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Washington DC History

D.C. Chronicles Volume 35

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D.C. Chronicles Volume 35

Hello Everyone! It’s December! That means 2020 is almost over and it’s Christmas season which are both things that make me happy. It’s definitely getting dark early these days which is not my favorite thing in the world. While I love the nighttime and the dark, I really prefer my daylight to stretch until at least 6. Thankfully it’s only three weeks until the Winter Solstice and then we can start looking towards springtime. The good thing about it getting dark earlier this time of year is that it means more time to see the beautiful Christmas lights and displays in people’s yards. I do love Christmas lights and I know from how many decorations were up for Halloween that this year will be bigger than usual. If you’re still looking for some holiday gifts for friends and family, don’t forget about my beautiful Cloudland Canyon wooden jigsaw puzzle available here from Wentworth Puzzle Company. And if you have any photos of mine that you like, I’d be happy to sell you a print or a beautiful aluminum art piece. You can check out prices at my store here, and know that I can do any photo you want, not just the ones featured there – don’t hesitate to reach out and we can make it happen.

I had a big little win this week which definitely made me smile. At the very beginning of this adventure when I was trying to build a blog from the tiny fishing village I lived in in Japan, I started to look for web addresses which would suit the project. I have always loved the Robert Frost poem which inspired the name for this blog, and was trying to figure out how to make it all work. When I looked up milestogobeforeisleep.com, it was available, but for a cost of like $1500. No page would be worth that to me, so I settled on its catchy but somewhat more complicated twin, miles2gobeforeisleep.com. I’m still happy with that decision, but the “2” can make it harder for people to remember etc. I’ve kept my eye on that page for ten years now and last week whoever owned it finally gave up the ghost and I snatched it up the very next day. It’s kind of silly at this point, but like I said it was a very small victory and it made me happy.

I also had a really nice offer come in this week from my friend Kim who owns and operated Up The Keys tours in Key West. She is planning on doing some sailing for a few months this winter and wanted to know if I would come and run her business for her while she was gone. It was a wonderful offer and I was very touched and humbled that she would ask, and who wouldn’t want to spend the winter in Key West? Any other time and I would jump at this, but I’m just not comfortable with guiding tours right now, not until I get a vaccine which is hopefully just months away at this point. I think I’m here in D.C. until that happens, which I’m not unhappy about, but I will be dreaming of the Keys for the next few weeks. I know when the time is right that something great will come along. It always does for me.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving last Thursday with my brother and his family in New Hampshire. He cooked up a real feast and I was definitely impressed with his cooking ability. It was a day of food and festivity and a very relaxed one at that…

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D.C. Chronicles Volume 32

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D.C. Chronicles Volume 32

Hello Everyone! It’s been a beautiful week here in Washington D.C. with warm, sunny days and cool clear nights. In some ways this is all very familiar to me as I’m usually headed home in October or November, tired from a long year on the road and ready for some “home time” over the holidays. I come home to rest and get my affairs in order and begin to plan for the next leg of my journey, whatever that may be and wherever it may take me. It’s a time to catch up – on my projects, on my sleep and with friends and family. Unlike spring and summer which I’ve rarely spent in the city, this feels more normal to me.

Today also marks the three year anniversary of the journey which became Miles2Go. Three years ago today, I set out for Harpers Ferry, West Virginia with a dream of spending a month in each state over the next 4 years. I soon learned that a month was too short to get a real understanding of a state while also maintaining this blog, so my timeframe changed. There were a lot of tough times and setbacks as I got this thing off the ground, and just when I felt like I knew where it was going and how to make it all work, I hit the cruise control button and then this pandemic hit, turning me towards home and grounding me indefinitely. It’s been a bumpy road for sure, but anything that’s worth it will no doubt involve overcoming obstacles. I don’t know what my future or the future of this project will look like at this point, but I’m grateful for the journey and everything and everyone that’s been a part of it thus-far.

Sadly the reason keeping me here, the coronavirus, has continued to rage across the country with still-worsening conditions being reported every day. As we get closer to a quarter-million deaths from the virus here in the U.S. alone, I wanted to put that number into perspective for you. While 235,000 may be just a fraction of a percent of the population of the U.S. as is often pointed out, it is more than our average annual deaths in this country from any cause other than cancer and heart disease. It’s four times our average annual number of flu and pneumonia deaths (all according to the CDC). It’s also more than the number of Americans who died in World War 1, Vietnam, Korea and the American Revolution combined. It’s more than the single-year casualties from our two bloodiest wars – World War II and the Civil War. Keep these statistics in mind when people tell you that the virus isn’t all that bad. In the entirety of the almost 15 years we were involved in the war in Vietnam, we lost less than a quarter of the number of people who have died from this virus this year, and it’s only mid-November. For some reason people in this country refuse to look beyond our borders to countries which got some level of control over the pandemic through the summer months with masks and distancing and continue to believe it’s all some kind of hoax. 80% of current cases in the U.S. can be traced back to restaurants, bars and gyms.

What should we be doing about this? First and foremost we need to start listening to the experts. This country’s leading medical experts and virologists have laid it out pretty simply from the start, and have been able to make things even clearer as we’ve learned more. And yet people refuse to listen to them, searching out someone, anyone, who will tell them what they want to hear instead of what the consensus of the experts is. I want to get back to my normal life more than anyone, but I’m willing to put that all on hold for the greater good of my countrymen. To me, that’s a pretty good definition of patriotism.

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Snapshots: Mount Olivet Cemetery

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Snapshots: Mount Olivet Cemetery

By 1852, the central section of Washington D.C. was developing quickly and the local citizenry wanted to be sure what land was available was available for the living. They therefore banned any new cemeteries from being established within the city center. Soon thereafter, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, then the overseer of Washington’s catholic churches, purchased 40 acres in the surrounding countryside and established Mount Olivet Cemetery. This cemetery was and is the largest catholic cemetery in Washington D.C. and was also one of the first racially integrated cemeteries in the city. With commanding views over the city, it is a beautiful place for a wander, and as long-time readers know I very much appreciate funerary art of which there are some stunning examples in Mount Olivet. Mount Olivet is the final resting place of such notable people as White House Architect James Hoban, Supreme Court Justice Joseph McKenna, and Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the U.S. Government.

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D.C. Chronicles Volume 26

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D.C. Chronicles Volume 26

Hello Everyone, well this week officially marks the half-year point of being sheltered-in-place here in Washington D.C. This is definitely not what I had planned for my 2020, but it is what it is and I’m still grateful to be here all things considered. I have watched spring turn to summer, hung on through the long, humid summer days and now I am watching the temperatures drop and the leaves start to change. I’ve tried to keep myself and my folks active and busy the best I can and I’ve really enjoyed being able to read more, play some music, do some writing and learn more about the history of my hometown. I’ve made friends with a 2 year-old who shares my daytime adventures with me and traveled with my mom around the region to explore Civil War sites and local scenic byways and neighborhoods. I’ve tried hard to keep this blog going despite the fact that it’s supposed to be a travel blog which 2020 simply had other plans for. If you’re still reading and following along, I really appreciate you. Believe me when I say I hope that I can get back on the road sooner rather than later and continue my adventures around the country. There are a lot of unknowns in the future, even on the other side of this, but I’m excited and hopeful for what’s to come.

This week has been pretty quiet. There is definitely a chill in the air and nighttime temperatures have dipped near freezing. Mason and I continue our exploration of the woods near his house and have found several new-to-me trails to wander down. Now that it’s cooler I can’t have him splashing around in the water, so we spend more time walking and exploring and less time throwing things in the creek. He seems to learn and grow every day and we both continue to learn from each other. He definitely wears me out, and when he takes an afternoon nap, I take one too.

I’ve finished The Pirate Hunters book and enjoyed it so much I’m staying on that vein for a while as I picked up a book I had started many years ago called …and a Bottle of Rum. It’s a fun look at the history of rum from its origins in the Caribbean through to more modern times. I bought it when I worked as a kayak guide on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands to have something to teach my adult participants, which was fun but I never got through to the end of it. I’ve got another book on pirates lined up for after this one as well before I shift gears to something else.

On Friday, we did our weekly basement party with a theme of Blues, Brews and Barbecues. We tapped into our home-brewed IPA which is finally ready to drink and we really enjoyed it…

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - The Sewall-Belmont-Paul House

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - The Sewall-Belmont-Paul House

In 1632, King Charles of England granted a charter for a huge tract of land in what was then the colony of Maryland to Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord of Baltimore. Within that tract was a hill known as Jenkins Hill which today we know by its far more famous name: Capitol Hill. In 1663, lawyer George Thompson acquired 1800 acres from Lord Baltimore and leased the land to future Proprietary Governor of Maryland Thomas Notley for 1000 years at the rental rate of “40,000 pounds of tobacco and one pepper corn” per year. Notley called his plantation Cerne Abbey Manor.

Cerne Abbey Manor would remain in Thomas Notley’s family for several generations and eventually was inherited by his great-great-grandson Daniel Carroll. When Washington D.C. was established, Daniel Carroll ceded Jenkins Hill to the Federal Government, and later received part of that land back which he then leased to Robert Sewall. On that lot was a small one-room farmhouse which had been built perhaps as early as 1750. Sewall built a considerably larger house facing the newly designated B Street (now Constitution Ave), keeping the farmhouse as his kitchen. It is likely that this house was completed around 1800. The architect of the house is unknown, but there is some conjecture that the designer was Leonard Harbaugh, who we remember for his designs of Old North for Georgetown University, the old U.S. Treasury Building and Holy Trinity Church and who is buried in D.C.’s Congressional Cemetery. Sewall had this house built as his “town house” but soon thereafter his uncle died and left him a large tobacco plantation in Southern Maryland called His Lordship’s Kindness. The fact that the manor house on that plantation was designed by Harbaugh lends some further credibility to his designing the Sewall House.

Because Sewall was busy sorting out his newly inherited plantation, the house was leased to Albert Gallatin who served as Secretary of the Treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. A disproven rumor once existed that the Louisiana Purchase was signed in the house while Gallatin was in residence there, but it would certainly have been an important discussion around the dinner table, perhaps with Thomas Jefferson himself in attendance. Gallatin lived in the house from 1801 to 1813 and after he left, Sewall left his son, William, to watch the house, but it is unlikely that William ever lived there.

After the Battle of Bladensburg in the War of 1812, British troops marched towards Washington. It is believed that shots were fired from inside the Sewall House, marking the only American resistance to the invasion of the Capital. Whether shots were fired or not, the British did set fire to the house which lends credibility to the story because as we learned when discussing the Octagon House in this series it was not British policy to burn private residences. Regardless, the house did burn and Sewall rebuilt it in its current form soon after the war making some small changes to the original design. He applied for reimbursement for this work from the U.S. government, but his application was denied. Robert Sewall died in the house in 1820, leaving it to his wife and four daughters…

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - The Potts-Fitzhugh House - Robert E. Lee's Boyhood Home

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - The Potts-Fitzhugh House - Robert E. Lee's Boyhood Home

The Potts-Fitzhugh house at 601-607 Oronoco Street in Alexandria is one of the most interesting houses still standing in the area. Known most famously as the Boyhood Home of Robert E. Lee, the house’s history goes much deeper. The house was built in 1795 in what was then the Alexandria section of Washington D.C. for John Potts. Potts was the secretary of the Potomac Canal Company, which was attempting to link the Potomac and Ohio Rivers with a canal around Great Falls. Potts was an old friend of George Washington who visited the house often and sometimes even spent the night during the year Potts resided in the house.

Potts lived in the Oronoco Street house for only about a year, and then sold it to William Fitzhugh, a wealthy Virginia tobacco planter and racehorse breeder who was looking for a city home. Fitshugh owned beautiful Chatham Manor in Fredericksburg which was right down the road from Ferry Farm, the boyhood home of George Washington. The two had served together in the Virginia House of Burgesses before the Revolution, and remained friends. In fact, Washington dined with Fitzhugh at this house on Oronoco Street just one month before he died, on his last visit to Alexandria. Fitzhugh was married to Ann Randolph and the couple had three children. One of their children, Mary Lee Fitzhugh, would grow up to marry George Washington Parke Custis, a grandchild of Martha Washington from her first marriage. The wedding took place in the parlor on Oronoco Street. George and Mary Lee had one daughter, Mary Anne Randolph Custis, who would grow up to marry Robert E. Lee in 1831, two years after he graduated from West Point. During the Civil War, the Lees would take refuge on the Fitzhughs’ country estate, Ravensworth, which they built after selling Chatham. When William Fitzhugh died in 1809, his city home on Oronoco Street passed to his son, also named William, who would rent it to the house’s most famous occupants: Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee and his family which included then five-year-old Robert E. Lee.

Robert E. Lee was born in Stratford, Virginia in 1807, but he moved with his family to Washington D.C. in 1810, when he was just 3 years old, and lived at 611 Cameron Street in the Alexandria section. In 1812, they moved to this house on Oronoco Street where they lived for the next four years. The Lees would move to 407 N. Washington St. in 1816 but returned to the house on Oronoco Street in 1820. On October 14th, 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette was in Washington and wanted to visit his old Revolutionary War friend “Light Horse Harry” Lee’s widow and children,so he stopped by their home on Oronoco Street. Lafayette met 17 year-old Robert and no doubt told him of his father’s heroism in the Revolution. Robert lived on Oronoco St. until he departed for West Point in 1825 on the recommendation of William Fitzhugh the younger. When Robert left, his mother and two sisters moved across the river to Georgetown, but the house on Oronoco Street would be inhabited by other members of the Lee family for the next 62 years until it was sold to the Burson family in 1887. During the Lee family’s tenure there, Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia. One can only speculate on the fate of Robert E. Lee and the nation had his boyhood home remained a part of Washington D.C…

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D.C. Chronicles Volume 23

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D.C. Chronicles Volume 23

Hello Everyone, September is upon us which means fall is right around the corner here in Washington D.C. We’ve gotten some rain here this week which has brought the temperatures down quite a bit, and cooler temperatures is more than welcome in my opinion. I’m not used to being here in the summer and the heat and humidity is a bit much to take, especially without the normal joys of summer like concerts, festivals and fairs. I spent my days this last week with my 2 year old buddy Mason and we’ve continued to hang out in the park, throw the ball around, play with his trucks, look at insects and flowers and have a good time. We laugh a lot and it’s really amazing to see him changing and growing day by day. He’s an absolute joy to spend time with and it’s been a treat to do just that. He’s been keeping me busy, but I’ve gotten out to do a few things this week which has been great as well.

Last Wednesday we celebrated my step-father’s birthday with some delicious steaks, cakes, champaign and a viewing of the classic film American Graffiti. It was a wonderful night and I’m happy to be home with him to celebrate it.

Thursday night I had a Zoom session with some of my friends from college which was also really great. They’re all good guys and it’s nice that we’re still in touch 20 years + down the road. We still spend a lot of time laughing which is important. There were a lot of Zoom sessions going on when all of this started, but the summer has put an end to many of them as my friends have been trying to have safe and distanced vacations and keep their kids learning and growing without summer camps and programs. Hopefully we will get some of them going again as school gets back in session and the cooler weather arrives. I really miss seeing people in person, but Zoom is better than nothing.

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Snapshots: DC's Historic Firehouses

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Snapshots: DC's Historic Firehouses

I grew up a block away from a firehouse, Engine Company #31, here in Northwest Washington D.C. When you grow up that close to an active station, sirens and horns are a part of your everyday existence. It becomes a part of you. Perhaps for that reason, I’ve always had a thing for old firehouses, and in this post I’ve set out to see some of the classic ones my city has to offer.

The Vigilant Firehouse in Georgetown, which was built in 1844 for a private fire company founded in 1817, is Washington D.C.’s oldest standing firehouse, although it hasn’t been in service since 1883. Most of the city’s early fire departments were private companies usually staffed by volunteers. It wasn’t until 1871 that Washington created a city-wide professional fire department. Over the last 150 years, many beautiful and sometimes ornate firehouses have been built across the city. In more recent years, some of the old ones have been retired and flashy modern stations have taken their places. While this is a good thing for those brave men and women who work in the field as they need and deserve modern equipment and facilities, it is still sad to see some of the old firehouses retired. Some have found new life as gyms, restaurants, churches and even apartment houses and condominiums while others sit quietly empty, fading into the cityscape. In this post I’ve tried to capture some of the classic firehouses of Washington and some of the small details which caught my eye when I visited. These old firehouses are from every corner of the city and I really enjoyed tracking them down to shoot this spread. I’d love to hear your memories of any of these old houses or to go find any I may have missed. Please comment in the section below. Many thanks to all of our wonderful D.C. firefighters, and to firefighters everywhere for your amazing and selfless dedication to the communities you serve.

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - Octagon House

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - Octagon House

On a strangely angled corner lot just a couple of blocks from the White House, at the corner of New York Avenue and 18th Street, sits the beautifully designed Octagon House, one of the city’s oldest and most architecturally celebrated homes. The house was designed and built as the winter home for Colonel John Tayloe III, one of Virginia’s wealthiest plantation owners, and for a few months in 1814 served as the Presidential Mansion after the burning of the White House.

John Tayloe III was born on his family estate, Mount Airy, in 1770, the only boy in a family of 11 children. John’s father died when he was just 9 years old and after receiving an education in London he became the soul heir to the estate. In 1792, John married Ann Ogle whose father, Benjamin, had served as the 9th Governor of Maryland. The two would have 15 children of their own. The Tayloe fortune was made primarily through farming, shipbuilding and ironworks, but they were also some of the country’s earliest racehorse breeders. Tayloe was a fine horseman himself and served in the Dragoons under the commands of George Washington and Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee during the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania. Later he served as a commander of the Cavalry of the District of Columbia. Just before the turn of the century, Tayloe was looking to build a winter residence in the city and had his sights set on cosmopolitan Philadelphia. His friend George Washington convinced him to build in the new Capital City instead. And so it was that John Tayloe III purchased Lot 8 in Square 170 to build his winter home within view of the White House.

There is some debate as to who designed Octagon House with the credit generally given to William Thornton who drew up the original designs for the U.S. Capitol. It is possible that the house was designed instead by our old friend William Lovering who designed several of the other houses in this series and many in early Washington. Regardless, it was Lovering who oversaw the construction of the home, thought to be a high point of the Federal Style of architecture. Needing to fit into a sloped, angled lot the house would be designed with amazing simplicity incorporating a circle, two rectangles and a triangle into the plan.The house was completed in 1801 and it is interesting that the Tayloe family chose to call it “Octagon House” since it only really has six sides. In addition to Mount Airy in Virginia, the Tayloe family also owned a 205 acre farm a few miles north of Octagon House called Petworth (from which today’s neighborhood in that area gets its name). Much to my delight Tayloe also built a racetrack just behind Lafayette Square and a stone’s throw from the White House.

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - Wheat Row

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - Wheat Row

Unlike most of the other properties I’ve featured in this series, Wheat Row hasn’t had any really famous residents. Nor has it hosted presidents or had any major historical events take place within its halls. If anything, it is reminiscent of how the regular people lived in the early days of Washington D.C. - just a common set of row houses set along an ordinary street.

The four connected townhouses which make up Wheat Row were built around 1794 and designed by architect William Lovering, whose architecture has featured prominently in this series so far. Even when they were built, the Georgian architectural style was considered out of date. People found the houses “small and poorly constructed of inferior materials”, and yet there they stand, 225 years later.

Wheat Row takes its name from one of its early residents, John Wheat, who lived in 1315 as early as 1819. Wheat was a local designer of gardens in the city and was listed in one census as a congressional messenger. He would later purchase 1319 and 1321 as well and his family lived along Wheat Row until a few years after the Civil War.

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - The Maples

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - The Maples

The Maples was originally built for Captain William Mayne Duncanson between 1795 and 1796 on property he purchased for $960. The Late Georgian style mansion is the oldest building still standing on Capitol Hill. The two story main house and detached outbuilding which served as slave quarters and a carriage house was designed by architect William Lovering who designed several of the properties I’ve features in this series. During the house’s construction, the captain lived in the Duncanson-Cranch House on N St. SW which was the last property we looked at. George Washington was a dinner guest at The Maples while Duncanson lived there and the president was said to have called it “a fine house in the woods”.

Duncanson’s real estate investments in the city eventually led him into bankruptcy, and he lost this house in the process. It served as a hospital after the Battle of Bladensburg during the War of 1812 and soon thereafter was purchased by recent Star Spangled Banner author and future D.C. District Attorney Francis Scott Key. Interestingly, at the time he purchased The Maples, Key was living at 3518 M St. in Georgetown, a block or so away from the Forrest-Marbury House featured earlier in this series. The Key family likely never lived in The Maples though, except perhaps briefly after selling their Georgetown home in the 1830s.

In 1838 The Maples was purchased by Major Augustus A Nicholson, the Quartermaster of the United States Marine Corps, and became the center of military entertainment in the Capital City. Sadly, Major Nicholson’ wife committed suicide in the house and is said to still haunt the property with her tormented cries…

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - The Duncanson-Cranch House

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D.C.'s Oldest Homes - The Duncanson-Cranch House

This house was built in 1794 and designed by architect William Lovering who is also credited with designing the Thomas Law House (featured last in this series), The Maples (which will be featured next), the Octagon House and Wheat Row, both of which will be featured later in this series. The house was designed in the Federal style popular at the time and was built as a double house, occupying 468 and 470 N. St. SW.

The lot on which the house was built was originally owned by Notley Young who deeded it to the City Commissioners when the site of the federal city was first determined. Captain William Mayne Duncanson, a wealthy merchant who came to Washington from Europe on a boat with Thomas Law in 1795, lived in the 470 half of the double house from 1795-96. He lived in the house while awaiting his new home, later known as The Maples, was being built on Capitol Hill. The Maples will be featured next in this series.

Several years later, the other half of this house was occupied by William Cranch. Cranch was the son of Mary Smith whose sister was Abigail Adams, making William the nephew, by marriage, of President John Adams. William married Nancy Greenleaf in 1795 and had four sons and three daughters. Their great-grandson was poet T.S. Elliot

A Harvard educated lawyer, Cranch moved to Washington D.C. in 1791 where he worked in private practice for 10 years. From 1800-1801 Cranch served as a City Commissioner for the District before being nominated by his uncle, John Adams, to serve on the newly established U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia

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