed. W. C. Ford (Brooklyn, 1899). For other letters and memoranda, see The Maryland Historical Magazine, vols. VII-IX, 1912-1914, also 1949, pp. 244 ff. and 1954, 157; D. S. Freeman, George Washington, 7 vols. (N. Y, 1951) III; J. C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of Washington, 39 vols. (Washington, D. C, 1931, 1944), II, XXXVI; id., Diaries of G. W., 4 vols. (Boston, 1925) I. V. L. Par- rington, The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800 (N. Y., 1927) pp. 214-218, gives a fair account of Boucher as a blunt but honest Tory.

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SIDELIGHTS 139

would richly repay cultivation, and fortifying his remarks by quotations from two passages of his favorite Vergil, calling to mind the '" skilled old Corycian gardener," and repeating the offer of Juno to find a wife for Aeolus, God of the Winds.2

The thought which was always on his mind is illustrated by his Quaeres addressed to the People of Maryland: 3 " I. Do not the popular meetings bear a very near resemblance to the tribunitial assemblies of the people in the earlier periods of the Roman history ? II. Do not the resolves entered into at such popular meetings resemble also the Plebiscite or Ordinances which in after times were as valid and obligatory as the Senatus-Consulta? III. By encouraging these, do we not in fact encourage that Dominatio Plebis, so much desecrated by the best writers on Gov- ernment? "

We may briefly consider Boucher as classical educator before we con- centrate on him as a pugnacious politically-minded churchman. He also kept a school for boys; but his particular attention was given to Jacky Custis, who at fourteen had been reading Vergil for two years and was beginning the Greek Testament. In July, 1768 the schoolmaster asked the patient and busy planter to "" look into his books for work of Cicero, De Officiis, or his Familiar Epistles, and a Livy," to be despatched as soon as possible. The lad's future college was discussed with care. President Witherspoon of Princeton had criticized Boucher because his pupil was not " put into Greek " ; but the latter maintained that an all-round education was more important: " things were superior to books." William and Mary was too near. Princeton and the College of Philadelphia were " the nurseries of all that frivolous and mischievous kind of knowledge that passed for learning in America—they are smatterers in Rhetoric and the belles-lettres." * The friendly debate ended with a term under Myles Cooper at King's College (Columbia), with good-sized bills from both tutor and president, and the young student's marriage to Nelly Calvert. Inevitable circ*mstances brought this relationship to an end. The General had been patient and courteous; Boucher honest but expensive. The spell broke on August 6, 1775.

Washington received, presumably at his headquarters in Cambridge, a farewell letter: " I know many Whigs who are not tyrants. In this number it is but doing common justice to place you." But the tone grows more severe: Washington should not have "looked on while he [Boucher] was vilified." The letter closes with a renunciation somewhat like the famous note of Franklin to his friend the printer Strahan: '" You are my enemy, and I am, yours." After the Peace he wrote to Washington from his Epsom vicarage in May, 1784, not apologizing but sending out a feeler towards renewed friendliness, wishing health and happiness to

* Reminiscences, 82-91. Like "the Old Corycian gardener," B. would "teach the plant to bloom" (Georg, IV. 127). For Junos offer of a wife, see Aeneid, I. 73-75.

3 Reminiscences, 128. 'Ibid., 101.

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the pair at Mount Vernon, though still objecting to the new American national "" Equality of Religious Establishments."

The View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution is a collection of sermons delivered in America before the war and doubtless somewhat altered from their original form. It is generously docu- mented with footnotes and heaped with classical allusions or illustrations. A motto on the title-page is taken from Bellenden's De Statu* suggesting the immediate facing of possible future problems: Cum a strepitu tumultu- que aures nostrae paulutum conquieverint, quid tandem causae est, cur de re publica quid sentiamus taciturnitate diuturniore celemust—"' Since our ears have been for a brief while rested from the din and confusion (of war), is there any reason why we should hide our feelings about the State by further silence?" A lengthy preface congratulates Washington on the wisdom of having established a "' mixed government" like that of Britain. It expresses the hope that the modern Cincinnatus, interested in peace, may have followed the Vergilian advice and brought about a regime of peace and order.6 "The turbulent spirit of Republicanism" must be avoided; for Government is not founded on the consent of the people! Will the Republic endure if, like the earth-men of Cadmus, demagogues should spring up and mob-spirit prevail as it did during the French Revolution? Many American governors were, as Phaedrus fabled, chosen only to be King Logs, insulted by the trouble-making frogs. American merchants had been in debt to the British: hence came trouble like that which Cicero and Sallust pointed out as the result of aes alienum (debt), all ready for an uprising under Catiline.7 While the rebellion against Tarquin was not a parallel, there was a condition resembling the quarrel between Corinth and Corcyra,8 where the former claimed the '" natural rights " of a mother-country, and the latter complained of harsh treatment.

Historians would smile at Boucher's comparison of the ineffective Sackville (Lord George Germain) with the Athenian Aristides. They would laugh at the friendly hint that the Father of our Country should have refused to take up arms against a tyrant without an order from the Senate, as Verginius Rufus did, declining also to become Emperor.9

There was good reason for the British government to strike hard in 1775, as there also was for the Roman Republic to act promptly against its rebellious colonies.10 In spite of all this, however, the American Republic may become " a great Empire under a monarch like Augustus," after a few disturbances and the establishment of a central organization. Church and State must go hand in hand. Perhaps some day the two nations might unite to form a world-power, matching the glory of Old Rome, as Anchises prophesied to Aeneas. Polybius had some inklings of the ultimate decline

"William Bellenden, De Statu Prisci Orbis, a General History (Paris, 1615). ' Aeneid, VI, 852,—the prophecy of Rome's greatness. 'Cicero, Catil., 1,25; 11.20; Sallust, Catil., 14, 23,40. 8 Thucydides, Book I. 8 Pliny, Epistles, VI.10. 10 Livy, XXVII.10.

SIDELIGHTS 141

of mighty realms;11 but the Tory refugee congratulates his friend on a noble career, and wishes the young republic well, in spite of some left- handed criticism and the scars of what the writer felt to be an error and an injury.

The first "" Discourse" was a sermon preached in 1763, celebrating the close of the Seven Years' War and welcoming the opportunity of an extensive agrarian policy on the Virginia plan, hand in hand with the prospect of universal peace. Parallel credit from the past is given to the pagan Augustus, who had shut the temple of Janus and had issued an edict that all the world should be taxed. This was " a propitious circum- stance to the propagation of the Gospel," reversing the process lamented by Vergil and Ovid, when pruning-hooks were beaten into spears.12 It is doubtful if Boucher was familiar with the works of Jonathan Edwards; but the latter used this same simile of Janus and world-peace under Augustus as an opening for the preaching of the Word throughout all nations. " War," declared the Tory parson, " is a relic of barbarism; " all Eusebius joins Tertuliian in this opinion. Latro (highwayman) is synony- mous with soldier; and the speaker hopes that no more French and Indians may disturb the frontier. As did John Dickinson, he bracketed the conquest-policies of Rome and Carthage with those of France and England.13 He gives us a glimpse of his inner convictions when he declares that Julius Caesar makes bad company in the presence of Socrates, or Fenelon, or William Penn. The Sermon ends with a prayer for harmony and a peaceful planter-existence, where " the fields will be yellow with ripe grain," and Ceres, " who first taught mortal men to till the soil with the plow," may come into her own again.1*

The second and third " Discourses " deal mainly with ecclesiastical matters. On Schisms and Sects, and The American Episcopate. Thanks to the Romans, who were lenient in allowing conquered people to retain their own religion, and to the Greeks, who never tried to convert anyone, the way was prepared for the Saviour to gather believers together from a variety of creeds. So far, this was sound doctrine,—a united church. But toleration, as Nathaniel Ward had also maintained a century and a half previously, was to Boucher a fallacy. Scattering in different sects meant loss of effectiveness: the ancient Britons, as Tacitus declared in his Agricola, could not unite because m commune non consulunt. The Vir- ginia clergymen who voted against an American bishopric did not understand that bishops succeeded apostles and that such a succession was " just as proper as the succession of Roman emperors or British kings." There should be one church, a " tower of strength," like the protector whom Medea sought after she had overthrown the house of Jason.

As a conservative educator, Boucher let himself go in the fourth " Dis- course," in a region where the well-to-do had tutors but the mass of the

11 Polybius, Histories, VI.57. " For the same theme in Jonathan Edwards, see his Works, ed. of 1844, I, 386.

For the Ovid and Vergil references, Fasti, 1.639 and Georg. 1.508. 18 Dickinson, Fabius Letters, 1797 series, nos. 2-6 passim. "Vergil, Eclog. IV.28 and Georg., 1.147.

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population was neglected. Here he was at one with Jefferson, but on a different basis. Cicero and Juvenal16 support his argument: " What better gift can we present to the State," said the former," than an educated citizenry? " Juvenal's ut patriae sit idoneus ("" ready to serve one's country") should be laid to heart. The ancients, if their experience of human nature was more limited, and consequently their stock of knowledge less extensive, were superior to the moderns in that they made a better use of what they did know. Xenophon "' was as much a legislator as Lycurgus "—his idea of it was "" an apprenticeship to the business of life." The Jews took their education much more seriously than did the Greeks and Romans, with special emphasis on their religious code. The preacher's advocacy of learning is backed by the well-known passage on Liberal Studies in Cicero's Archias.16 Even the Dissenters are insistent on good schooling; and Episcopalians should profit by their example: Fas est et ab hoste doceri—" Learn a lesson from your enemy "—a proverb popular throughout Colonial history.17 An agricultural society is especially favorable to learning, because, according to Aristotle," the citizens occupy themselves with statecraft, having people to work for them, and they are able to have leisure." Plutarch adds his testimony from his essay On the Education of Children, and for good measure Boucher records the words of Diogenes to the Megarians: " Better to be one of their swine than one of their children! " 18

The sermon of 1774 continues this plea for an ultimate union of Churchmen, Catholics, and Dissenters. It was preached in St. Anne's, On the Toleration of Papists, and may have been intended as a token of agreement with the Quebec Act for Canada, which was finally passed by Parliament in the same year. Furthermore, the writer may have given some thought to the Maryland toleration act, which for a time provided freedom of worship. Catholics included. Persuasion is better than com- pulsion: Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentest ("Who could endure to listen to the Gracchi on the subject of rebellion? "), as John Dickinson declared under more critical circ*mstances.19 There should be no gospel of hatred, no curse on future generations like that of Dido on the descendants of Aeneas:20 Genus omne futurum exercete odiis! Nullus amor populis, nee foedera sunto—" Train all the after-born to hate! Let there be no friendship, no treaties, between the two nations! " Catholics should be fairly treated, educating their children in their own way, instead of seeking elsewhere. On this point, the Younger Pliny was sound: Educentur hie qui hie nasc*ntur, statimque ab infantia natale solum amare et frequentare consuescanty " Let those who are born here be schooled

"Cicero, De Divinatione, 11,2; Juvenal, Sat., XIV, 71. 16 Pro Archia Poeta, 7. " Ovid, Metam., IV.428. 18 Plutarch, On the Training of Children, 7; Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philoso-

phorum, VII.2.41 (in this version a ram, not a pig). "Juvenal, Sat., 11.24. ""Aeneid, IV.622. 21 Epistles, IV.13.

SIDELIGHTS 143

here; from infancy onward let them become accustomed to love and to live in their home region." As for the current Deism, it should be outlawed: " Some modern writers have extolled the mild spirit of heathenism, as though it had been peculiarly indulgent to persons of different religious creeds." Here the Episcopalian is as emphatic as the Presbyterian Wither- spoon—both classical scholars of no mean attainment.

The seventh Discourse continues the plea for unity. " The first cri- terion," says Aristotle, " is a care for religion." Epaminondas, on being praised by his people for governing well, replied "You obey well!'" Dissenting chatter indicates civic decline. Petronius, a rather shaky wit- ness, lamented the current fashionable ventosa et enormis loquacitas; Tacitus in his Dialogus bears the same testimony: Est magna et notabilis eloquentia alumna licentiae—" Heavy and conspicuous flow of talk is the foster-mother of loose morals." Unchecked and disloyal attitudes toward the Establishment are the beginning of deep-seated trouble. But the Word of God is like a rock, to which the unbending King Latinus is compared: 22

llle velut pelagi rupes immota. reshtit, Ut pelagi rupes magno veniente fragore,

" Like a cliff by the sea that stands unshaken, yea, like a cliff by the sea when the surf comes heavily crashing."

The year 1774 was a critical one; three more sermons were preached within that period, recalling the quarrel between Abraham and Lot, and the famous Absalom and Achitophel episode. All three were allegorical of the political situation, reflecting the problem of taxation without repre- sentation. There is still hope for the olive-branch and a solution like that when Aristippus and Aeschines were reconciled.23 "" Our English Livy " (Lord Clarendon) had written with eloquence on the evils resulting from civil war. Boucher's language is akin to that of John Winthrop on Civil Liberty, stressing acquiescence in "" some fixed and steady principles of conduct." 24 The mutual advantages of a loyal colony are as obvious to-day as they were to Sallust: 25 Vobis vero nulla opportunior amicitia nostra,— "" No friendly alliance could be more beneficial to you than ours." But the tragedy of the situation was obvious, and the misplaced ambitions of would-be tyrants must be checked; there is no place for any Alexanders:

Unus Pellaeo iuveni non suffidt orbis; Aestuat infelix angusto limlte mundi,—

" One world is not enough for the young Macedonian, and the hapless one chafes at the narrow limits of his universe." 26

At this point Boucher's classical comparisons begin to be abusive. Catiline is dragged out from the pages of Sallust, with his mob of fiagitiosi

u Aeneid, VII.586. "Diog. Laertius, ibid., 111.24. 24 S. E. Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston, 1930) p. 103. ** Jugurtha, CII.7. 26 Juvenal, Sat., X.168,—the over-weening ambition of Alexander.

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and facinorosi; and Dionysius of Halicarnassus furnishes a parallel, that the Loyalists are the Patricians and the rebels the Plebeians.27 Hesitation would be fatal: King David was too soft-hearted; and Tiberius waited too long, in the case of the Gallic rebellion of 21 A.D.: " Consultus super eo Tiberius aspermtus est iudicium, aluitque duhitatione helium: " "When Tiberius was consulted on this matter, he refused to make a decision, and thus by his wavering he encouraged the war." 28 To the Committees of Correspondence and the many provincial assemblies the preacher cried; "" Come, then, ye perturbed spirits, shew me, if you can, in what your conduct differs from that faithless incendiary whose history we have just been reviewing! " And worse yet; the likeness of Benjamin Franklin to Achitophel and Catiline is clearly indicated, and many of his hearers thought that Absalom meant Washington!

By 1775 the attitude of Boucher had become known to a wide circle. His eleventh and twelfth " Discourses " are direct answers to attacks on the mother country by Dr. William Smith, Provost of the College of Philadelphia, and by Jacob duch*e, who offered the first prayer before the Continental Congress but became finally compromised. These addresses are also a blend of classical and Biblical, alluding to rebellious tribes who mistakenly move away and build altars elsewhere, proving Plutarch's contention that "" there is in every people, naturally, something of a malignant and peevish temper against those who govern them." 29 The only remedy is firm treatment, as in Sallust's Catiline; Si quid ah Senatu petere vellent, ah armis discedant—"' If they wished to petition the Senate, they should first disarm." An appendix to the eleventh sermon repeats at some length the speech of Spurius Servilius, " a patrician malici- ously persecuted by the tribunes," taken from the ninth book of Dionysius Halicarnassensis.30

In this fateful year the clergyman is absorbed into the politician: " I stand sufficiently vindicated as a preacher of politics." Fortified by St. Paul's advice, and harking back to the divine right of kings as outlined by Sir Robert Filmer in his Patriarchy he preaches a doctrine of obedience to the constituted powers. For this purpose he ransacks many pagan writers, plus church authorities, in addition to Blackstone, Burke, Claren- don, and Robertson. The " General Governor," whose very name Sam Adams abhorred, would have suited Boucher, if the position had been created with Parliamentary authority and royal approval. Plato, the " oracle of heathen wisdom," was right in regarding Law as the creation of God himself. Locke was wrong in holding that ' a right of resistance still exists in the governed," and that the majority have the right to rule.

The Maryland clergyman elevates the authority of the Church to a position no less prominent than the Old Testament supremacy of the

27 Dionysius Halicarnassensis, Antiq. Rom. VII, I, trans. E. Spelman, London, 1758, III.148.

28 Tacitus, Annals, 111.41. 28 From his Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae, 16. ^ Antiq. Rom., IX, 28-33. Servilius, accused of risking the lives of a whole

army in the Etruscan War, was finally acquitted after a popular vote.

SIDELIGHTS 145

Puritan John Cotton. Individual opinion takes second place to the Law, although the Cicero whom he quotes for the purpose implies a more democratic system of justice; Cicero's law exists ut liberi esse possimus.31

Passive obedience and non-resistance are delusions. Boucher admits that years ago he took part in protests against the Stamp Act; but, like that man in the third book of Xenophon's Cyropaedia, who "" bowed at the altar of Liberty, hoping to leave liberty to his children," he regards it as a mere thing of the past. If it is incompatible to obey both the Lord and the temporal magistrate, obey the Lord; for Christ himself refused to head a temporal power. His argument is sometimes difficult to follow; but his meaning is clear. If government is to be considered as "by nature absolute and irresistible," and if one's parishioners are ordered to '" submit to the ordinances of God rather than the Commandments of men," where do we find ourselves? One asks " Which government? " and '" Which men? " Or even, in view of the many religious denominations, "Whose God? " But to him church and state are one; and if America goes to war, it will be not only against established legislative and executive officers, but against Divine authority. The unbending Tory borrows some classical mythology to make his point: " The Greeks described Eleutheria as a daughter of Jupiter; the Romans drew her with the praetor's wand." But there is in these opinions little advance upon the concepts of Winthrop; in fact, the Puritan desired independence from England, with all his strictness of internal government, while Boucher the monarchist believed in both colonial status and local strict control.

We have allowed Jonathan Boucher to speak for himself; and we may also allow him to say his own farewell, before sailing into exile, or returning " home " in 1775, after preaching his last sermon with a pair of pistols lying on his lectern. Like Nehemiah, he would not take refuge in the Temple. In spite of those who, in the words of Pliny,32

fictts mentithque terroribus vera perkula augerent,—" increased the real danger by false and misleading panic "—he would not surrender. He declared, with the warrior Turnus,33

Terga daho? Et Turnum fugientem haec terra videb'tt? Usque adeo-ne morl miserum est? —

Retreat? Never! Shall this land behold in Turnus a coward? After all, is it so wretched a fate to die?

He would continue to pray for the King, to hold out against the Com- mittees of Correspondence, and to uphold in his own corner the authority of the Church, which meant the State also. Even at the end, however, Boucher was hoping that some understanding might still be reached, as in the Roman crisis when Appius Claudius and the tribunes were at each others' throats, and Marcus Valerius in his capacity as dictator delivered his speech of reconciliation.34

31 Cicero, Pro Cluentio, 53. This phrase was used by James Wilson and many others of the Founding Fathers.

32 Pliny, Epist., VI.20. 33 Vergil, Aeneid, XII.645. 31 Dionysius Halic, Antiq. Rom., VI.38-41 and VII.54.

REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS

The Papers of Henry Clay, Volume 1, The Rising Statesman, 1797-1814. Edited by JAMES F. HOPKINS and MARY W. M. HARGREAVES.

Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1959. xv, 1037. $15.

The continuing fascination Henry Clay has for his fellow-Americans was recently attested when a committee of the United States Senate made him an early and unanimous choice for its list of the five most outstanding senators in our history. It was a popular choice, acclaimed by both scholars and the public. Yet it paid tribute to only one of the many aspects of a distinguished career that spanned the first half of the nineteenth century. For Clay was also one of the greatest Speakers of the House of Repre- sentatives, chief of the War Hawks of 1812, secretary of state, advocate of the American System of a planned national economy, leader of the Whig party, thrice a presidential candidate, and the outstanding champion of efforts to reconcile sectional rivalries and preserve the Union.

It is not surprising that such a man has inspired numerous biographies. It is surprising, however, that down to the present there has been no edition of his writings that by any stretch of the imagination could be characterized as scholarly, or complete, or even adequate. What has for over a century served, perforce, as Clay's " Works " is a set of six volumes originally published by Calvin Colton in 1855. Yet this is as much the "" Works " of Colton as of Clay, since one half of it consists of Colton's three-volume life of Clay and the other half of speeches by Clay and only one volume of his correspondence. Such a deplorable situation highlights the immense value of The Papers of Henry Clay, of which the first of ten projected volumes has now been published.

This initial volume abundantly proves that, at long last, we are to have a complete and scholarly edition of Clay's writings. It covers his career from 1797, when as a boy of twenty he arrived from Virginia to begin his Kentucky law practice, through his participation in the peace negotiations at Ghent in 1814. Included in it are not only Clay's letters and speeches but letters written to him, as well as his business, legal, legislative, and diplomatic papers, together with summaries by the editors of formal and routine documents.

Here in great abundance are source materials varied in subject matter that reflect a many-sided Clay and at the same time richly illuminate the period for the social and economic historian. They reveal Clay as the successful young frontier lawyer busy with land-title cases, collecting bills for merchants such as William Taylor of Baltimore, investing in land, horses, salt and rope manufacturing. They show him as the convivial

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REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS 147

squire of Ashland plantation, and as public-spirited citizen who urged the gradual abolition of slavery, promoted education, and corresponded about architecture with Benjamin Henry Latrobe. But most of all these papers reflect Clay's meteoric rise in state and national politics. In Ken- tucky he became the Jeffersonian leader and, as well, the champion of the commercial and manufacturing interests of his Bluegrass region. On the national scene he served first in the Senate and then as Speaker of the House, War Hawk leader, and peace commissioner. All the source materials bearing on his career as " The Rising Statesman " are valuable but especially so are those pertaining to the very important role he played in the War of 1812 from its inception to its conclusion.

This first of the ten projected volumes merits high praise. For the editors have done in a superb manner their arduous and exacting task of collecting Clay's widely scattered papers, preparing them for publication in this handsome and sturdy volume, giving helpful footnote references, and providing an index. They have made a splendid beginning of a project which will fill a great gap in American historiography. Already with this volume they have put deeply in their debt all students of the formative period of our history in which Henry Clay for so long a time figured so prominently.

BERNARD MAYO University of Virginia

Doctor Kelly of Hopkins. By AUDREY W. DAVIS. Baltimore; The Johns Hopkins Press, 1959. 242. $5.

A biography of Dr. Kelly has been long overdue. Youngest of the so-called " Big Four" (William H. Welch, pathologist, William Osier, physician, William S. Halsted, surgeon, and Howard A. Kelly, gyne- cologist) who constituted the initial staff of The Johns Hopkins Hospital when it opened in 1889, his likeness has come down to us in the now famous group portrait painted by John Singer Sargent. Biographies of the other three appeared some time ago and now the quadrumvirate has been completed in another respect, namely through the publication of Miss Audrey W. Davis's authoritative work.

Miss Davis, the author of the biography, was Dr. Kelly's secretary for the last twenty years of his life, as we are told by Dr. Edmund B. Kelly, his youngest son, in the foreword to the book. She had abundant opportunity to see him at close-hand, therefore, and in addition he turned over to her the pocket notebooks which contained his notes and memoranda covering the major portion of his life. It is not surprising, therefore, that Miss Davis has been able to give us an unusually detailed and intimate picture of an unique and extremely interesting personality. She brings out very clearly the great diversity of his interests which covered many fields of human endeavor beside that of gynecology, and ranged from

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natural history through biography, medical history, and political and social reform to the most profound concern for the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith.

Some of Dr. Kelly's professional disciples and colleagues may probably wish that more space had been allotted in this biography to the development of gynecology, including female urology, for it was in this area, and particularly in his mastery of operative technique that he shone with greatest brilliance. His contributions were chiefly of a technical nature and they came at a time when the field was ripe for them and hence yielded a rich harvest. They did much to enhance the early reputation of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, to which Dr. Kelly was deeply devoted and to which he gave freely of his personal means during the period when he was most active, professionally speaking.

If, therefore, the biography should perchance seem in the eyes of some members of the medical profession not to be as complete as it might be, certainly in the eyes of the lay public it will be welcomed as a vivid and arresting portrait of an alert, eminent and warm-hearted individual who radiatetd kindness wherever he happened to be, and left a marked impression upon the institution with which he was associated during his most active years, and where he did his most outstanding work.

ALAN M. CHESNEY Johns Hopkins University

Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse. By KATE GUMMING. Edited by RICHARD BARKSDALE HARWELL. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. xx, 321. $6.

A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond. By PHOEBE

YATES PEMBER. Edited by BELL IRVIN WILEY. Jackson, Tennessee: McCowat-Mercer Press, 1959. 199. $4.95.

Both of these ladies, Scottish-born Kate Gumming of the Journal and Phoebe Yates Pember of A Southern Woman's Story, were matrons of Gonfederate hospitals. Mrs. Pember at Ghimborazo in Richmond, Miss Gumming in the mobile hospitals set up in the deeper South, were similarly charged with seeing their patients properly fed, comforted, and kept clean; of controlling the supplies and (Mrs. Pember found this endlessly onerous) the whiskey; of dealing with such visiting relatives as the woman who got her husband up and out of his hospital bed so she could have a baby there, and of writing to those relatives who could not come-—in time, or at all. Both Miss Gumming and Mrs. Pember were kindness itself, expert brickmakers-without-straw, and the strongest of Southerners; but their differences were more interesting than their simi- larities.

REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS 149

Mrs. Pember, born Phoebe Yates Levy in South Carolina, was in hospital work from mixed motives. As a widow she had found herself " unpleasantly situated " when she returned to live in her father's house. Unlike Miss Gumming, Mrs. Pember was not constantly annoyed with what people thought of ladies who exposed themselves to the horrors and crudities of hospital life; she did not accept criticism, though she often offered it Sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, pretty enough to get by with it usually, efficient, well-educated, and hard-working, she is so aware of it all and so afraid her audience will not get the point that she makes a less attractive personal impression than—say—Miss Kate Gumming.

Miss Gumming's motives—I can't call her Kate as nonchalantly as Mr. Harwell does—were not mixed. She was a heroine of purest ray serene. (It is appropriate to quote about her since she herself, her editor says, "quoted poetry at the drop of a cliche.") Her cause was noble, the men and women who served it were noble, the Yankees were wicked and wrong. Not written for publication, as many Southern women's reminiscences were, or so touched up for publication that they might as well have been. Miss Gumming's original version has the immediacy of what she really thought and felt. There are no crocodile tears, for instance, about Lincoln's assassination. (Miss Gumming did not approve of Lincoln, whom she blamed most seriously for the sufferings engendered by his refusal to exchange prisoners.) She is in every way much more serious and literal than Mrs. Pember, and not witty at all; but her goodness is so pervasive and genuine that it never bores.

Mrs. Pember's production is, inevitably, the more " literary." She is endlessly quotable; it is better just not to begin. (One single anecdote, though—of the soldier whom she asked, "" Why do you not let the nurse cut your nails ?" "' Because I aren't got any spoon, and I use them instead.") But both books are more along the lines of solid improvement than entertainment. They add tremendously to our knowledge of the Confederate hospital system both in theory and practise, the wartime attitudes of both civilian and military, and the background of daily events, greatness and pettiness, privation and strain. Miss Gumming is particularly valuable for factual detail, names and dates. Mrs. Pember's book will be of special interest to Maryland readers because of the attention she pays to the rather special problems of Maryland Confederates. Both narratives, long out of print, have been attractively reissued with good if perhaps rather thunder-stealing prefaces, a good index for Miss Gumming and a miserable one for Mrs. Pember. Both are excellent reading, and should reach a wide audience as the Civil War boom continues.

ELLEN HART SMITH Owensboro, Ky.

150 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

American Colonial Painting: Materials for a History. By WALDRON

PHOENIX BELKNAP, JR. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959. 377, 75 plates. $12.50.

This unusually handsome volume was prepared for publication by Charles Coleman Sellers as a memorial to the scholarship of Waldron Belknap, who devoted the latter years of his life to an intensive study of the genealogical records of America's Colonial artists and their subjects. While it will not interest the casual reader, the specialist in early American art will find this collection of articles, letters, and catalogue notes extremely valuable. The publication of 286 illustrations on 75 plates is in itself a great aid in furthering the study of our early painters and the index, compiled by Ann B. Lenher, renders this complex material readily serviceable.

Two articles, previously published in the Art Bulletin, are included at the beginning of the book to illustrate Belknap's aims in his genealogical research. The first of these reasserts the probability that the painter Feke was indeed Robert Feke, Jr. of Oyster Bay by examining minutely the latter's ancestors, relations, connections, and movements in comparison with the facts known about the painter's life. The discovery, first published here, of an article on the painter's career by his grandson leaves little doubt that Belknap's conclusion was correct. The second reprinted article reidentifies Feke's portrait formerly known as Gershom Flagg III, by presenting evidence that it is probably Henry Collins, merchant and shipowner of Newport.

These studies are followed by notes on the de Peyster family, which establish the identities of various portrait subjects, including a group of pictures by Charles Willson Peale, who married into the clan. This aug- ments the author's previous publication, The de Peyster Genealogy (Boston, 1956). Then attention turns from patrons to artists in a very full section of notes on the Duyckinck family of New Netherland. The Schuyler and Beekman genealogies are also given as valuable in helping to identify subjects in early portraits. '" Notes on Four Painters " include documentation on Raphael Goelet, Nehemiah Partridge, Jacob Strycker, Pieter Vanderlyn, and their descendants, and is followed by an extensive list of "' Painters and Craftsmen " with particularly interesting comments on Thomas Smith and John Greenwood. "" Notes on Colonial Portraits," which publishes a card index Belknap was preparing, is useful in bringing together material of catalogue nature, dates, dimensions, etc., and is illustrated in many cases.

By far the most fascinating portion of the book deals with Belknap's discovery that English mezzotint prints were far more influential in deter- mining sitters' poses in American portraits than had ever been guessed before. Thirty-eight plates, usually with four illustrations each, and an excellent catalogue demonstrate the dependence of Colonial art upon the English school. But the book does not sufficiently establish that the mere adapting an old pose to a new sitter will neither make nor break a painter. Whether the pose is taken from nature or from elegant European art.

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the artist still has the task of rendering it convincingly. Particularly in the eighteenth century such plagarisms are excuseable, since they were the basis of approved academic teaching, and " invention " for the artist was defined as recombining traditional forms.

The disconnected nature of the entries in this book make it somewhat disappointing in view of its title, American Colonial Painting, and the subtitle. Materials for a History, does not entirely dispell this dissatisfac- tion. But if the reader is forewarned, he will find it a valuable reference work, and one backed by the best scholarly opinion in its field.

GROSE EVANS The National Gallery,

Washington, D. C.

George Croghan, Wilderness Diplomat. By NICHOLAS B. WAINWRIGHT.

Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959. (Pub- lished for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg). viii, 334. $6.

Since 1926 Albert T. Volwiler's George Croghan and the Westward Movement has been the standard source on the life of this remarkable colonial Indian trader, land speculator, and Indian agent. Now Nicholas B. Wainwright, Editor and Research Librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, has supplemented, expanded, and on occasion corrected Volwiler's work. His welcome reassessment of Croghan is based not only on the colonial studies of the past three decades but also on a large collection of Croghan's personal papers discovered by the author in 1939 in the Pennsylvania Historical Society. George Croghan, Wilderness Diplo- mat, written with care and verve, illustrated with five excellent maps in the text and on the end papers, enriched by an informative bibliographical essay, will be of interest to the general reader and of considerable significance to the colonial historian.

Croghan came to western Pennsylvania from Ireland as a young man in 1741. Struck by the possibilities of the west, he plunged into a career of trading and land speculation in western Pennsylvania, New York, and the Ohio country. Official appointments to negotiate with the Indians only accelerated his activities for, acting on the apparently timeless principle that personal acquisition and government service go hand in hand, he used his positions unhesitatingly to further his plans for trade and land Eurchase. His scheming was as endless as his ability to attract financial

acking; his optimism remained undimmed by the constant reverses caused by his own overambitious plans and the confusion of frontier conditions after 1741. Croghan died in 1782 without realizing any of his great land projects, but in the succeeding two decades soberer investors reaped a fortune from land he had held and lost.

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A failure economically, Croghan was an unqualified success as a negoti- ator, and especially a peacemaker, with the Indians. Trusted and respected by the tribes, capable of outplotting and outmaneuvering both Indian and white around the conference fire and in the rum filled tents beyond, Croghan was, in the author's view, the most effective working diplomat the British had in the west between 1748 and 1771. Employed first by Pennsylvania, Croghan became Indian agent for Washington in 1754 and Braddock in 1775, and from 1756-1771 acted as deputy to Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Indian affairs. Neither changing policy and official nigg*rdliness in London, nor conflicting interests in colonial capi- tals, nor danger on the frontier kept Croghan from his duties. The Index lists 33 conferences in which he took an influential part between 1748 and 1774. Between conferences he travelled almost constantly on Indian affairs, often paying the heavy expenses incurred out of his own pocket.

Mr. Wainwright has succeeded, through judicious discussion of character and motive and the use of selected quotes from Croghan's correspondence, to breathe life into the rather illusive figure of Croghan the man—extrava- gant, charming, energetic, unscrupulous. Equally important, the detailed discussion of Croghan's Indian negotiations indicates with a clarity no general account can achieve the tangle of difficulties which Briton and colonial alike encountered in trying to define and implement Indian policy.

Of a book as carefully prepared and written as this, criticisms are few. The author's style, usually clear and forceful, occasionally verges on the unnecessarily purple (as when Monckton's army "" moved massively toward Montreal"); and unfortunately abounds in the use of that Madison Avenue favorite, finalize. For those not closely versed in Pennsylvania history, it is distracting to have individuals identified in relation to brilliant or base future careers without even a short footnote stating what these careers were. More important is the question of emphasis. The author intended, as stated in the Preface, '" to focus on Croghan the man, avoiding digressions into background material now available in other books." While certainly a legitimate limitation in principle, this approach in practice tends to put all aspects of Croghan's Indian negotiations, particularly, on a level, failing to emphasize those which ultimately proved to be of more telling significance.

RHODA M. DORSEY Goucher College

Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. By STANLEY M. ELKINS. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959. viii, 248. $4.50.

In this scholarly and very readable little book, Dr. Elkins, a teacher of social studies in the University of Chicago, has raised once more an old and familiar question, but one which scholars have always found difficulty in answering satisfactorily. "Why," the author asks, "was American

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slavery different from any other slave system, and why was the impact on Negro personality so severe and lasting? "

Dr. Elkins suggests that our slave policies began to take definite form about 1660 amid the tidewater plantations of Maryland and Virginia, spreading from there in due course to other parts of the south, where the plantation system came to exist. The slave system, in the institutional sense never developed fully in the north, although Negro bondage was to be found there for a time. As this author sees it, the American system of slavery thus began, expanded, and flourishd almost wholly within the society and economy related to the plantation, a point perhaps of considerable importance to keep in mind, especially with reference to certain parts of the south, where the plantation life did not tend to thrive.

Despite the vigorous assertions of its defenders in support of the alleged morality and righteousness inherent presumably in institutional slavery. Dr. Elkins holds that the system from the very beginning was much more evil than good. Socially and legally, for instance, it reflected a rigidity of structure and a harsh disregard for the Negro as a human being, unlike any other slave condition in history, past or contemporary.

Making use of historical conditions in colonial Maryland and Virginia, the author points to the fact that the local body of law—which grew up around the system—was in truth totally unsupported by English precedents, while contrariwise other local law generally was so supported. Yet the laws relating to slavery in these colonies came to define Negro status as that of mere chattel property, to be used practically without restriction by the owner of the same as he might see fit. In this sense, the Negro was not a human being with the spirit, instincts, and feelings of a man. Much less was he endowed with any civil or natural rights, or even the capacity for appreciating or enjoying these, because he was " property," not '" man."

Tragically, too, in this legal and social concept there was no "" escape clause," for the Negro, and his children, and children's children after him were condemned to bondage in perpetuity; and, ironically, it was only the master out of the goodness of his heart, rather than the law, that could decide to free the slave, if ever he was to be free. The irony in this situation increases, if one considers the fact that the slave system was developing in Maryland and Virginia at a moment when the laws relating to indentured servants were being written to protect the civil rights of these involved, and to make certain that they would gain complete freedom at the end of a fixed period of servitude.

Finally, the inconsistencies and viciousness inherent in slavery become all the more bewildering in colonial Maryland, where, it will be recalled, the tide of public sentiment for civil and religious freedom was already running strong by the middle of the seventeenth century. How, it might be asked, could a freedom-loving Maryland community rationalize and justify human slavery against such a background of social aspirations ?

Dr. Elkins asserts, in dealing with that question, that racial distinctions had little, if any, real effect in bringing about the American slave system. He cites conditions in Latin America, where racial difference had failed

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utterly to produce the " Sambo " stereotype, so familiar here. Rather, our system was the result, he says, of the absolute dependence of slave upon master within the plantation type of society.

VERNE E. CHATELAIN University of Maryland

Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President. By ROBERT J. RAYBACK. Buf. falo: Published for the Buffalo Historical Society by Henry Stewart, Inc., 1959. xv, 470. $7.50.

The president we elect in November will be well-chronicled—on the air and in the press, in magazines, in books. The subject of this biography has waited for more than a century for adequate treatment. Millard Fillmore was the second man to succeed to the highest office on the death of the elected official. He served for nearly three years and later ran unsuccess- fully for the same post. Yet only a campaign biography or two and an account by a lifelong political enemy until now told the story of the thirteenth president.

Mr. Rayback, who teaches at Syracuse University, has drawn on a large store of little used manuscripts in the Buffalo Historical Society in the preparation of this book. He has shown the development of a young politician in frontier New York State, the growth of a Congressman, a Vice-President at odds with the dominant faction of his party suddenly placed in the White House by Zachary Taylor's death, a President sub- stantially helping to effect the Compromise of 1850 and silently sacrificing his hope for popularity and renomination to save the Union, and a civic leader in his city during the long years of retirement. For this treatment of a long neglected man and era, the author and the sponsoring Society have earned our gratitude.

The brief but vital service of John P. Kennedy as Secretary of the Navy and Fillmore's nomination in Baltimore as the Whig candidate for president in 1856 are worth note by Mary landers.

FRED SHELLEY Library of Congress

Boston—A Topographical History. By WALTER MUIR WHITEHILL. Cam- bridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959. xxxix, 233. $4.95.

Those who know and love Boston,—so similar in many respects to Baltimore—will greatly enjoy " Boston—A Topographical History," by Walter Muir Whitehill, of the Boston Athenaeum. The author utilizing only 198 pages (58 of which are well chosen maps and views, admirably

REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS 155

reproduced by the off-set process), in a style worthy of an eighteenth century essayist, and with a liberal sprinkling of entertaining anecdotes and neat epigrams, summarizes the vast corpus of material concerning the metropolis of New England which has been gathered down the ages by its proud sons.

Boston has, like Baltimore, founded 99 years later, through unguided growth, fires and vandalism by politicians and others in whom public trust was placed, lost most of its earliest buildings. Baltimore, much smaller until well on in the nineteenth century, had far less to lose. The main parts of both cities are now predominantly nineteenth century, but the more varied and more interesting architecture of Baltimore and its amenities in general are shamefully neglected.

The John Hanco*ck House was torn down in 1863 for an expansion of the State House which never took place, and the land was sold and modern buildings erected on it,-—a shocking and pointless loss. Some years later when the church authorities wished to sell the Old South Meeting House the civic spirit of the Bostonians rebelled. In a whirlwind campaign they raised the then considerable sum of $400,000 and bought and preserved the historic and cherished building. This was the first instance in Boston (furnishing a then unheard of example to the nation), in which, says Mr. Whitehill, " respect for the historical and architectural heritage of the city triumphed over considerations of profit, expediency, laziness and vulgar convenience." Later the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities was formed. This, the first general preservation group, had no equivalent in Baltimore for many years during which it has done splendid work. A zoning law was enacted in Boston, long before Balti- more's—and was sympathetically enforced. An ordinance requiring the removal of over 90% of all advertising signs in Boston was upheld as constitutional by the Chief Justice of the Commonwealth in the name of " public decency."

When Baltimore, a museum of nineteenth century architecture despite its lamentable losses, shows like civic pride, the City will be a more de- lightful one in which to live. And when that time comes, Baltimoreans will demand a topographical history of their own. It is to be hoped that an author will then appear who will do for this city what Mr. Whitehill has done so well for Boston.

DOUGLAS H. GORDON Baltimore, Md.

Proceedings of the Provincial Court of Maryland, 1678-1679 {Archives of Maryland, LXVIII, Court Series 13). Edited by ELIZABETH

MERRITT. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1959. xiii, 303. $5.

This is a volume from the very experienced and capable hands of Dr. Elizabeth Merritt. It contains a complete transcript of the proceedings of

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the principal court of Maryland from 8 October 1678 to 16 October 1679 together with " A Contemporary Index." It also has a modern index and a table of cases. This is the fourth volume of Provincial Court Proceedings to have been edited by Dr. Merritt.

In the "Letter of Transmittal" to be found at the beginning of the book it is stated that "" it was set directly from photostats of the original liber in the Land Office at Annapolis, and it reproduces, as exactly as a good modern press can do it, the contents of that manuscript book."

No comment is made in her interesting and very informative introduction by the editor on the condition of the manuscript, though she has unfavorable criticism of the work of the clerk of the Court, Nicholas Painter.

The present reviewer has made a close study of Liber Z and Liber PR and he is well aware of the problems of transcribing these first volumes of the State records, problems which were surmounted with great skill, and almost with complete success, by the first editor of these Archives three quarters of a century ago. Since those days, however, the science of palae- ography and the art of printing have attained even higher standards of accuracy. The volume under review is well printed and bound; but the leaves should have been cut by the bookbinder.

The Provincial Court was one of first instance as well as of appeal. Its justices were unsalaried and mostly extensive landowners. Occasionally a justice acted as attorney for a client of the Court. No criminal cases were heard during the period covered by this volume. Much use was made of juries in civil cases. There is one example of an appeal from the Provincial Court to the Upper House of the General Assembly.

A very large number of cases were tried, some of them of great interest. Dr. Edward Husbands, the St. Mary's County chirurgeon, was jailed on an exceedingly strong suspicion of trying to poison members of the Lower House of Assembly on the evening of 8 November 1678 when some of them were taken ill after a meal of duck pie. He was eventually forbidden to continue the practice of medicine and ,for uttering threats and curses against the Assembly, ordered to be whipped on his bare back with twenty lashes by the common hangman.

ERIC MCDERMOTT, S. J. Georgetown University

fuet's Journal. The Voyage of the Half Moon from 4 April to 7 Novem- ber 1609- By ROBERT JUET. Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1959. $5.

Robert Juet, probably the mate on one or more of the Half Moon's voyages, described the coast line of Virginia, Maryland including Chesa- peake Bay, and Delaware, in August, 1609, before the famous little vessel reached the Hudson River. Juet's description is a simply written, straight-

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forward account. In Juet's story, brief though it is, we can almost hear the splash of salt water against the sides of the sturdy Half Moon and feel the breezes relieve the hot, humid August air.

Our counterpart, the New Jersey Historical Society, published this little book as part of its observance of the 350th anniversary of the discovery of the Hudson River. The journal is available in a number of older editions, but this version in an attractive format should bring fresh and new attention to this voyage of discovery. The introduction by John T. Cunningham whets the reader's appetite and Robert M. Lunny's restrained but sensitive editing aids the landlubber as he reads of familiar places through early 17th century eyes.

FRED SHELLEY Library of Congress

The Civil War Dictionary. By MARK MAYO BOATNER. New York: David McKay Company, 1959. xvi, 974. $15.

Comprehensive reference books for the student of the American Civil War are as rare as decisive battles in that war. Usually these works appear only once in a generation. Mark Boatner has provided such a source book that is worthy of his predecessors Heitman, Livermore, and Evans.

The Dictionary deals with the following areas of Civil War history: military and key political biographies, campaign summaries, and terminology. The latter will prove of great interest and assistance to the re- searcher. Such terms as " Swamp Angel" and the Gillmore Medal are defined concretely. Perhaps of greater import is the information given concerning the organizations of both armies. The heretofore amorphous military departments and small units like Terry's Rangers are defined. The campaign summaries are concise and yet provide all of the essential data. When authorities differ, Boatner presents both sides and attempts to resolve the inconsistencies. In conjunction with the campaign studies is an atlas of sectional and theater maps. These maps are of particular merit. The biographical sketches (there are over 2000) form the most valuable section of the book. Elusive names like Thomas G. Pitcher and Franklin Gardner become meaningful as Boatner provides information concerning their background. Civil War activities, and post-war pursuits. Actually the biographical section represents a synthesis of the classical studies of Cullum, Heitman, Evans, and others. Although uneven in quality this portion of the book represents the best Civil War biographical source available.

The primary criticism of Boatner's work is that it attempts to accom- plish the impossible. A biographical guide to Civil War generals alone would constitute a lifetime project. The author's effort to compress three studies into one volume results in each section falling short of expecta- tion. The great problem of organization inherent in such a task has been

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resolved in alphabetical form. Although this is often unsatisfactory, one can hardly conceive of a more workable solution unless it be separating the three sections; treating the biographical and terminology sections alphabetically and the campaign section chronologically.

The Civil War Dictionary stands, nevertheless, as a significant contribution. It is welcomed as a valuable aid for the Civil War historian and enthusiast. It has no rival.

N. C. HUGHES Bell Buckle, Tenn.

Covered Bridges of the Middle Atlantic States. By RICHARD SANDERS

ALLEN. Brattleboro, Vt: The Stephen Greene Press, 1959. 120 p. $6.50.

Can a book on bridges, particularly covered ones, interest the general reader? By reason of the author's ability to communicate his own en- thusiasm for the subject, Richard Sanders Allen is well qualified to write such a book. And no one who has read his first volume. Covered Bridges of the Northeast, will question his standing as the world's No. 1 authority and collector of them.

The attraction of bridges is rooted in the fact that unlike temples, sky- scrapers or dwellings, they thrust themselves, in apparent defiance of the law of gravity, across swift water, deep chasms or crawling arteries of commerce, and succeed in taking us from one place difficult of access to another in perfect safety. And no matter how small or insignificant, as long as they stand they constitute monuments to man's defeat of the natural forces that clutch at his handiwork and try to pull it down. Yet their very function as a means of getting us from here to there puts limits on our interest, which usually concerns itself more with destinations than with the routes by which they are reached.

Although it was only the logical answer to the practical problem of preserving the bridges' bones from the effects of sun and rain, something magical happened when a cover was drawn over these heretofore bareheaded structures. They became houses, and as such, all the fascination of explor- ing an old house was added to the natural curiosity we feel for the works of these self-taught, back-country engineers, who

Building for the carriage, never dreaming of the day When all of them would move without the motivating horse. The planks they laid for the Morgan's hooves now know

the weight and feel. The whirr and worry, the hurry and scurry of the

rubber-tired wheel.

Despite the architecturally subversive attempts of Frank Lloyd Wright to destroy " the box," this shape, more than any other devised by man.

REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS 159

answers the human psychological need for containment. A covered bridge really is an open-ended, elongated box. It is the only type of which it may be said that we are in it, rather than on it. Its friendliness is not an illusion. The moment we enter, it is our host and hostel for the duration of our passage, and in its day that passage could be a rather lengthy one when there was a " $5 fine for any person riding or driving over this bridge faster than a walk."

The picture Mr. Allen gives us of the many bridges described in the text is no dreary mass of measurements and statistics, but a panoramic view of an irrepressible, expanding young America, faced with the neces- sity of flinging highways in every direction, and finding torrential streams, soaring mountains and broad rivers barring every path. Insuperable engineering problems that would have stopped the most talented of academi- cally trained engineers threw down a gauntlet that was picked up by country carpenters and exmillwrights whose engineering was in the seat of their pants—who did not know " it coudn't be done." One, the great Theodore Burr, whose rugged design still dominates the standing bridges of the Middle Atlantic area, snagged contracts for three out of four of the authorized spans over the Susquehanna, added two more of these and tried for a sixth—all to be built at the same time! Here is a fine portrait in miniature of the man who, defying God himself, sent local Paul Reveres to ride the back country and round up every available volunteer for the task of shoving into place by hand, in the dead of an evil winter, the partly completed structure of a bridge threatened with imminent and sudden death by alternate thaws and ice jams. No wonder the proud Burr surveyed his finished handiwork, the 360 foot giant at McCall's Ferry— longest single-span wooden arch ever built in the world—and claimed that here was one bridge that "God Almighty can not move!" But ironically enough, the Almighty was listening, and it took Him less than four years to whomp up an unprecedented ice jam that ground it to pieces. We then meet Ithiel Town, the doughty little redhead, one of the world's first and most successful traveling salesmen, who tramped the Appalachian foothills from New England to Alabama selling his patented lattice truss bridge, and either erecting it himself or selling the right to erect it at $1 per foot royalty. And Lewis Wernwag, the German immi- grant who began his career in this country as builder of mills, mill wheels and machinery, and did not design his first bridge until he was forty-one, yet succeeded so well in drawing the attention of the Philadelphia city fathers that they awarded him the contract for the great 340 foot Colossus across the Schuylkill. In his engaging fashion, Mr. Allen tells us how rumor began to circulate as the bridge neared completion, to the effect that Wernwag's brainstorm was being held up only by the scaffolding, and that the whole thing would collapse as soon as this was removed. The timid managers, tricked into inspecting the bridge while the falsework was still in place, found out to their consternation, when they were well out on the arch, that all the supports had been cut away. The bridge had actually been resting on its own abutments since the day before. From then on Wernwag's reputation was made.

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The uninitiated tend to think of covered bridges as quaint fugitives from calendars and Christmas cards, built to take Old Dobbin into town on Saturdays. But as Mr. Allen explains, many of our country's longest covered bridges served the Iron Horse rather than the oatburner, and occasionally both. One such was the 900 foot rail and highway bridge at Harper's Ferry, finished in 1836. This was the bridge seized by John Brown and his men, and movingly described in Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's Body, part of which is appropriately reprinted here. This leads us into the great bridge-building era of the Civil War, when the North became adept at building bridges faster than the South could burn them down or blow them up. We are amazed to learn that the Union built more than 26 miles of bridges before the end of the conflict. And sturdy and adequate they were, despite Lincoln's humorous report that a 400 foot railroad span built by General Herman Haupt, the North's great engineering genius, contained " nothing but beanpoles and cornstalks." Wartime exigencies also brought about a reversal of the practice of covering bridges, when roofs and wooden sheathing made things too easy for guerillas and saboteurs.

If you have ever wondered how one goes about " collecting " covered bridges, Mr. Allen gives both the answers and the inducements in the latter half of the book, where the most important of the structures still standing are located, state by state. The author's descriptions should result in sparking little pilgrimages into the hinterlands to search out the glades and old mill sites where these relics of a bygone age still survive. Such expeditions will be richly rewarded with the excitement of discovery, the provision of a logical goal for what might otherwise be merely random ramblings.

Of especial interest to Maryland readers is the news that of the seventeen covered bridges in the state twenty years ago, more than half are still standing. The gem of these, and what may prove to be the finest example of a covered bridge anywhere in the country, is in Baltimore County on the Bunker Hill Road, between Maryland 45 (old Route 11 to York) and Prettyboy Dam. The beautifully preserved 110 foot span links Bunker Hill with an unspoiled little valley at a bend in the Gunpowder River to form a setting that could well be the composite of all the ideals of bridge collectors everywhere.

No less exciting than Mr. Allen's story is the abundance of superb photographs, prints and drawings, handsomely reproduced and dramatic- ally integrated with the text. Particularly fascinating are the Civil War pictures, some of which have never before been printed. But just as enjoyable are the diagrams, demonstrating solution to problems we are prone to regard as strictly modern. How startling, for example, to see a drawing of a cloverleaf intersection, and learn that it was not devised by 20th century engineers, nor for superhighways and turnpikes, but nearly a hundred years ago, for mules to cross on towpaths without tangling their lines!

Impressive in text, illustrations, design, printing and binding, this is surely a must to own rather than simply borrow. There are altogether

REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS l6l

too few books as carefully put together as this one, and the Stephen Greene Press of Brattleboro, Vermont, is as much to be congratulated as the author.

L. B. HOLDRIDGE Baltimore, Md.

On Chesapeake Shores. By ALBERT W. DOWLING. Richmond: The Dietz Press, Inc., 1959. 53. $3.

Mr. Dowling, a native of Rock Hall in Kent County, and a member of the English Department at Polytechnic Institute in Baltimore since 1937, happily combines the sensitivities of a poet with the keen observations of a waterman. Of the fifty-two poems included in this collection, the great majority of them are well-executed sonnets which pinpoint familiar but not well enough known Eastern Shore scenes. It is refreshing to find in our midst a man who can write of early spring in Maryland, a Chester River crabber, a bachelor farmer, and the glory of wild geese at night, without dipping into what is known as gobbledegook.

C. A. P. HOPKINS Maryland Historical Society

NOTES AND QUERIES

Howard—On February 27, 1728, Edmund Howard, son of Joshua Howard of Baltimore County, married Ruth Teal. Information is requested about their daughter Rebecca and her husband Solomon Stocksdale.

ROWLAND G. WEBER

RD No. 1, Malvern, Pennsylvania

Letters of John Dickinson—The Public Archives Commission of Dela- ware and the Friends of the John Dickinson Mansion, Inc. announce that they are collecting for eventual publication the Letters of John Dick- inson. They would appreciate communication with them about any Dickinson manuscript known to our readers.

" Baltimore Looks Northward" by Jane Garrett. (Md. Hist. Mag., Mar., I960). The following editorial was published in the Baltimore Evening Sun, Apr. 25, I960, concerning Mrs, Garrett's article:

NORTHWARD HO!

An ancient controversy may again be briefly revived when the latest contribution to the Baltimore-is-a-northern [or} southern- city argument reaches the eyes of veteran argufiers. The leading article in the latest issue of the Maryland Historical Magazine, entitled "Philadelphia and Baltimore, 1790-1840; A Study of Intra-Regional Unity," by Miss Jane N. Garrett, is a work of scholarly erudition and documentation, and it pushes the south family back below the Potomac.

Miss Garrett denies the grits-and-magnolia-blossom school even the comforts of nostalgia. Baltimore and most of Maryland ceased being southern, she says, back in the Eighteenth Century, when the economy shifted from tobacco to grain. Since then, "' a Middle Atlantic orientation must be acknowledged for Bal- timore " and as the economy further shifted from an agrarian to a business basis, " the regional interdependence of the two cities " of Philadelphia and Baltimore became paramount. But the port is not the only standard of measurement. Account must also be taken of the long period in which Baltimore wholesale houses

162

NOTES AND QUERIES 163

had close relations with the South. Also of Baltimore's contribution to the Confederate Army.

While waiting (quite patiently) for the rival flags to begin waving, the truly modern Baltimorean may find himself guilty of a small smile. The Baltimore of the ever nearer future promises to be a study in unity, all right: economic, geographic, vehicular. As the coagulation continues, along the East Coast from Boston on down, it may envelop even the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond itself.

CONTRIBUTORS

JAMES HIGH is assistant Professor of Social Sciences in the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a student of colonial Maryland history on which he has published many scholarly articles.

ELLA E. CLARK is assistant Professor of English at the State College of Washington. Her discovery of the hitherto unpublished manuscript on the C. & O. Canal not only sheds much light on its history but also is timely in view of the recent Congressional interest in the old waterway.

MARTHA S. POOLE is a student of local social history about which she has contributed several articles to the Maryland Historical Magazine.

RICHARD M. GUMMERE, formerly a member, now retired, of the Har- vard University Faculty, is an outstanding classical scholar by which means he arrived at his interest in Jonathan Boucher, a " first-rate" early American classical scholar.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Report for 1939

REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

'TPHE reports of the officers and committees of the Society touch upon many phases of the Society's work during the preceding year, which

was unusually busy and productive. The older standing committees continued their effective work, and the new ones, the Women's Committee of which Mrs. William W. Symington is chairman and the Special Projects Committee, Chairman C. A. Porter Hopkins, made notable contributions to the Society's activities. The steamboat cruise arranged by the last named group was profitable and brought out many interesting sidelights on the Bay through the panel discussion led by Dr. Reginald V. Truitt.

Our director supervises ably the general operations of our Society. His activities included a four-month stay in England last summer doing fruitful research relative to the life of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore. Dur- ing his absence our assistant director, Harold R. Manakee, also head of War Records and Road Markers Committee, carried on efficiently.

Vice President J. Oilman D'Arcy Paul and Laurence H. Fowler assist in numerous ways in the operations of our Society, giving special attention to matters of art in cooperation with the Gallery Committee of which John H. Scarff is chairman and Miss Eugenia Calvert Holland is assistant.

Our other Vice President Jacob France, also Chairman of the Finance Committee, has been very generous with donations and indefatigable in strengthening our financial structure. His committee stresses the urgent need for much increase in our income and endowment because we are privately financed and owned and receive no public funds for our general expenses. We receive nothing from the State of Maryland except small amounts as actual reimbursem*nt for money expended by us in handling certain specific projects for the State. We receive no money from the City of Baltimore for numerous public services rendered by us, especially to the city's schools.

Samuel Hopkins as Treasurer has greatly improved the system of keeping financial records and handling funds of our Society, aided materially by the competent Miss Martha Bokel, Office Manager. Corresponding Secretary William B. Marye has for years given devoted attention to his-

164

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 165

torical research and Recording Secretary W. Hall Harris, Jr., assists in administrative matters.

The Chairman of Trustees of the Athenaeum, Lucius R. White, supervises our real estate properties which have been added to slightly during the year.

Our Membership Committee under the leadership of Chairman Charles P. Crane is securing excellent results. The long experience and wide con- tacts of Chairman John E. Semmes are invaluable in securing speakers for our meetings.

Mrs. Frank F. Beirne guides the work of our Committee on Relations with other Societies, the scope of whose functions is steadily widening. We have taken a keen interest in the organization and development of county historical societies, on occasion serving as intermediary in such endowment grants as that of Thomas SJ Nichols, of our Finance Com- mittee, to the Dorchester County Historical Society.

The Publication Committee of which Dr. Charles A. Barker is Chairman has increased carefully its publications. Our magazine edited by Dr. Rich- ard Walsh continues to receive much favorable comment. Our Maritime Committee of which G. H. Pouder is Chairman assisted ably by R. H. Randall, R. Hammond Gibson and others, is developing our Maritime Museum. Our Library Committee of which G. Ross Veazey is Chairman and John Kilbourne, Librarian and Miss Hester Rich assistant, is in charge of our numerous and valuable books and manuscripts which are in urgent need of large expenditures for their preservation and utilization. Judge Calvin Chesnut is head of our Education Committee.

The scholarly Miss Elizabeth Merritt is now working on the current volume of State of Maryland Archives, a series which we have been editing for nearly eighty years.

We are grateful for membership dues and contributions toward our expenses and for the greatly needed enlargement of our endowment funds. Meanwhile we are receiving almost daily donations, occasionally aug- mented by purchases, to our collections which are varied in nature and very valuable, and increasingly used by scholars and the general public. A recent addition was the famous collection of papers of Benjamin H. Latrobe, the architect and engineer. We already had many of his papers.

Our 116-year-old society is seeking zealously to find ways of increasing our usefulness. We are grateful for your generous support, and we ask that you continue to help us to serve better our members and the public.

GEORGE L. RADCLIFFE, President

166 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR

The size of the staff for the first time in the experience of the undersigned was nearly adequate to the current load the Society attempts to carry. I am happy to report that there is also a high level of competency.

Accessions during the year, as reported below, were gratifying. The outstanding feature was, of course, the acquisition of the Benjamin H. Latrobe papers, including sketchbooks, journals and letterbooks, altogether the largest body of Latrobe materials in existence. Together with the significant group of B. H. Latrobe papers already here and the outstanding collection of papers and sketches of Latrobe's eldest son, John H. B. Latrobe, both presented by members of the Latrobe and Semmes families over a period of fifty years, this accession establishes the Society as the principal headquarters for study of the contributions of this talented family. It is regrettable that until the papers newly received can be micro- filmed and put in proper repair, they cannot be exhibited or made available for research. To the many contributors to the fund by which these papers were acquired the Society is gratefully beholden.

The functioning of two new committees whose reports are listed below —the Women's Committee and the Special Projects Committee—has greatly strengthened the Society's work.

The Society was privileged to offer its hospitality and in other ways cooperate with a large number of societies and special groups through meetings, talks, exhibitions and advice. The continuing work with schools includes a heavy schedule of guided tours of the building by classes under the general management of Mr. Manakee and with the assistance of guides from the Junior League of Baltimore. In addition, talks were given at various schools during the year and an expanded program of leaflets and other printed materials for schools was planned.

Inability to finance a complete program of community service and cooperation in the field of history has long been the Society's major difficulty. The plain fact is that in this time of expanded interest in American history and the obvious re-appreciation of our heritage, shown in almost every field, such an organization as ours has unlimited opportunities. That we are unable to seize many of these is regrettable. On the other hand, we are grateful for the widening support of our work on the part of the public, as shown by a membership of 3300 and by many handsome gifts and legacies. The bequest of Miss Elizabeth Chew Williams, amounting to approximately $200,000, though not yet received, was the most gratifying gift of recent years and affords promise of improved service on the part of the Society.

The Director was granted by the Council the unusual privilege of spend-

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 167

ing several months in England last summer in order to pursue his study of the life and career of the first Lord Baltimore. His investigations in the great libraries of London and many libraries and archives in the counties resulted in the assembling of much new material. While this study was undertaken under a grant from the American Philosophical Society and with aid from Mr. Jacob France, for both of which I am grateful, I again wish to express my appreciation of the interest of the Council and the support of the staff, especially of the assistant director, Mr. Harold R. Manakee, who carried on effectively the usual heavy schedule.

JAMES W. FOSTER, Director

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE ATHENAEUM

During the past year the entire modern wing, including the Library and art gallery, has been air-conditioned for the comfort of the public and for the better preservation of books, manuscripts and pictures. This has also resulted in a greater use of our facilities during the warm months.

The Cohen Room and the Carter-Lehr Room were both redecorated last summer and new lighting fixtures were installed in the former.

The Society's properties on Monument Street west of the main building are all in good condition and occupied by tenants.

Luaus R. WHITE, JR., Chairman

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE GALLERY AND MUSEUM

The year was marked by the acquisition of several distinguished collections, notably the group of portraits, furniture, silver, porcelain and jewelry of the Patterson and Smith families, presented by Mrs. Andrew Robeson, and sketchbooks of Benjamin H. Latrobe, the architect. The latter are to be retained as an integral part of the Latrobe Collection, the remainder consisting of notebooks and letterbooks of Latrobe, which are library materials. Other important accessions were the Howard and Key items from the estate of Miss Julia McHenry Howard; miniatures, silver, glass and porcelain from the late Mrs. Breckinridge Long; mahogany pieces, porcelain snuff boxes and figurines, and silver from Mrs. Richard B. Darnall; early American silver tankard from Mrs. DeCourcy W. Thorn; English tankard and various other silver pieces from anonymous donors; portraits, china, and lighting fixtures from Mrs. Anne V. McKim. Other

168 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

valued items, bringing the number of accessions to 1,070, from 143 donors, were received.

Principal exhibitions were the joint showing at the Baltimore Museum of Art of portraits and silver, commemorating the important contributions of the late Dr. J. Hall Pleasants, and " The History of Baseball in Balti- more " at the Society's headquarters. Other displays were those of the silver of the battleship Maryland, the Washington Monument papers, the War of 1812, the 350th anniversary of Queen Henrietta Maria's birth, Christmas toys and dolls, and recent acquisitions.

The Society was included in the tour of the annual House and Garden Pilgrimage when members of the Women's Committee kindly acted as hostesses to hundreds of visitors.

The Cohen Room and the Carter-Lehr Room were both redecorated and refurbished. The Council took a long contemplated step when it authorized the installation of summer air-conditioning for the Society's gallery and library. This is important for the better preservation of portraits and furniture in the Main Gallery, as well as for the comfort of visitors and staff.

Demands on the Society for the loan of museum materials in increasing. The following in 1959 borrowed important materials from the Society: Historic Annapolis: Maryland Society, Colonial Dames of America; Hampton National Historic Site: Star-Spangled Banner Flag House; U. S. Post Office Department; Baltimore Museum of Art; Cathedral Church of the Incarnation; Eastern High School; Peabody Institute: Milwaukee Art Center; Towson Library; C. and P. Telephone Co.; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Hochschild, Kohn & Co., and several TV stations.

Members of the Baltimore Junior League have generously served as guides in showing school classes and other groups through the exhibition rooms, while members of the Women's Committee have acted as hostesses for many special events.

The museum staff of the Society is increasingly called upon for study of and reports on objects privately owned. This is a community service given gratis, as in the case of most museums, although it entails heavy demands upon the time of various members of the staff. Though burden- some, conferences on museum materials sometimes produce additions to the Society's collections by gift or otherwise.

JOHN H. SCARFF, Chairman

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 169

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE LIBRARY

Personnel of the Library at the year's end included the undersigned, librarian, Miss A. Hester Rich, assistant librarian, Dr. Elizabeth Merritt, indexer. Miss Elizabeth Hart, library assistant, and Mrs. Forrest W. Lord, secretary. Mr. F. Garner Ranney in June accepted a position with the Peale Museum and Miss Hart was then employed as a part-time assistant. During the summer Mr. David G. Fischer was also a temporary assistant. Miss Louisa M. Gary has continued as manuscript restorer. The able volunteer services of the following have been of outstanding aid in the functioning of the Library; Mrs. William F. Bevan, Miss Mary C Hiss, Miss Edith V. Thompson, Miss Florence R. Kelly, Mrs. G. H. Pouder, Miss Eliza Funk, and Mrs. Kenneth A. Bourne.

During the year 441 lots of material were accessioned, of which 84 were manuscripts, 30 of mixed nature (books, manuscripts, photographs, etc.), and the remainder were bound volumes. Owing to the constantly increasing use of the Library and the shortage in staff, no attention to the indexing of new material was possible. The summer work of Mr. Fischer was the arranging and housing of manuscript collections received in past years, and the arranging and indexing of the map collection. The resultant convenience in making these records more accessible is a marked gain.

Important among the year's manuscript accessions were: additional papers of the de la Roche family of France and Maryland, 1803-1863; a manuscript volume of surveys of real estate belonging to the Baltimore Company, c. 1810; a similar volume containing a resurvey of boundaries and lots of George Town, Kent County, 1787; additions to the Patterson- Bonaparte papers, consisting of accounts of Elizabeth Patterson Bona- parte's French pension and other financial interests, a letterbook of Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, 1863-1870, and memoranda, notes and related documents. Mr. Randall's contribution of a Maryland maritime index is also notable. This index consists of a card file of the names of ships associated with the Chesapeake Bay from 1584, and contains some 5000 entries. Accompanying the index is a glossary of nautical terms relating primarily to Maryland. In another field of interest may be mentioned the gift of letters of William Wilkins Glenn, a Baltimore editor. These letters relate to his arrest and banishment during Civil War days, and illustrate graphic- ally the difficulties inherent in the delicate balance of sentiment in Balti- more at that time.

Manuscripts from the estate of the late Miss Julia McHenry Howard were of special interest. They included interesting Key and Howard family documents and have been described in Maryland History Notes for November, 1959. An interesting collection of Latrobe and Brown papers

170 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

including a manuscript " Dancing Book," done by Julia E. Latrobe c. 1812, with illustration and introduction by her father Benjamin H. Latrobe, was the gift of Mrs. Adrian Onderdonk.

Satisfactory progress can be reported in the field of document restoration and conservation. The capable services of Miss Gary were regularly employed throughout the year. Some of the documents upon which attention was focused were: rent-rolls, tax lists and land papers from the Scharf collection; the rolls of the Federal direct tax of 1798; portions of the Society's collection of Revolutionary War pay- and muster-rolls; and many single and miscellaneous items from the manuscript and broadside collections.

Two hundred and fifty-one lots of books were accessioned, totaling 497 items. Nine hundred and sixty-one volumes were catalogued, as compared with 833 during 1958. This gain was made possible by releasing Miss Rich almost entirely from reading-room attendance. The cataloging represents all new items added to the Library, and numerous publications already in hand from the backlog. Attention is now being paid to the printed genealogical materials, which have never heretofore been catalogued. The genealogical guides and general source materials are now almost completely catalogued.

Only 103 volumes were bound or rebound. This was due primarily to the fact that the Society's regular binder went out of business, with a resultant over-load on this city's only remaining library binder. Also, the smallness of the staff inevitably curtailed the bindery program. Because of these facts, only a little progress could be made in reducing the very large backlog of books needing bindery attention.

Some notable accessions of books were: Shaw and Shoemaker, American Bibliography . . . , in five volumes, marking the first attempt to continue the chronicle of American publishing past the terminal date (1800) of Evans' American Bibliography. Interesting primarily because of its associations is the volume of Thomas Hearne's edition of Guilielmi Neu- brigensis, Historia, she Chronica rerum Anglicarum . . . , published at Oxford in 1719. The book contains the bookplate of the Hon. Benedict Leonard Calvert, second son to Benedict Leonard, Fourth Lord Baltimore. Hearne and young Calvert were intimate friends whose association is discussed in the Maryland Historical Magazine, Volume 3. Two large additions to the genealogical section came with the gifts of Dr. J. Ben Rob- inson and of the estate of Carl Ross McKenrick. Worthy of mention also is the acquisition of a copy, probably unique, of The Shorter Catechism . . . , printed by M. K. Goddard, Baltimore, in 1782. Until the presentation of this imprint by Mr. Robert S. Nyburg, no copy was known.

Additions of prints, photographs, and architectural drawings were also received. The largest accession in this general category was the more than 1600 colored slides of Maryland houses and gardens given by Mrs.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 171

Blanchard Randall. Another large collection of slides was presented by the Pratt Libary which discontinued use of 31/2" x 4" glass slides. These are also of Maryland scenes. A check list of parish records of Maryland and their locations, for all denominations so far as information can be found was made by Miss Hart and will be extended as occasion arises.

A record of Library attendance was begun for the first time on January 1. The total number of visitors was 3,178. This was in addition to the thousands of individuals and organizations who requested information by mail or telephone.

JOHN D. KILBOURNE, Librarian

I join in signing this as a matter of form. Most obviously the credit for this careful report is due to Mr. Kilbourne.

G. Ross VEAZEY, Chairman

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE

The duties of your Committee on Finance are to advise the Society in the management of its overall finances and the investment of endowment funds given or left to the Society by members and friends to provide facilities and income to keep alive the historical and cultural development of Maryland.

Your Committee believes strongly that the Society's expenses should be kept in line with income. It also seeks to increase income because it believes good use can be made of more money.

In managing the Society's investments, your Finance Committee seeks to obtain the best current income that can be produced by prudent management. We also seek reasonable growth of both principal and income.

The increase in the book value of the Society's endowment since 1956, shown in the following table, is due to gifts, legacies and gains realized on sale of securities.

Book Value of Endowment Investments, Net Endowment and Trust Income and Income from Dues and Contributions

Book Value of Endowment Net Endowment and Trust Income Dues Contributions for Operating Expense

Your Committee believes that in I960 special emphasis should be given to increasing income from dues and contributions.

JACOB FRANCE, Chairman

1959 1958 1956 801,308 814,714 482,789 38,730 33,088 26,385 26,509 27,847 17,072

667 1,923 3,050

172 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATIONS

On behalf of the Committee on Publications, I beg to report that the three series-publications of the Society were carried on along the customary lines during the calendar year 1959. The Committee is more than happy with the product in each case: the four issues of the Maryland Historical Magazine, edited by Dr. Richard Walsh and assisted by Mr. C. A. Porter Hopkins; The Maryland History Notes edited by the Director of the Society, Mr. Foster; and vol. 68 of the Maryland Archives, the proceedings of the Provincial Court, 1678-1679, edited by Dr. Elizabeth Merritt.

Dr. Merritt called the attention of the committee to the fact that she must some day retire as editor of the Archives. It is very desirable to consider the question of her successor, so that there will be a continuity of policy. Dr. Pleasants, who preceded her as editor, had the matter on his mind for years before he retired. Messrs. Walsh and Hopkins raised a second question of personnel need. A good copyist, a typist who would like to be trained in transcribing manuscripts, and would have time for that duty, is badly needed on the Society's staff for the work of the Magazine, they report; and your Committee recommends that such an appointment be made.

The Society published no new books in 1959. The sales of earlier publications have been gratifying, however, and we are pleased to learn from the Treasurer that the publications fund carries a surplus. The Com- mittee thinks that the next year or two, the sooner the better, will be an appropriate time to publish the edited text of one or more of the Society's Civil War manuscript diaries or collections of letters. If a favorable opportunity presents itself, that is, if an editor appears who is ready to edit important manuscript material, we will recommend that a commitment to publish be offered.

Your Committee again recommends the publication of a Guide to the Manuscripts in the Library of the Maryland Historical Society. This brings us close to matter formally outside the Committee's responsibility, but one on which we have expressed ourselves before, the desirability of establishing a Manuscripts Division in the Society. We think that the prior need in implementing that policy is the appointment of a full-time professional Curator of Manuscripts (whether using that title, or some other title such as Associate Librarian in charge of Manuscripts). Although we favor some rearrangement of plant as part of setting up the new division, Mr. Foster and his colleagues of the staff persuade us that this will probably need to wait the construction of the new building. No decision to delay that part of the undertaking, however, should delay also the Guide to the Manuscripts we think; and we think that the appointment of a curator is the first and essential step toward getting to work on the Guide.

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 173

Professor Rhoda Dorsey, of the History Department of Goucher College, has accepted appointment to this Committee; and her membership rounds out the most academic of the Society's committees to include members of the faculties of Goucher, Hopkins, and the University of Maryland.

CHARLES A. BARKER, Chairman

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON MEMBERSHIP

January 1, 1959 Honorary Members 4 Life Members 63 Active Members 3024 3091

New Members gained in 1959: Life Members 7 Active Members 237 244 3335

Members lost in 1959: Death—Honorary 1

—Life 4 —Active 56 61

Resignations—Life 1 —Active 284 285 346

NET MEMBERSHIP DECEMBER 31, 195^ , 2989

Honorary 3 Life 65 Active 2921

2989 New members since Jan. 1, I960 205

CHARLES P. CRANE, Chairman

174 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON ADDRESSES

Meetings of the Society's members during the calendar year 1959 were as follows:

January 12—Joint meeting of the Society and the Society for the Preser- vation of Maryland Antiquities. Speaker: Mr. Charles C. Wall, resident director of Mount Vernon. Topic: " Mount Vernon, Its Message and Its Problems." Illustrated.

February 9—Annual Meeting. Mr. Frederick S. DeMarr, assistant dean at the University of Maryland, substituting for Dr. Barker whose talk previously scheduled for this meeting was postponed, spoke on religious denominations in Maryland.

February 19—Joint meeting of the Society and the English Speaking Union, Maryland Branch. Sir John Wedgwood, Bart., was the speaker. Topic: " The Wedgwood Story." Illustrated.

February 25—" Sutro's Wednesday Evening." Planned and largely underwritten by Miss Ottilie Sutro, daughter of Mr. Otto Sutro, founder of the " Wednesday Club." Informal evening of music.

March 6—Count Rene de Chambrun, great great grandson of Lafayette, gave an informal address on Lafayette's Maryland associations and the Lafayette Papers.

April 7—Mr. James H. Bready of the Sunpapers spoke at a meeting held to mark the opening of the exhibition " 100 Years of Base- ball in Baltimore."

May 4—Dr. Charles A. Barker, chairman of the Committee on Publica- tions and Professor of American History at the Johns Hopkins Uni- versity. Topic: '" The Historical Society Makes History."

September 24—Sir Allan Chalmers Smith, Bart., a Justice in Bermuda, gave an illustrated address on early relationships between Bermuda and the Chesapeake colonies.

November 23—Mr. Lenoir Chambers, editor of the Norfolk Virginian- Pilot, and author of a life of Stonewall Jackson, spoke on Jackson and his association with Robert E. Lee.

In the afternoon series, the first lecture, on January 20, was given by Mr. Mendel L. Peterson of the Smithsonian Institution. His topic was "" Underwater Exploration of Shipwrecks." At the second lecture, on February 17, Dr. Alfred P. Maurice, director of the Maryland Institute, spoke on "' The Flowering of American Print-Making Culminating in Currier & Ives Lithographs." Both of these lectures were illustrated.

JOHN E. SEMMES, Chairman

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 175

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON WAR RECORDS

During 1959 the War Records Division completed the alphabetizing of the carbon copies of the separations from service of Maryland's 250,000 World War II Veterans. Work began on the preparation of a printed register of these veterans' names.

Photostats of these papers are in some demand by interested individuals and by authorized government agencies.

JOHN T. MENZIES, Chairman

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

The Committee was elected under the revised Constitution of 1947 to meet the need for speakers to address meetings of school groups and other organizations when calls were too numerous for the officers and staff of the Society to handle. The Committee has endeavored to carry on this work, although in the last year calls have been less frequent owing to the activities of the Special Projects Committee and the enlarged staff of the Society.

A vacancy on the Committee was filled by action of the Council with the appointment of Dr. Thomas G. Pullen, State Superintendent of Schools.

The Committee did not find it necessary to hold a meeting during the year just ended.

W. CALVIN CHESNUT, Chairman

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RELATIONS WITH OTHER SOCIETIES

The principal work of the Committee in 1959, as in the previous year, was the planning of the all-day conference of historical societies in Mary- land on October 31. The various sessions were held at the Society's headquarters and luncheon was at the Stafford Hotel. Seventy-eight persons attended the conference and heard discussions on Maryland's commemora- tion of the Civil War.

The Society's relations with the various patriotic societies continue to be close and, it is hoped, profitable on both sides. Meetings of other groups at the Society's headquarters included the Society of the Cincinnati of Maryland, Maryland Society of Colonial Dames, the Ark and the Dove, Woman's Eastern Shore Society, and Chapter I, Colonial Dames of America.

Two new county historical societies have been formed: Baltimore and

176 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Worcester, bringing the total of county societies in Maryland to 20. Of these, five societies maintain affiliate memberships with this Society under a system of joint dues. There are frequent consultations between the officers of the county societies and the officers and staff of our Society. Talks were given by the president and members of the staff in various parts of the state before county historical groups.

ROSAMOND R. BEIRNE, Chairman

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE

MARITIME COLLECTION

The principal gain of the year was the completion of the catalog of the collection and its classification by types of material in 17 categories. This meticulous undertaking was carried out with skill by our acting curator, Mr. R. H. Gibson, with the result that we now have duplicate written records of the 1,500 items of maritime interest in our care. This is in addition to the records of accessions which have always been kept in order by the Society, and our inventory card file. Headway was also made in organi2ing information files and storing study materials.

A card index of about 5,000 entries of names of vessels entering the Chesapeake Bay from earliest times to the present was presented by Mr. R. H. Randall who compiled it over a period of many years. This comprehensive file forms a permanent addition of great value to the study materials of our local maritime history.

Other important gifts were the rigged model of the steamer Joppa, constructed and presented by Mr. August Mencken, his fourth. From Mr. Gibson came a fine model of the clipper ship Mary Whitridge, the eighth presented by him. Glass cases for both of these models were supplied by the donors, and a stand as well was given for the Mary Whitridge. The model of a whaleboat with complete gear was given in memory of the late J. Valentine Muller by Mrs. Muller of Easton. Thanks to the efforts of Mr. H. Graham Wood and the Maryland Port Authority, the Society received the builder's and re-builder's plates from the icebreaker F. C. Latrobe and the nameboard, builder's and engine builder's plates, binnacle light, steam whistle, and various other pieces of equipment from the icebreaker Annapolis; together with an oil painting of the schooner Lucille. The city of Baltimore presented the 14 pieces of the Kirk silver service made for the armored cruiser Baltimore and presented in 1890 to that ship. Four large pieces of whalebone, bearing scrimshaw designs were presented by Miss Miriam H. Burch.

The Monkey, an actual log canoe 20 feet long, complete with mast, sails, and equipment was presented in memory of G. Raymond Ziegler of

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 177

Cambridge by members of his family through Miss Barbara Ziegler of Baltimore. The craft is being maintained gratis for the Society until such time as our museum can accommodate it. A replica of the plaque carried by the U. S. S. Nautilus on her cruise under the North Pole was presented by Commodore I. M. Poss, representing the Boy Scouts of America.

Preliminary planning for the building to house the maritime museum along with other exhibition areas and an auditorium has been under consideration. The acting curator has inspected many of the 27 nautical museums on the Atlantic Coast and has listed the space requirements for full development of our collection, including a chronological scheme of displays on the main floor. Further discussions on this subject will continue as the needs become clarified through day-to-day experience.

The thanks of the chairman of this Committee and other officers of the Society are due to the various members of the Committee who have assisted in building up the collection to its present strength. Particular notice is given to the competent and devoted service of Mr. R. Hammond Gibson.

G. H. POUDER, Chairman

REPORT OF THE WOMEN'S COMMITTEE

The Women's Committee of the Maryland Society has endeavord to assist the staff when help of its members was needed. Hostesses were provided for special tours, school tours, and evening meetings, as well as registrars for the Third Annual Conference of Historical Societies. Speakers were entertained at private luncheons, and flowers were provided for special occasions.

On November 12, 1959, the Women's Committee sponsored a tea for new members of the Maryland Historical Society.

Eight members of the Committee volunteered to fill staff requests for library work—filing, typing and chauffeuring assistance.

One member has worked with the Amateur Gardeners' Club, and reports the garden in good shape.

An old lace collection has been inaugurated, with Mrs. George Weems Williams as chairman.

During the year the Director and other members of the staff addressed meetings of the Women's Committee to acquaint the members with the details of various activities of the Society.

Mrs. W. Wallace Symington, Jr., was elected Chairman of the Com- mittee on January 21, I960, succeeding the undersigned.

GLADYS W. KEYSER

178 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

REPORT OF THE SPECIAL PROJECTS COMMITTEE

This Committee was formed in the fall of 1958 by a group of younger men interested in promoting the interests of the Society. The main effort of 1959 was the sponsorship of the cruise, " A Day on the Bay," which attracted over 700 people and netted the Committee $1,500. One thousand dollars was subsequently presented to the Society for the Latrobe fund, the remainder being kept for promotional measures which might from time to time come up.

In addition a speakers' committee was formed of members of the Special Projects Committee and is now functioning as an aid to the staff of the Maryland Historical Society. Several members of the Committee have also donated additional gifts of manuscripts and money. For the support and interest of the Committee, the chairman is grateful.

C. A. PORTER HOPKINS,, Chairman

REPORT OF THE TREASURER STATEMENT OF OPERATIONS—GENERAL FUND

for year ended December 31, 1959

Income

Dues $26,509.50 Contributions 667.00 Investment Income, etc.

Endowment Fund $ 9,164.25 Daingerfield Fund 7,850.99 Wild Fund 3,728.79 Other 1,807.58

$22,551.61 Less Commissions $ 1,050.75 $21,500.86

Rental Income 209-11 West Monument Street $ 2,219.00 213 West Monument Street 4,468.50 219 West Monument Street 4,247.96 614-16 Park Avenue 9,450.00 War Records Division 840.00 $21,225.46

H. Oliver Thompson Estate $ 1,541.96 J. J. Cook Estate 660.78 Publications 3,880.69 Library Fees 231.66 Miscellaneous Income 123456 12345665

$76,509.22

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 179

Expenditures

Rental Property Expense I 6,198.82 Maintenance and Repairs 623.67 Building Supplies 1,015.48 Heat, Light and Power 3,877.2} Insurance 3,544.22 Equipment Replacement 125.00 Salaries 46,404.79 Social Security Expense 1,501.44 Publications and Periodicals Expenses 14,719.07 Library Purchases—Books and Manuscripts 1,041.80 Binding and Other Repairs 1,478.55 Library Supplies 584.99 Membership Extension 228.75 Addresses 1,390.45 Office Supplies 1,213.45 Telephone 1,183.13 Postage 392.48 Gallery Expense 1,788.02 Depreciation 28.50

TOTAL EXPENDITURES $87,339.84

EXCESS OF EXPENDITURES OVER INCOME $10,830.62

BALANCE SHEET—DECEMBER 31, 1959

Current Fund Assets Current Assets

Cash in Bank $ 8,718.53 Petty Cash 100.00

TOTAL CURRENT ASSETS $ 8,818.53

Fixed Assets

Real Estate $143,332.24 Books 1.00 Manuscripts and Prints 1.00 Paintings and Statuary 1.00 Furniture and Fixtures $286.00

Less Depreciation to Date 256.50 29.50 Air Conditioning System 7,350.00

TOTAL FIXED ASSETS $150,714.74

TOTAL CURRENT FUND ASSETS $159,533.27

Restricted Fund Cash $ 18,615.65

180 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE

Endowment Fund Assets

Cash Corpus $ 1,705.68 Cash Deposit—Baltimore Equitable

Society 90.00 Mortgages Receivable 45,844.63 Real Estate 316,614.76 Due from General Fund 28,595.04 Bonds 35,971.92 Stocks 151,710.48 Ground Rents 666.66

TOTAL ENDOWMENT FUND ASSETS $581,199.17

Daingerfield Fund Assets

Cash Corpus $ 375.52 Bonds 65,869.04 Stocks 90,865.09

TOTAL DAINGERFIELD FUND ASSETS $157,109.65

Wild Fund

Cash Corpus $ 527.71 Bonds 29,081.87 Stocks 32,083.30 Ground Rent 1,307.00

TOTAL WILD FUND ASSETS $ 62,999.88

$979,457.62 Current Fund Liabilities

Current Liabilities

Due to Endowment Fund $ 28,595.04 Special Fund Account 17,935,64

TOTAL CURRENT LIABILITIES $ 46,530.68

Other Liabilities

Deferred Credits $ 1,020.79

Net Worth

Surplus $111,981.80

TOTAL CURRENT FUND LIABILITIES and NET WORTH. .. $159,533.27

Restricted Fund

Restricted Fund Surplus $ 18,615.65

Endowment Fund

Endowment Fund Reserve $581,199.17

TOTAL ENDOWMENT FUND $581,199.17

MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPORT FOR 1959 181

Daingerfield Fund

Daingerfield Fund Reserve $157,109.65

TOTAL DAINGERFIELD FUND $157,109.65

Wild Fund $ 62,999.88

Wild Fund Reserve $ 62,999.88

TOTAL WILD FUND $ 62,999.88

$979,457.62

STATEMENT OF ENDOWMENT FUND RESERVE

DECEMBER 31, 1959

Balance—January 1, 1959 $573,225.04

Add

Life Memberships and Other Payments $ 1,765.00 Received from

Jacob France $ 4,998.00 Estate of Florence J. Kennedy 10,511.19 Estate of V. G. Wilson 180.62 Estate of Helen M. Dennis 882.00 $16,571.81

Gain on sale of Securities 2,912.51 $ 21,249.32

$594,474.36 Deduct

Write-Off of Receivable from Special Funds $ 5,000.00 Commissions paid to Fidelity-Baltimore National

Bank 325.19 Adjustment for over-valuation of Securities Donated

to Society during 1958 7,950.00 $ 13,275.19

Balance—December 31, 1959 $581,199.17

We have examined the Balance Sheet and related Statement of Operations of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland as of December 31, 1959. Our examination was made in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards and accordingly included such tests of the accounting records and such other auditing procedures as we deemed necessary.

In our opinion, the accompanying Balance Sheet and related Statement of Opera- tions fairly present the financial position of the Maryland Historical Society at December 31, 1959, and the result of operations for the year then ended, in con- formity with generally accepted accounting principles on a basis consistent with that of the preceding year.

ROBERT W. BLACK

Certified Public Accountant March 4, I960

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