The Capitol Dome

8. Josias Wilson King (d. 1833) from Port Tobacco, MD, was an engrossing clerk in the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. His parentage has not been estab- lished. On 11 November 1799 Josias Wilson King of the City of Philadelphia sold his 115-acre tract of land, "Hawkins Barrons," in Charles County for £300; his wife Letitia surren- dering her dower rights at the same time (Michael R. Marsh, ed., Charles County, Maryland, Land Records [Millsboro, DE, 2015]). King was reimbursed $390 for expenses of moving his family and household goods from Philadelphia to Washington in 1800 ("Reprints," RCHS 9[1906]:232). When King was not elected Clerk of the House, he took a position as a clerk in the State Department and soon built a substantial house on 17th Street NW on square 170 between New York Avenue and F Street. King later became a minor celebrity when on 24 August 1814 he removed the Declaration of Independence (in his charge for a quarter century), all the treaties, and many other important State Department documents to Montgomery Court House, MD, thus saving them from destruction by British troops ("A Reminiscence," Alexandria [Va.] Gazette, 5 Sept. 1840). Katherine Elwes Thomas, "The Long Lost Washington Draw- ing by Major L'Enfant and the Historic McKean House," RCHS 39(1938):110-2, 119-23 is an unreliable historical account. Dr. Patrick Snadon, a specialist in the history of interiors, speculates that the term "camp beds" denoted military usage, probably demountable for easy storage and portability, possibly even Revolutionary War salvage (email from Patrick Snadon to author, 6 Aug. 2016). 9. The Capitol Cutler knew was the stone North, or Senate, Wing, its exterior design by William Thornton but its interi- ors largely built by Stephen Hallet and George Hadfield. The House chamber he f irst k new was designed and built by James Hoban, architect of the President's House. Its exterior stone walls were carried as far as the entablature of the oval House chamber roofed in wood. It was quickly dismantled in 1804 when its structure was deemed unsafe. 10. Letitia Harper King (1758–1845) was not the daughter of Robert Goodloe Harper (1765–1865) but his elder sister, born in Spotsylvania, Virginia. Letters from her signed "Letty" sur- vive in Harper's papers in the Maryland Historical Society, Bal- timore. Their father Jesse Harper (1728–1800) was a prominent builder in Virginia and North Carolina; his surviving letters sent to Robert while a student at Princeton College furnish ample evidence of his own level of education, as of his piety. In 1800 Harper married Catherine Carroll, daughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and thus a distant cousin of Daniel Carroll of Duddington. It was probably this family connection that led to the Kings becoming short-term landlords in one of Duddington's boarding houses. 11. Historian Michael R. Harrison considers that Anna King played from commercial hymnals, as Episcopal liturgical ones were not yet available. The piano-organ Anna played was called an "organized piano," the two steps of organ pipes probably added by John Sellers, a Germantown, Pennsylvania, musical instrument maker active there until about 1803 before he moved to Alexandria, Virginia. Only three of Sellers's organized pia- nos survive (John Watson, "Another Organized Piano?" http:// makinghistorynow.com/2014/06/another-organized-piano/, accessed 17 Aug. 2016). The author thanks Harrison and music historian Anne Acker for this information. 12. Rep. Benjamin Talmadge of Connecticut lodged with John T. Frost, one of Law's boarding house keepers on New Jersey Avenue. Perry M. Goldman and James S. Young, United States Congressional Directories, 1789-1840 (New York, 1973), p. 39. Members probably were aided in finding boarding houses by the clerks of their respective chambers. 13. Goldman & Young, Congressional Directories, p. 42; Cutler and Cutler, Life of Manasseh Cutler, pp. 112-3, 132; "Genteel Boarding," [Washington, DC] National Intelligencer, 13 Oct. 1803; "Will be sold at auction," National Intelligencer, 9 Oct. 1807. Speake (d. 1817) served in the First U.S. Regi- ment from 1785 until 1790, and kept a boarding house at the same time that he operated an auction house specializing in the sale of Washington real estate (Ancestry.com, U.S. Compiled Service Records, Post-Revolutionary War Volunteer Soldiers, 1784-1811). 14. Cutler and Cutler, Life of Manasseh Cutler, pp. 136-7, 153, 171. 15. Jonathan Roberts and Philip S. Klein, "Notes and Doc- uments: Memoirs of a Senator from Pennsylvania: Jonathan Roberts, 1771-1854," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 62(April 1938):241. John T. Frost was a clerk in the House of Representatives who ran Capitol Hill boarding houses between 1801 and 1819. 16. Cutler and Cutler, Life of Manasseh Cutler, pp. 154, 170. 17. Ibid., pp. 168, 170, 189-90. This composition seems to have been the favored trope for cartoons mocking the removal of the seat of government. In the summer of 1790, New York City streets were blanketed with a (non-extant) cartoon show- ing Pennsylvania Sen. Robert Morris carrying the capitol ("Fed- eral Hall") on his back to Philadelphia (Kenneth R. Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea and Location of the American Capital [Fairfax, VA, 1991], pp. 200-01). 18. Ibid., 155. 30 THE CAPITOL DOME

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