Showing posts with label Real estate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Real estate. Show all posts

Monday, March 3, 2014

Notice to construct a Turnpike from Baltimore to Bladensburg, Maryland - 1814

NOTICE
            The President, Managers and Company of the Washington and Baltimore Turnpike Road hereby give Notice —

            That Plants of the said Road have been lodged as the law directs, in the County Clerk's Office of Baltimore, Ann , and Prince George's; and it is intended to commence making said Road from Baltimore on the first day of April next.  This toad will run from Pratt-street [Baltimore] across Gwynn's falls, a little below Mrs. Carroll's Mill, and continue in a straight a line as the nature of the ground will permit, (keeping always to the left of the old road to Norwood's Ferry; from thence to McCoy;s Tavern to Vansville [Beltsville, Prince George's County] , and to Bladensburg.

            This is to require all persons over whose lands the said road may pass, to make known to the said President and Managers, whether they intend to claim any damages on account of the road passing over their lands, in order that a jury (if necessary) may be called to adjust the same as the law directs.
           
                     March 21                                            2aw8t [1]



[1] American & Commercial Daily Advertiser; Date: 03-25-1814; Volume: XXIX; Issue: 4632; Page: [4]; Location: Baltimore, Maryland.

Transcribed by John Peter  Thompson. March 2nd, 2014.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Farm on the Turnpike road for Sale - advertisement Jan 19th, 1814

Farm on the Turnpike road for Sale - advertisement Jan 19th, 1814
Daily National Intelligence


FOR SALE,

               A small tract of Land in the district of Columbia lying and bounded on the South side of the Turnpike Road leading from the city to Bladensburg & joining the country seat of Col. Wm Brent, containing about 30 acres, the whole undergoing fence and one third of the whole undergoing thriving timber. On the said tract, is one of the handsomest scites [sic] for building in the district, having a view of the Eastern Branch, and a great way into Prince George's county, also of the Turnpike Road for one mile, the site being within 250 yard [sic] of the road, and not more than 20 minutes ride from the Capital. For terms (which will be very moderate) apply to the subscriber near the Navy Yard.
                                                                                                         JOHN B. FORREST.

               Jan 11-2aw1m[1]



[1] Daily National Intelligencer; Date: 01-19-1814; Volume: II; Issue: 327; Page: [4]; Location: Washington (DC), District of Columbia.

Transcribed by John Peter Thompson, January 19th, 2014.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

A Partial Bibliography - Agricultural and Political Life in Bladensburg, Maryland - 1814

Anon, 1836. A General History of the Tobacco Plant: Intended as an Authoritative Reference to Its Discovery, Dissemination, and Reception as a Luxury, Newcastle upon Tyne: Pattison and Ross. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=W-UWAAAAYAAJ.

Biddle, J.F., 1953. Bladensburg: An Early Trade Center. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 53/56, pp.309–326. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40067682.

Bozman, J.L., 1837. The history of Maryland: from its first settlement, in 1633, to the restoration, in 1660 ; with a copious introduction, and notes and illustrations, J. Lucas & E.K. Deaver.

Buchholz, H.E., 1908. Governors of Maryland: from the revolution to the year 1908, Williams & Wilkins company.

Calvert, R.S., 1992. Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, 1795-1821 illustrate. M. L. Callcott, ed., Johns Hopkins University Press. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=m9rxARyL5hcC.
Abstract: he book features letters from Rosalie Stier Calvert, a wealthy Belgian woman who married in to one of Maryland’s most prominent families after emigrating to America in the late 18th century. Her family ultimately returns home while she stays with her new husband, affording her the opportunity to write many letters detailing life in early America. ~ Book Review: Mistress of Riversdale By Brian. 


Carr, L.G. et al., 1991. Robert Cole’s World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland, Institute of Early American History and Culture. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=0eFwYcDLQigC.

Abstract: In 1652 Robert Cole, an English Catholic, moved with his family and servants to St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Using this family's story as a case study, the authors of Robert Cole's World provide an intimate portrait of the social and economic life of a middling planter in the seveneenth-century Chesapeake, including work routines and agricultural techniques, the upbringing of children, neighborhood relationships and community formation, and the role of religion. The Cole Plantation account, a record that details what the plantation produced, consumed, purchased, and sold over a twelve-year period, is the only known surviving document of its kind for seventeenth-century British America. Along with Cole's will, it serves as the framework around which the authors build their analysis. Drawing on these and other records, they present Cole as an exemplar of the ordinary planter whose success created the capital base for the slave-based plantation society of the eighteenth century.

Fields, B.J., 1985. Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century, Yale University Press. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=DNd5_LRxjt8C.
Abstract: Probing the relationships among Maryland’s slaves and free blacks, its slaveholders, and its non-slaveholders, Fields shows how centrist moderation turned into centrist immoderation under the stress of the Civil War and how social channels formed by slavery established the course of struggle over the shape of free society. In so doing, she offers historical reflections on the underlying character both of slave society and of the society that replaced it.

Gottschalk, L.C., 1945. Effects of Soil Erosion on Navigation in Upper Chesapeake Bay. Geographical Review, 35(2), pp.219–238. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/211476.
Abstract: Alfred M. Rives, engineer in charge of a survey of bridges across the Potomac, who wrote, in 1857:13 Examination of old charts, as well as reflections upon the necessary operations of nature, convince me that these flats date from a period long antecedent to the erection of the cause? way. That they have increased rapidly during the past fifty years is but natural, when we consider what vast deposits must result from the freshet waters of the Potomac, now rendered doubly turbid from washing the shores of a highly cultivated region. It must be evident that ploughed hill sides furnish more alluvial deposit than unbroken forests or grassy slopes. By the operation of these and similar causes, many ports, formerly deep and accessible, now scarcely exist, of which Bladensburg, in our immediate vicinity, and others on our rivers of the Atlantic seaboard, are familiar examples.

Heidler, D.S. & Heidler, J.T., 2004. Encyclopedia of the war of 1812, Annapolis: U S NAVAL INST Press. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=_c09EJgek50C.

Holmes, O.W., 1948. Stagecoach Days in the District of Columbia. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 50, pp.1–42. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40067314.
Abstract: The stages met and exchanged passengers at a tavern in the vicinity of the present town of Laurel that was then kept by Thomas Rose.3 Here the passengers also dined. For the first few years the Potomac crossing was at Alexandria, not at Georgetown. From the Maryland side of the ferry the stage travelled up to Bladensburg on the road that ran east of the Anacostia River.4 The fare between Baltimore and Alexandria was $3.00. The proprietors “presumed this commodious and speedy method of travelling will meet with due encouragement,” but the trip apparently consumed the entire day.

Johnson, W., 1999. Soul by Soul, Harvard University Press. Available at: .
Abstract: The focus of this book is on nineteenth-century New Orleans and the slave market that emerged then and there. More than other workings of slavery, slave markets reduced humans to commodities with prices. In particular, this book is interested in the story of slave showrooms, which held up to 100 slaves and where appraisals, accountings, back-room dealings, and other activities took place. The book attributes the slave trade to mercantilism whereby colonial imports serviced and stocked metropolitan centers and generated profits secured for both state-sponsored companies and the monopoly-granting state itself. Companies with well-connected leaders and government ties could gain state privileges and favors and receive special monopoly licenses to dominate trade, first in goods such as tobacco, indigo, rice, cotton, coffee, and so on, and later in human beings. The ban of the international slave trade in 1808 did not lead to the reduction or softening of slavery, but rather to new shapes and manifestations of slavery, especially as slave populations moved increasingly from the upper to the lower South. The ban led, more importantly for the purposes of this book, to the domestic slave trade. The domestic slave trade intensified during the rise of the cotton kingdom. The price of slaves changed with the price of cotton until the 1850s.

King, J.A., 1997. Tobacco, Innovation, and Economic Persistence in Nineteenth-Century Southern Maryland. Agricultural History, 71(2), pp.207–236. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3744247.

Kulikoff, A., 1986. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800, University of North Carolina Press. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=NCvU9_bj-1QC.
Abstract: A major reinterpretation of the economic and political transformation of Chesapeake society from 1680 to 1800. Building upon massive archival research in Maryland and Virginia, Allan Kulikoff provides the most comprehensive study to date of changing social relations?among both blacks and whites?in the eighteenth-century South. He links his arguments about class, gender, and race to the later social history of the South and to larger patterns of American development.

McWilliams, J.W., 2011. Annapolis, City on the Severn: A History, Johns Hopkins University Press. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=9NJzbC_mlpkC.
Abstract: The story of Annapolis resonates in every century of American history. Annapolis has been home to tobacco plantations, political intrigue, international commerce, the U.S. Naval Academy, ballooning population growth, and colonial, state, and national government. Jane Wilson McWilliams’s captivating history explores Annapolis from its settlement in 1650 to its historic preservation campaign of the late twentieth century. McWilliams brings alive the people of Annapolis as she recounts their fortunes and foibles. Be they black or white, slave or master, woman or man, each has a place in this book. With unsurpassed detail and graceful prose, she describes the innermost workings of Maryland’s capital city—its social, civic, and religious institutions; its powerful political leaders; and its art, architecture, and neighborhoods.

Morgan, P.D. & Culture, O.I. of E.A.H. and, 1998. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-century Chesapeake and Lowcountry, University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.
Abstract: Philip Morgan compares and contrasts African American life in these two regional black cultures, exploring the differences as well as the similarities. The result is a detailed and comprehensive view of slave life in the colonial American South. Morgan explores the role of land and labor in shaping culture, the everyday contacts of masters and slaves that defined the possibilities and limitations of cultural exchange, and finally the interior lives of blacks?their social relations, their family and kin ties, and the major symbolic dimensions of life: language, play, and religion. He provides a balanced appreciation for the oppressiveness of bondage and for the ability of slaves to shape their lives, showing that, whatever the constraints, slaves contributed to the making of their history. Victims of a brutal, dehumanizing system, slaves nevertheless strove to create order in their lives, to preserve their humanity, to achieve dignity, and to sustain dreams of a better future.

Morse, J. & Webber, S., 1802. The American Universal Geography: Or, A View of the Present State of All the Empires, Kingdoms, States, and Republics in the Known World, and of the United States in Particular. In Two Parts ..., Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews; sold at their bookstore; by said Thomas in Worcester; by Thomas, Andrews & Butler in Baltimore, and by other booksellers.

Renzulli, L.M., 1973. Maryland: The Federalist Years, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=MsVZW6DJqpoC.
Abstract: The rise and fall of the Federalist Party in Maryland is detailed in this solid, traditional, narrative. Carefully documented, it examines the nature and voting patterns of the Federalist electorate in Maryland during the pre-Jacksonian era.

Riggs, J.B., 1946. Certain Early Maryland Landowners in the Vicinity of Washington. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 48/49, pp.249–263 CR  – Copyright © 1946 Historical Soc. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40064099.

Riley, E.S., 1906. A history of the General Assembly of Maryland, 1635-1904, Baltimore: Nunn & Co.

Sarson, S., 2000. Landlessness and Tenancy in Early National Prince George’s County, Maryland. The William and Mary Quarterly, 57(3), pp.569–598. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2674266.
Abstract: In the first three quarters of the eighteenth century, the landless component of the free population in the tidewater Chesapeake grew from a third to more than half, and that trend continued after Independence.6 In Prince George’s County, the proportion of landlessness was almost 70 percent in i8oo, 67 percent in i8io, and 75 percent in i820 (see Tables I, III, and V).

Sarson, S., 2009. Yeoman Farmers in a Planters’ Republic: Socioeconomic Conditions and Relations in Early National Prince George's County, Maryland. Journal of the Early Republic, 29(1), pp.63–99. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40208239.

Taylor, J., 1814. Arator: Being a Series of Agricultural Essays, Practical & Political, in Sixty One Numbers 2nd ed., Gerogetown, District of Columbia: J.M. Carter. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=YFVHAAAAYAAJ. 

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Market Master's House, Bladensburg, Maryland

Market Master's House, Bladensburg, Maryland
Library of Congress


The first known description of the Market Master’s House, in Bladensburg, Maryland, was recorded in the 1798 Federal Direct Tax Assessment. The assessment describes the Market Master’s House, which was then in Benjamin Lowndes’ possession, as a “single story stone dwelling 24 by 20 [feet].” The stone house had five windows. Additionally, the property was improved by a 20 by 16-foot stable. The Federal Direct Tax also reveals that a second portion of Lot 38 was improved with an unoccupied “single story framed dwelling house 27 by 17 [feet]” and an 8-foot-square framed kitchen. The Federal Direct Tax, which noted owners as well as occupants of the properties being assessed, indicated that the Market Master’s House was not occupied by Benjamin Lowndes, or any other member of the Lowndes family. Rather, as stated in the tax assessment, Benjamin Lowndes lived in a three-story brick dwelling on Lot 60 and Henry Jones occupied the Market Master’s House.[1] No Henry Jones was identified in either the 1790 or 1800 Federal Censuses, thus nothing is currently known about this
early occupant of the Market Master’s House.

Although the Federal Direct Tax recorded the Market Master’s House as a dwelling,
other evidence suggests that it may have been used as a store for the Lowndes Company.
In 1800, a notice appeared in the George-Town and Washington Advertiser that “A number
of inhabitants of Prince George’s County intend applying to the next General Assembly
of Maryland, for a law, authorizing the laying out of a road from Bladensburg across
the Eastern Branch opposite Mr. Lowndes’ store [emphasis added] and to run … the
nearest and best way to the City of Washington.”[2] Although the notice does not provide
any more information about the location of the Lowndes store, an 1802 controversy over
Benjamin Lowndes’ dereliction of duty as Postmaster of the Town of Bladensburg suggests
that the store was located in the stone building.

According to a letter published in the Washington Federalist, on two occasions Benjamin
Lowndes left his store, which also served as the Post Office, prior to the arrival of the
mail. The Post Master was required to remain at his station even if the mail arrived late,
as it was on these instances. Lowndes went home, apparently intending to return when
the mail arrived. Even though Lowndes had left the store in the care of an unnamed associate,
he was dismissed for failing to receive and examine the mail in a timely manner. In an open letter to the Postmaster General dated February 25, 1802, Lowndes appealed
to return to his position:

The post-office at Bladensburg is worth no man’s acceptance, but after seventeen years servitude (the attention requisite can be called nothing else) I consider myself as intitled [sic] to it as any person. I have acted, I believe without censure, and I know I have done my duty faithfully.

An editorial in the Washington Federalist defended Lowndes’ actions, noting that his home was close enough to his store:

For the exchange of mails, one quarter of an hour is allowed, but it can be
proved that in the instances alluded to, the mail carriers did not stay five
minutes. It is not true that Mr. Lownde’s [sic] dwelling house, even with
all the meanders is half a mile from his store, the more direct way does
not exceed 630 yards…

The author’s identification of the store as being located between a third and a half of a
mile from Lowndes’ house supports the contention that the store/post office was indeed
the Market Master’s House (Benjamin Lowndes’ house on Lot 60 was located on the parcel
directly to the southeast of Bostwick). After Lowndes was dismissed, the Washington Federalist reported that the Post Office moved into another store somewhere on Market Street.[3]

from:    Maryland State Highway Administration
            Project Planning Division
            Environmental Evaluation Section
            October 2009


[1] 1798 Federal Direct Tax, New Scotland, Oxen & Bladensburg, Maryland State Archives, Archives of
Maryland Online, Volume 729.

[2] “Notice,” The Centinel of Liberty, George-Town and Washington Advertiser, 9 September 1800.
[3] Washington Federalist, 19 April 1802. see also: 1802 Dismissal of Benjamin Lowndes as Postmaster of Bladensburg Maryland http://beyondthebattleofbladensburg.blogspot.com/2013/03/1802-dismissal-of-benjamin-lowndes-as.html. 

Friday, May 24, 2013

Edward Suit of Bladensburg: 1809 - 1850


Edward Suit of Bladensburg

Edward Suit lived in Bladensburg from circa 1820 until his death in 1850; the recorded activities of Suit and his family offer some interesting details about life in Bladensburg in the early 19th century.  Born in 1788 and married in 1809 to Catharine Tolbert/Talbert, Suit served in the Maryland Militia in the War of 1812, in Captain James Veitch’s Company of Infantry.  After the war, Suite farmed land that adjoined the town of Bladensburg on the east - several parcels of the large tract, Columbia, that had been amassed by the Lowndes’ family in the late 18th century.  He also purchased several lots in the town of Bladensburg, including Lots  #21, and #22, and it was in his house in town that he died in August, 1850. [1]

Archival records give us tantalizing bits of information about Edward Suit’s activities in the 1840s.  On 7 March 1844, Suit purchased all of the “goods, wares and merchandise” in the store operated by Joshua Selby in the village of Bladensburg, as well as all of Selby’s household furniture from the same building.  The following week Suit entered into a contract to take on a young African-American boy as an apprentice; this contract gives us information on the apprentice process.  William Beckett and Thomas Clements, both Justices of the Peace and neighbors of Edward Suit, drew up the contract, which bound Suit and young James Galloway, according to the Act of the General Assembly passed in 1839 “for the better regulation of the free negro and mulatto children in this state.”  James, who was not quite six years of age, was the son of a free Negro woman, Sarah Galloway, recently deceased.  By this contract, it was the responsibility of Edward Suit that the boy “learn to labor and all habits of industry after the manner of an apprentice.” And young James was to “dwell with and serve the said Edward Suit . . . until the first day of May A.D. 1859 when . . . . [he]   . . . . shall attain the age of twenty-one years.” During all of this time, James was to faithfully serve his master in all lawful business set to him by Suit, and to behave himself in an orderly and honest fashion toward Mr. Suit and his family.  Suit covenanted to faithfully provide good and sufficient meat, drink and clothing, lodging and other necessaries “fit and convenient for such an apprentice.”   At the expiration of his term Suit was to give to his apprentice “two suits of wearing apparel, one suitable for Sundays and the other for working days.”[2]

Edward Suit did not live to provide the two sets of clothing to James Galloway – he died at age 62 in 1850.   The 1860 census shows that James Galloway, well after his 21st birthday, continued to live in Bladensburg with Suit’s family - the widow Catharine Suit, and her adult son, George Washington Suit.  What happened to James Galloway after this has not yet been discovered – he is not listed in the Bladensburg household of George W. and Catharine Suit in the 1870 census, and a search of Civil War troops is beginning.[3]

One more interesting fact about Edward Suit is that he served as Inspector of Plaster of Paris for the Bladensburg District.  Plaster of Paris was an important item in construction and architectural trim, as well as medical treatment (casts for broken bones), and concern that it “be of good quality, accurately weighted, and well coopered”  occasioned Acts of the General Assembly in 1833 and 1834 to appoint an Inspector of Plaster of Paris in Baltimore.  The following year, the Assembly provided for inspection in Bladensburg, and Edward Suit was appointed to this post in 1847.[4]

.
 By Susan Pearl, May 22, 2013.



[1]  Prince George’s County Land Records AB#2:447, AB#10:483, AB#11:138; Prince George’s County Tax Assessments, 1820-1850;  Brown, Helen W., Index of Marriage Licenses, Prince George’s County, Maryland 1777-1886, Genealogical Publishing, Co. Inc., Baltimore 1973; War of 1812 Pension Records.

[2]  Acts of General Assembly Chapter CLV, 1827;  Prince George’s County Deed JBB#3:378; Federal Census 1850, 1860.

[3] Prince George’s County Will PC#1:438; Federal Census 1850, 1860;  Alexandria Gazette, 26 August 1850. Obituary.

[4] Acts of the General Assembly 1832-1834,  Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates of the State of Maryland.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Land for Sale near Bladensburg - Beall farm - April 1814


LAND FOR SALE
By virtue of a decree by the honoeable
Chancellor of Maryland

                    The subscriber will expose to public sale on the premises, a 11 o'clock in the forenoon on Wednesday the 20th day of April next, if fair, if not the next fair day.

                    About 230 acres of land, the residence of the late John Beall, situated about three fourths of a mile above Bladensburg, west of the present road to Baltimore, and bounded by the same - bounded also west and north-west by the lands of Wm. D. Diggs, Esq. and Capt. Leonard M. D[e][a]kens - the improvements upon the property, are a frame dwelling house, a tobacco house or barn, 24 by 48 feet, and some other small buildings.  There are about 15 aces of wood-land, but a good deal pillaged, and about 8 or 10 acres of second growth; the balance available, and adapted to the growth of Indian corn, and small grain of the various kinds.  A more minute description of the property is deemed unnecessary, as it is assumed that persons inclined to purchase, will view it previous to the day of sale, which may be seen by application to Mr. Charles Spickna, living on the premises, or to the subscriber in Bladensburg.  

                    The terms of sale will be, that the purchaser give bond to the subscriber with approved security, conditioned for the payment of the purchase money, with legal interest thereon; and not before - the subscriber is authori[s]ed  to convey said property by a good and sufficient deed, true, clear and discharged, from all claim, of the purchaser
                                             THOMAS BOWIE, Trustee.

                    Bladensburg, March 28, 1814 April 2 - [1]
                   




[1] Federal Republican; Date: 04-12-1814; Page: [2]; Location: Georgetown, District of Columbia.
Transcriber by John Peter Thompson, April 12th, 2013.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Dr. (and Governor) Joseph Kent, Executor, sells Brother's Bladensburg Property 1816


Public Sale

               Will positively be sold to the highest bidder, at 12 o'clock, om Saturday the 2d of March next, at Wm. Ross's Tavern, the house and lot in the town of Bladensburg, now in the occupancy of Dr. Fitzgerald.  Its situation is pleasant and healthy, the houses are commodious and either new or lately repaired, consisting of a dwelling-house with three rooms, and a passage on the lower floor, and as many on the upper, a kitchen, stable, meat house, &c.

               No place offers a prospect of greater profit to the retail merchant than Bladensburg: it contains one of the largest Tobacco inspection houses in Prince George;s county, and is surrounded by a thick settled country.

The terms of sale are - one third of the purchase maney to be paid in three one third in six, and the residue in twelve months, with interest - the purchaser to give approved security.[1]

                                                            JOS. KENT,[2]
                                             Ex;r of T. H. Kent.
FEB. 17 - tawtda
               .



[1] Federal Republican; Date: 02-17-1816; Page: [3].

Transcribed by John Peter Thompson March 31, 2013.

[2] see Dr. & Governor Kent: "New Cure for Dysentery Described in Bladensburg, Maryland 1825" MAR, 29, 2013.

Notes from Wikipedia:

"Joseph Kent was elected to the United States Congress in 1810 taking his seat on March 4, 1811 and served several years until March 3, 1815. Though a Federalist, opposing War with Great Britain, he voted with the Republican party in declaring War. He was a Presidential Elector in 1816, casting his vote for James Monroe (1758–1831). He later broke with the Federalist party and by the time of the next election he was a Democratic-Republican, in which he was elected to another term in the House of Representatives from March 4, 1819 until he resigned on January 6, 1826. In his second tenure in Congress, Kent continued as chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia.

Josesph Kent was elected Governor of Maryland in 1826. The primary goal of Kent's administration as governor was to work toward internal improvements. He was in support of improving internal transportation, including expanding the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The immense cost of these projects, however, were never fully repudiated until several decades after Kent's administration, and placed the state under immense financial burden for many years aftwards.

Other areas of interest for Kent included prison reform, separating presidential voting into districts, and for increased funding for schools and colleges. He also sought to improve the maintenance of the state's records, "so indispensably necessary to its correct history" as he said
Kent was elected as a Republican (later Whig) to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1833, until his death at his home, ”Rosemount,” near Bladensburg. He served as chairman of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia (Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Congresses). As senator, Kent was opposed to the Bank of the United States, and offered a resolution asking for negotiations with France regarding lower tobacco prices and restricting the importing of tobacco. However, although this resolution passed, it was not widely popular. Due to ill health, Kent attended only four sessions of the Senate, and died in 1837 as a result of a fall from his horse. He is buried in an unmarked grave at his home of 'Rosemount'"


Thursday, March 28, 2013

For Sale, 2000 acres by Benjamin Stodderd Bladensburg 1803


Note well the sales pitch for real estate in Prince George's County has changed little ... 

For Sale

               About 2000 acres of land on the East side of the Eastern Branch, and adjoining it, three miles from the City of Washington,  Vessels, drawing twelve feet water, may load at the landing, where there is tolerably good fishery.

               Near 400 acres of the land is a rich bottom, through which there are several streams of water, that turn a mill erected on the land, and which might be used to advantage in watering meadow [ ] a part of the bottom is now in Timothy grass and the whole is capable of producing grass in abundance and Tobacco.  There may be between 500 and 600 acres in wood, the rest is cleared land.  A part of the land adjoins a commodious brick dwelling house, with all convenient out houses and a large and handsome garden, but not in good repair, on the borders of the town of Bladensburg.

               This property so convenient to the City of Washington, which affords a market for grass and all other products of land, equal to any in the United States; so certain from its situation to rise in a few years, to a price several times as high as will now be taken for it, well deserves the attention of men of fortune.  The whole land including the dwelling house and improvements, and mill will be sold for [illegible hand written character; could be a 6; more likely the symbol for a pound sterling: £ ]10 per acre.  It is questionable whether the meadow ground alone is not worth all the money; it is certain that it might easily be made to pay more than the annual interest of the whole purchase. [1]     

BEN. STODDERT.         

               George Town, Nov. 15th 1803.
              



[1] Washington Federalist.; Date: 11-30-1803; Issue: 555; Page: [1]

Monday, March 18, 2013

Land for Sale near Bladensburg - We're only 200 years late



LAND FOR SALE


The subscriber will sell on seasonable terms, A SMALL FARM, containing 25[2] acres of land, lying in Prince George's county, on the north-east branch of Potomack [sic]w, 2 1-2 miles above Bladensburg, and 7 1-2 from the City of Washington.  There is on it a Dwelling House and many other impovements, all of which are new; a sufficiency of wood and rail  timber, and a good proportion of meadow ground.  For situation, water and health, it is probably exceeded by none. -- For terms apply to the subscriber, living on Fayette Street, Georgetown.       FRANCIS FENWICK January 13, [tt] [1]



[1] Federal Republican, published as FEDERAL REPUBLICAN, AND COMMERCIAL GAZETTE.; Date: 03-19-1813; Volume: VII; Issue: 944; Page: [4]; Location: Georgetown, District of Columbia