Barlow was one of the founders of the Bank
of Washington in the District of Columbia, who were Daniel Carroll of
Duddington, William Cranch, Robert Front, Frederick May, Franklin
Wharton, Joel Barlow, Samuel H. Smith, James S. Stevenson, Joseph
Forrest, George Blagden, Thomas
Law, Samuel N. Smallwood, Daniel Rapine, Peter Miller, Tunis Craven,
and William Prout. (Bank of Washington. National Intelligencer and
Washington Advertiser, Sep. 6, 1809.) Daniel Carroll was chosen
President, and Samuel Eliot Jr., Cashier. (National Intelligencer and
Washington Advertiser, Sep. 18, 1809.)
In 1811, the directors elected were Daniel Carroll of Dudington,
Robert Brent, George Calvert, Robert Sewell, Samuel H. Smith, Joel
Barlow, George Blagden, John Davidson, James S. Stephenson, Frederick
May, William Cranch, and Joseph Forrest. Carroll was elected President,
and Griffith Coombe appointed a director in his place. (National
Intelligencer, Jan. 17, 1811.) Samuel Harrrison Smith was elected
President in 1819. (City of Washington Gazette, Sep. 14, 1819.) George
Calvert was elected President in 1828. (Baltimore Patriot, Feb. 7,
1828.)
Daniel Rapine was Mayor of Washington, and Blagden was President of the Board of the Common Council. They opened separate accounts for each city ward in the bank. (An Act Directing the Treasurer to open separate accounts in the Bank of Washington. National Intelligencer, Dec. 8, 1812.)
George Blagden
"was a native of
Attercliffe, Yorkshire, in England, but was one of the first settlers
in Washington, having been here from the laying of its
foundation-stone. At the time of his death, and for many years
previous, he was superintendent of the masons employed on the Capitol,
an Alderman of the City, and a Director of the Bank of Washington." He
died about an hour after a six-foot bank of earth on the southwest
corner of the Capitol collapsed on him. (Deaths. Vermont Chronicle,
from the National Intelligencer, Jun. 16, 1826.) He was Treasurer of
the Washington Building Company. (National Intelligencer and Washington
Advertiser, Nov. 6, 1801.) His son, Rev. George Washington Blagden,
Yale 1823, was an Overseer of Harvard from 1854 to 1859; his wife,
Miriam Phillips, was a daughter of John Phillips, Harvard 1788. Wendell
Phillips, the abolitionist, was his brother-in-law. (Obituary Record of
Graduates of Yale, 1880-1890, p. 226; The history of the Treman,
Tremaine, Truman family in
America. p. 1683.) George W. Blagden had
two sisters and a brother, Thomas. (A discourse
commemorative of the Rev. George Washington Blagden, D.D. By Charles
Agustus Stoddard, p.14.) Emily Blagden married George W. Phillips. She
died at age 31. (Died. Boston Daily Atlas, May 2, 1842.) Thomas Blagden
married two sisters of Benjamin
D. Silliman. His grandson married a sister of George C. Clark, first president
of the American Society for the Control of Cancer.
"From Noah Webster to
Napoléon, Barlow
traveled in illustrious company all his life. At Yale from 1776 to
1778, he studied with Timothy Dwight alongside his friend Webster...
In 1788, business took him to Paris, where, under the influence of
Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette he underwent a political conversion and
became a supporter of the French Revolution. Moving to London in 1791,
he associated with such progressive thinkers as Mary Wollstonecraft and
William Godwin and wrote defenses of the Revolution that won him
honorary French citizenship.... After a year in Hamburg, studying
German literature in the company of the poet Friedrich Kopstock, he
returned to Paris and formed a friendship with James Monroe that led to
his appointment as U.S. consul at Algiers..." As U.S. Consul to France,
he was stranded in Poland
during the French Army's retreat from Moscow and died. (Joel Barlow
(1754-1812). Nineteenth-century American Poetry. By William C.
Spengemann, Jessica F. Roberts, 1996.) While in Hamburg in 1795, he
assisted English newspaper editor Joseph Gales and family in
immigrating to Philadelphia, with a letter of introduction to Col.
Oswold. (The Late James Montgomery, the Poet. From the National
Intelligencer. The Raleigh Register, Jun. 28, 1854.) He was born in
Redding, Conn. in 1754. He was married secretly to the sister of his
tutor, Abraham Baldwin, Yale 1772. (Biographical Sketches of the
Graduates of Yale College, July 1778 - June, 1792, p. 3.)
Joseph Gales (1761-1841) was a printer in
Sheffield, England, who
founded the Sheffield Register and got in trouble with the authorities
for supporting the French Revolution. In 1794, he fled to the free city
of Hamburg, and immigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1795,
where he was employed by the American Daily Advertiser, where he
covered speeches in the U.S. Senate. He founded the Independent
Gazetteer and did printing work for a number of congressmen. In 1798,
members of the North Carolina delegation offered him the state printing
contract, and he sold the paper to Samuel Harrison Smith in 1799, moved
to Raleigh and established the Raleigh Register. "It was the leading
political voice in North Carolina, first for the Republicans and, after
1824, for the National Republicans of Adams and Clay." He took William
Winston Seaton as a partner in 1806, who married one of his daughters.
An apprentice, Francis Lumsden, was the cofounder of the New Orleans
Picayune. Joseph Gales Jr. (who had been expelled from the University
of North Carolina) became a partner of his father's old associate from
Philadelphia, Samuel Harrison Smith, in the National Intelligencer in
Washington, D.C. His second son, Weston Gales, who was expelled from
Yale, joined the Raleigh Register in 1821. The Gales had been
Unitarians since their days in Sheffield, where they knew Joseph
Priestley, who also became a refugee in Philadelphia. (Gales, Joseph.
By Robert N. Elliott. In: Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.
William S. Powell, ed. 1979-1996 University of North Carolina Press.)
Mrs. Joseph Gales, Winifred Marshall, was a cousin of Lord Melbourne.
(Joseph Gales 1761-1841. Joseph Gales. Dictionary of American Biography
Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.) Love S.,
Mrs. Weston R. Gales, was a sister of Hon. Russell Freeman of
Sandwich, Mass. (Died. Boston Courier, Feb. 7, 1842.)
Gales sold the Sheffield Register to James Montgomery, while his
sisters remained in Sheffield operating his bookstore. Montgomery was a
member of the Church of the United Brethren (Moravian). (The Late
James
Montgomery, the Poet. From the National Intelligencer. The Raleigh
Register, Jun. 28, 1854.) Joseph Gales' son, Weston Gales (1802-1848)
and grandson Seaton Gales
(1828-1878) were editors of the Raleigh Register before it was sold in
1856.
(Gales Family. North Carolina Markers.) Joseph Gales' great grandson, George
M. Gales, was an
incorporator of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
Samuel Eliot Jr. came to Washington about the same time as Cranch.
He was an assistant to his uncle, real estate speculator James
Greenleaf, whose
sisters were Mrs. William Cranch and Mrs. Noah Webster. Cranch was a
cousin and
boyhood friend of John Quincy Adams, son of Vice President (1789-1797)
and President (1797-1801) of the United States, John Adams. (Greenleaf
and Law in the Federal City. By Allen Culling Clark. [contrary to this
book, Eliot died in 1821].) The Cashier of the Bank of Washington, as
in three other banks in town, received the highest salary of all its
officials. (Letter from a Subscriber. Maryland Gazette and Political
Intelligencer, Jul. 22, 1819.) Samuel Eliot Jr. was the uncle of Rev. William
Greenleaf
Eliot Jr., who married Judge William Cranch's daughter.
Samuel Eliot Jr. married a daughter of Maryland Gov. Thomas Johnson,
a personal
friend of President George Washington. His wife's cousin married John
Quincy Adams in 1797. Their son, Johnson Eliot, M.D., was one of the
originators of the Medical Department at Georgetown University.
(Necrology. Journal of the American Medical Association 1884 Jan
19;2(3):79.) Johnson Eliot married Mary John Llewellyn, a descendant of
the last royal governor of Maryland, Sir Richard [sic] Eden. Her
father, John Llewellyn, had been secretary to Lord Baltimore. (Mrs.
Mary John Eliot Dead. Washington Post, Jul. 3, 1915.) Sir Robert Eden
was the last Colonial Governor of Maryland, 1769-1776. His wife's
brother, Frederick Calvert, was the seventh Lord Baltimore, who died
without descendants, and his estates went to Lady Eden. (Americans of
Royal Descent. By Charles Henry Browning, 1891, p. 78.)
Thomas Johnson (1732-1819) was the first governor of the State of
Maryland. (Johnson, Thomas. Maryland Online Encyclopedia.) Johnson was
an original member of the Committee of
Secret Correspondence, created by the Continental Congress in 1775.
"The original Committee members—America's first foreign intelligence
agency—were Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Johnson.
Subsequent appointees included James Lovell, a teacher who had been
arrested by the British after the battle of Bunker Hill on charges of
spying... The committee employed secret agents abroad, conducted covert
operations, devised codes and ciphers, funded propaganda activities,
authorized the opening of private mail, acquired foreign publications
for use in analysis, established a courier system, and developed a
maritime capability apart from that of the Continental Navy, and
engaged in regular communications with Britons and Scots who
sympathized with the American cause." (Intelligence in the American
Revolutionary War. Wikipedia, accessed 6/6/10.) Johnson, George
Washington and Thomas S. Lee were directors of the Patowmack Company,
which aimed at improving the navigation of the Potomac River. (Notice.
Maryland Journal, Jun. 7, 1785.)
Johnson's niece, Louisa Catharine Johnson, daughter of his brother
Joshua Johnson, married John Quincy
Adams. They were the parents of Charles
Francis Adams
[Sr., who was one of the Overseers of Harvard who elected Charles W.
Eliot the President of Harvard]. (Americans of Royal Descent. By
Charles Henry Browning, 1891, p.
68.) "Mr. J. Johnson, previously to the Revolutionary war, had been
established in London (England) as a merchant. When the war was
declared, he, being a stanch republican, could no longer remain in
England with safety, and therefore removed his family to Nantz
[Nantes], in
France, and was presented by Dr. Franklin to the King and Queen in the
capacity of commercial agent, being appointed by the Congress of the
old confederation in 1778 or 1779. At Nantz he remained until the year
1783, after the peace, performing the duties of consul and agent for
the ports of Nantz, Brest, and Morlaix." In May 1783, he was
transferred to London as Consul General, where he served until 1797. He
died at the house of his brother, Baker Johnson, in 1802. His
grandmother, [Mary] Baker, was the daughter of the commander of an
English vessel, who owned land in Maryland. (Joshua Johnson, the Father
of Mrs. J.Q. Adams. Written for Neale's
Saturday Gazette. In: Daily National Intelligencer, May. 26, 1848.)
The Adams family were descendants of William the Conqueror, King of
England. (Americans of Royal Descent. By Charles Henry Browning, 1891,
p. 68.) Louisa
Adams was one of the feminist syndicate that made their financing of
the medical school contingent upon admitting women to Johns Hopkins
University. William
H. Welch, Skull & Bones 1870, was brought in to head the med
school.
"Although far from home, for [President John] Adams there was nothing that alien about the place. It wasn't that southern. Whites outnumbered blacks 3 to1, and Adams probably had more friends in town, which is to say, living within two miles, than Jefferson, including his nephew William Cranch, a lawyer, who had come to the city in 1794 to manage Greenleaf's affairs. The Adams' family doctor in Washington, Dr. Frederick May, was Harvard educated, New England born, and had come to the city in 1796. And don't forget Blodget and Greenleaf, both from Boston and both in the city managing on-going law suits over their failed speculations. Much is made of the southern planter John Tayloe III who was building a mansion, the Octagon House, close to the President's house, but he was the only southern planter to do that. Jefferson, who came to town as Vice President, certainly didn't find his kind of people in the city." (The General and the Plan. In: The Seat of Empire: A History of Washington, D.C. By Bob Arnebeck.)
The General and the Plan / Bob Arnebeck.comDr. Frederick May died in 1847 at
the age of 74. (Deaths. Daily National Intelligencer, Jan. 25, 1847.)
He married Julia Matilda Slacum of Alexandria, Va. (Married. National
Intelligencer, Jun. 20, 1811.) His son, Dr. John Frederick May, and
grandson, Dr. William May, were on the medical staff of the Garfield Hospital, whose incorporators
included John S. Billings, Henry A. Willard, E. Francis Riggs, and
Alexander Graham Bell. Mrs. Gardiner G. Hubbard of
Massachusetts was a vice president of the Ladies' Aid Society. (The
Garfield Hospital. The Washington Critic, Aug. 1, 1887.) Dr. John F.
May's wife, Sarah M., was the daughter of P.L. Mills and Caroline Kane
of New York City. (Died. New York Times, Jan. 30, 1920.) Their
daughter, Edith Sibyl May, was the second wife of William C. Whitney,
Skull & Bones 1863, whom she had known since the Cleveland
administration. They were married in 1896. She had three children from
her previous marriage to Col. Arthur Randolph of the British Army.
(Mrs. Wm. C. Whitney Dead. New York Times, May 7, 1899.)
Thomas Law (1756 or 1759 to 1834) was born in Cambridge, England.
"His father, Right Reverend Edmund Law, was the Lord Bishop of
Carlisle; brother Ewan served in India and was a member of Parliament
from 1790-1802; brother Edward was Attorney General and Speaker of the
House of Lords; brother John was a bishop; and brother George Henry was
Bishop of Chester." He went to India at the age of 17 to serve in the
civil service of the East India Company, and was appointed tax
collector of Gaya, Bihar in 1783. "In 1794 Law left England and sailed
to the United States after filing a suit for restitution against the
East India Company who had seized one fifth of his fortune acquired in
India to satisfy a claim against a paymaster for whom Law was surety."
Thomas Law's sons, John, George and Edmund, were actually born to his
mistress in India. He married Elizabeth Parke Custis, granddaughter of
Martha Custis Washington and step-granddaughter of George Washington,
in 1796, and they had a daughter, Eliza. They separated in 1804 and
filed for divorce in 1810. (Thomas Law Family Papers, 1791-1834.
Maryland Historical Society.) His English friend and partner in land
speculation, William Blane, 1794-1834, was one of the parties
contesting Thomas Law's will. (Reported for the National Intelligencer.
Daily National Intelligencer, Oct. 25, 1847.) "Warren Hastings was
governor general [of India]. It was asserted, though never proved, that
Law emigrated to America to avoid being called as a witness in the
Hastings trial. When he came here he brought half a million dollars in
gold, and soon fell in love with Miss Custis... To ingratiate himself
with Gen. Washington, he made large investments in land on Capitol
Hill, and the general favored his suit. His marriage was not happy, and
it is asserted that when a divorce suit was about to be commenced by
Mrs. Law, her husband conveyed his real estate to a friend. The
consideration was but nominal, but the papers are said to be legal, and
they were recently found in a secret drawer by the friend's grandson."
(A Curious Suit Against Gen. Butler. Milwaukee Daily Journal, Apr. 6,
1883.)
William Blane was a younger brother of Sir Gilbert Blane M.D., 1st
Baronet (1749-1834), a physician-in-ordinary to the Prince Regent [who
became King George IV in 1820]. In 1804, William Blane bought Foliejon
[an ancient hunting lodge a few miles from Windsor Great Park, where
the Regent lived after 1812]. Blane's sons, David Anderson Blane
(1801-1879), Member of Council at Bombay, 1849-1854, and Thomas Law
Blane (1806-1885) were both in the East India Company Service.
(Introduction. Templehouse Papers, p. 38. Public Record Office of
Northern Ireland.)
A visitor, Thomas Twining, wrote that "One anticipation which he
indulged, with great confidence and satisfaction, was that other
East-Indians would join him; and he hoped, I was sorry to see, that I
might return to Bengal with impressions tending to encourage this
migration. As we stood one evening on the bank of the river before his
door, he said: 'Here I will make a terrace, and we will sit and smoke
our hookahs.'" (Greenleaf and Law in the Federal City. By Allen Culling
Clark, 1901, p. 238.)
Eliza Law married Lloyd Nicholas Rogers of Baltimore, Md. Her
grandfather's brother, Baron Ellenborough, was "the leading counsel for
Warren Hastings during the latter's impeachment trial before the House
of Lords in 1788." Her granddaughter, Eleanor Agnes Rogers, married
George Robins Goldsborough. She was one of the regents of Mt. Vernon.
(Death in Baltimore of Mrs. Goldsborough. (Washington Times, Jan. 31,
1906.)
The Custis family were Royal descendants of Edward I, King of
England, through Benedict Leonard Calvert, the fifth Lord Baltimore,
and his son of the same name, the Governor of Maryland. (Americans of
Royal Descent. By Charles Henry Browning, 1891, p. 639.)
His youngest son, Edmund Law, graduated from Yale
in 1806. His brother graduated from Harvard in 1804. Their grandfather
was the Rt. Rev. Edmund Law (Cambridge 1723), the Bishop of Carlisle,
England, whose brother, Edward Law, was the first Baron Ellenborough,
lord chief justice of England. Thomas Law
was chief magistrate of Behar [Bihar], India, where he made a fortune
of
£50,000. He emigrated to New York in 1794, "in consequence of
ill-treatment by the East India Company and the general political
situation." Edmund Law was a member of the Common Council of
Washington,
D.C. from 1812 to 1814 and 1825. He was briefly a member of the
Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida in 1822, and was
secretary to Commodore David Porter in Mexico in 1826-27. (Biographical
Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, September, 1805 - September,
1815, p. 42.)
Lt. Col. Franklin Wharton (1767-1818) was appointed Commandant of
the Marine
Corps by President Madison. His brother, Robert Wharton, was the
multi-term mayor of Philadelphia. (Genealogy of the Wharton family of
Philadelphia. By Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, 1880, p. 23.) Franklin
Wharton Jr. was a lawyer in New Orleans. He married May Jane Baylor,
daughter of John W. Baylor, a U.S. Army Surgeon. Their son, Edward
Clifton Wharton, was an associate editor at the Galveston News and New
Orleans Picayune until 1880. (Death of E.C. Wharton. The Daily
Picayune, Jun. 14, 1891.) The Whartons are descendants of Edward I,
King of England. (Americans of Royal Descent. By Charles Henry
Browning, 1891, p. 661.)
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