_The Three Philanthropists_
George Town produced three eminent philanthropists: one whose
benefactions were solely to Georgetown; a second, who became the
greatest benefactor the City of Washington has ever had, and inaugurated
the tremendous gifts to schools and colleges that have since become the
fashion among men of great wealth; the third started his gifts at home,
then crossed the ocean and made enormous contributions to the largest
city in the world.
The first one, Edward Magruder Linthicum, had a hardware store on the
northwest corner of High (Wisconsin) Avenue and Bridge (M) Street, the
business hub then, as now, of Georgetown. He was a trustee of the
Methodist Church and member of the Town Council.
He built the home at number 3019 P Street, which has such a beautiful
doorway, and lived there until in 1846 he moved up on the Heights to The
Oaks, for which he paid $11,000. William A. Gordon, in his book _Old
Houses in Georgetown Heights_, says of him:
Mr. Linthicum was a prominent and prosperous merchant of the highest
type, a man of great civic activities, and deeply interested in
everything which tended to beautify the community. In his will by a
legacy of $50,000 he provided for the endowment of a school for the
free education of white boys of Georgetown in useful learning and in
the spirit and practice of Christian virtue being, as he expressed
it, convinced that knowledge and piety constitute the only assurance
of happiness and healthful progress to the human race and devoutly
recognizing the solemn duty to society which develops in its
members, and entertaining a serious desire to contribute in some
manner to the permanent welfare of the community, amongst whom my
life has been spent.
As a commentary on the length to which partisan feeling went in the
years succeeding the War Between the States, it may be stated that
efforts to have the Linthicum Institute incorporated by Congress
were prevented by Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, for
the reason that the benefits were confined to white youths.
[Illustration: EDWARD MAGRUDER LINTHICUM]
The Linthicum Institute began its career in the lower floor of one side
of the Curtis school building on P Street, opposite Saint John's Church.
The name in large gold letters used to be there. The present building
was erected about 1890 on the south side of O Street near 31st, the
school occupying the lower floor, and Linthicum Hall, considered by the
belles of the nineties to have the "best floor 'par excellence' for
dancing anywhere," being the upper portion. I have been told it was the
first night school in the District of Columbia.
Mr. Linthicum was a very imposing looking gentleman, was married, but
had no children. He and his wife adopted a daughter, Kate, who became
Mrs. Dent, and I think it was in honor of her or her son that the little
street called Dent Place, just below R and between 30th and 31st Streets
was named when that part of Georgetown, then nicknamed "Cooke Park" was
developed.
[Illustration: WILLIAM WILSON CORCORAN]
William Wilson Corcoran, the third son of Thomas Corcoran, was born in
George Town on December 27, 1798, in his father's home on Bridge (M)
Street. He attended Mr. Kirk's school, later Reverend Addison Belt's,
in between, having been for a while a day scholar at Georgetown College.
Contrary to his father's wishes for him to complete a classical
education, at the age of seventeen he went into a dry goods store
belonging to his brothers, James and Thomas. Two years later they
established him in a small store of his own on the northwest corner of
High (Wisconsin Avenue) and First (N) Streets. Again, two years later
they all purchased a two-story brick house on the corner of Bridge (M)
and Congress (31st) Streets and commenced a wholesale auction and
commission business.
In the depression of 1823, when very many firms went to the wall, they
too had to give up and settled with all their creditors for fifty cents
on the dollar.
I think the aftermath of this story (which is the reason I have given it
in detail) is most encouraging to this generation, struggling in the
grip of the present depression, for the young man of twenty-five, after
giving up four or five years to taking care of the business of his
father, who was growing old, finally became connected with the Bank of
Columbia, and in 1837 began a brokerage business in Washington in a
little store 10 x 16 feet on Pennsylvania Avenue near 15th Street. He
was so successful that he eventually took into partnership George W.
Riggs, also of Georgetown, and changed the name to Corcoran and Riggs.
In 1845 this firm purchased the old United States Bank on the corner of
15th Street and New York Avenue. And so the Riggs National Bank, today
one of the strongest banks in the United States, was born. A little
later George W. Riggs retired and Elisha, his brother, was made a junior
partner.
In 1847 Mr. Corcoran sent to all people to whom he had been able to pay
only 50% in his failure of 1823, the full amount due them, with
interest, amounting to about forty-six thousand dollars, to their great
surprise, as evidenced by letters I have read from them to him. Of all
his great benefactions, this seems to me to have been the very finest
thing he ever did.
He must have been a man of very remarkable personality, witness his
going to Europe, the first of the very, very many trips he made in his
life, on one day's notice, and against much discouragement, persuading
Thomas Baring of the great London banking firm of Baring Brothers, to
assist him in a sale of five millions of government bonds. At that time
the firm of Corcoran and Riggs took, on its own account, nearly all the
loans made by the United States.
On his return to New York he was greeted by everyone with enthusiasm, as
this was the first sale of American securities abroad since 1837--eleven
years.
In April, 1854, Mr. Corcoran withdrew from the firm, thinking he had
made enough money, and spent the rest of his long life of ninety
years--forty-five years more--spending his money in a manner unknown
before that time.
Apropos of his money-making faculty, I have often been told by my aunt
how her father, Henry Dunlop, when a boy, was walking along the street
with young Corcoran, just his own age, when Henry, whose family was
rather well-off in those days, seeing a penny lying on the pavement,
kicked it ahead of him in his stride, as boys will do, but young
Corcoran, stooping down, put it in his pocket saying, "Henry, you will
never be a rich man." That prophecy came true, for Henry spent his life
in farming, and you know what that means!
Among Mr. Corcoran's very first benefactions were gifts to the town of
his birth. First of all a fund of $10,000 to be spent for firewood,
etc., for the poor. It was left to the town authorities, but was
administered by the Benevolent Society.
In 1849 he gave beautiful Oak Hill Cemetery, lying along the northern
limit of the town. To me no other cemetery that I have ever seen in this
country or abroad has the same natural beauty of slopes and trees--in
the spring bedecked like a bride in flowering white shrubs; in the fall
its towering oak trees aflame with shades of crimson.
I suppose what impressed on him the need of a cemetery for Georgetown so
deeply was the death of his beloved wife in 1840. It had been a very
romantic marriage. She was Louise Morris, the daughter of Commodore
Charles Morris. Mr. Corcoran met his wife when she was sixteen and he
was thirty-six. On the 23rd of December, 1835, they eloped, accompanied
by Mr. Corcoran's sister-in-law, Mrs. James Corcoran, who later became
the second wife of John Marbury, senior, and to the day of her death was
greatly beloved by Mr. Corcoran. When she was lying in her coffin on
14th Street, he came there and although somewhat lamed by paralysis and
nearly ninety years of age, he insisted upon climbing the long flight of
stairs to the room where she lay, saying over and over as he toiled up
the many steps: "I must see Harriet once more!" I suppose in his mind he
was living over the great event in his life when she helped to secure
for him the only love of his life. And so pitifully short a time he had
her, for only five years afterwards, when she was twenty-one, she died
of tuberculosis. In those short years she had had three children,
Harriet Louise, Louise Morris, and Charles Morris. Of these the middle
child, Louise, was the only one to grow up.
Although Commodore Morris had greatly disapproved of his daughter's
marriage, which was very natural as at that time he was one of the most
eminent officers of the United States Navy, and Mr. Corcoran had not
then entered on the career which eventually made him the most
distinguished private citizen of the capital of the nation, he grew to
greatly admire and respect his son-in-law. For there are preserved in _A
Grandfather's Legacy_, a collection of letters received by Mr. Corcoran,
and compiled by him before his death, several letters from Charles
Morris, showing the deepest trust and affection.
I suppose there was never a daughter more beloved and petted than Louise
Morris Corcoran. Her father seemed to expend on her all the affection of
his great big heart, and she seems to have been a very lovely character.
When she was about ten years old she fell overboard from a vessel and
was only saved from drowning by the quickness and skill of Gurdon B.
Smith. Among these letters are several in regard to this incident, for
Mr. Corcoran, in his gratitude for this merciful deliverance, sent
through an agent, $1,000 to Mr. Smith, an artisan, who was very grateful
and considered he had received a fortune. But, not satisfied with that,
Mr. Corcoran secured an appointment as lighthouse keeper for Mr. Smith
at a point not far from his home, a life position with a good salary,
but Mr. Smith refused it as he seemed perfectly satisfied with his
circumstances.
Mr. Corcoran's money doubled and trebled and quadrupled, and the
following letter shows how his judgment was sought on political as well
as financial questions:
My dear Sir:
I wish you would come to my house about 8 this evening and tell me,
in five words, what are the best reasons to be given to friends of
the administration for not passing the sub-treasury bill at present.
Yours,
D. WEBSTER.
He had a close friendship with Edward Everett, senator from
Massachusetts, who was frequently his guest. He and ex-President
Fillmore traveled abroad together. The letters he received from many of
the great of the earth make very interesting reading. By the middle of
the nineteenth century this Georgetown boy of rather modest parentage
was living in a very fine house in Washington, in great elegance,
entertaining everyone of any importance who came to the capital. There
is on record now a letter from a gentleman in England, bringing to his
attention the coming of the new Minister and his wife from Great
Britain, Lord and Lady Napier. Although, as he had said "he knows he
will receive a great deal of attention, yet he wishes Mr. Corcoran,
particularly to honor them." He was consulted by presidents for his
opinion on financial matters. Baron Humboldt, the great German
geographer, kept up a correspondence with him to the day of his death.
After a brilliant girlhood, Louise Corcoran had married the Honorable
George Eustis of New Orleans, representative in Congress. When the Civil
War came and shattered all existing social ties, Mr. Eustis, of course,
took the Southern side, as did Mr. Corcoran. Mr. Eustis, who had been
appointed Confederate Secretary of Legation at the same time that the
Honorable John Slidell was appointed Minister to France, after being
held a prisoner in Maine, went over to France, where he was joined by
his wife. Neither ever returned to this country. They made their home
there, their three children were born there, they died there, were
finally brought back and buried in Oak Hill under the beautiful little
Doric temple Mr. Corcoran had erected for his first Louise.
Those three grandchildren then became his pride and joy. But more and
more he absorbed himself in his benefactions. It is impossible to tell
all of them. Beginning with his gift of Oak Hill to Georgetown in 1849,
in 1850 a loan to the Roman Catholic Church there which, like all of his
loans, he eventually turned into gifts; in 1851 he gave an organ to the
Lunatic Asylum in Staunton, Virginia, saying he knew of nothing better
than to give music to those whose souls were so troubled. About this
time he gave the lot for the Washington City Orphan Asylum, and a little
later the one for the Y. M. C. A. For many years he had been collecting
painting and sculpture, both on his trips to Europe and from the various
persons who wrote to him soliciting his patronage. These were at first
kept in his own house, but then he decided to build a gallery and give
them to the City of Washington, so he erected the building on
Pennsylvania Avenue at the corner of 17th Street, directly opposite the
State, War and Navy Building. It was just nearing completion when the
Civil War began and was taken over by the United States Government as an
annex to the War Department, so that it was not until 1869 that it was
opened as the Corcoran Gallery of Art. In 1897 the collection was moved
to the beautiful new building lower down on 17th Street and was formally
opened on February 22nd by a brilliant reception at which were President
and Mrs. Cleveland and all of their Cabinet.
Above the doorway of the old building, in the stone, is still seen a
carved medallion with W. W. C. intertwined.
Just about that time, also, Mr. Corcoran began to build another of his
beneficent gifts to the city. His beloved daughter had died, and the
city and the country was filled with ladies who had been made penniless
by the cruel fratricidal war. In 1871 he turned over to the trustees the
Louise Home on Massachusetts Avenue, between 15th and 16th Streets, as a
home for gentlewomen, the only requirements being enough money to
furnish their own clothes and their burial expenses, even lots in Oak
Hill were reserved for them after the Louise Home failed to suffice. It
was very natural that for a long time its clientele was largely made up
of Southerners, as there were very, very many more of them impoverished
at that time, and also Mr. Corcoran was himself in sympathy with the
Confederates. It is said he saved his house from confiscation by renting
it to the French Minister.
Many, very many, were the letters he received thanking him for the help
he had sent to widows and orphans of soldiers of the South. He founded
homes of that kind in Charleston, South Carolina, and in other places,
besides rendering assistance most tactfully in many private cases. Many
of these letters are very touching in their gratitude.
His friendship for James Mason, of the Mason and Slidell affair, was
close, as was his very real association with General Robert E. Lee,
witnessed by letters from General Lee during his life in Lexington,
Virginia, after the war, and from Dr. William Pendleton, General Lee's
rector there, and from Mrs. Lee in regard to General Lee's death.
He and General Lee spent several summers at the "Old White," as the
Greenbriar White Sulphur Springs was then affectionately known. As the
years rolled on, Anthony Hyde, a Georgetown man, was kept busy
administering the benefactions of his employer. He has told how during a
trip through the South after the war, with Mr. Corcoran (he was his
secretary), he had difficulty in keeping Mr. Corcoran's gifts within
bounds. I was told not long ago by a man in the employ of Oak Hill, how
an old street-car conductor had described to him the sight of Mr.
Corcoran going to his office, and on the sidewalk in front of it each
morning was a line to which he always dispensed "green money," as the
old man called it.
The business of his life then was judiciously giving away his money.
Here are some of the ways he did it: colleges had always appealed to
him, and he was for many years Rector of Columbian University in
Washington, now renamed George Washington, and gave freely to it. His
name is now borne by one of their largest and best buildings, Corcoran
Hall. He gave to the Maryland Agricultural College, to the College of
William and Mary in Virginia, loaned money to the Virginia Military
Institute and when the bonds came due, tore them up--a little way he
had. To Washington and Lee University, also in Lexington, he gave
$20,000 besides the library purchased from the widow of Nathaniel
Howard, thus, it helped in the getting as well as in the giving.
His portrait hangs in the little chapel in Lexington where lies the body
of his friend, Robert Edward Lee. To the University of Virginia he gave
$100,000 which endowed two chairs, also giving $5,000 to resuscitate the
library which had suffered during the war and the period following, from
being unable to procure any new books.
He was one of the first people to subscribe to the fund being raised by
certain ladies to purchase Mount Vernon, after the Washington family
found themselves unable to keep it up and offered it to the United
States Government, which refused to buy and preserve it.
The Episcopal Church of the Ascension on the corner of 12th Street and
Massachusetts Avenue was built almost entirely with his money. William
Pinckney, its rector when it was begun, was very devoted to Mr.
Corcoran. He afterwards became Bishop of Maryland. It worried him
exceedingly that Mr. Corcoran had never become a confirmed member and
communicant of the church. Many are the long and eloquent letters he
wrote to him on the subject. Finally, in his old age, the old gentleman
did come forward and be confirmed. The friendship between these two
seems to have been very sweet. The Bishop was a simple soul, a great
lover of flowers and birds. He was always sending gifts of grapes to his
wealthy friend, from Bladensburg. He now rests not far from his friend
in Oak Hill. The inscription on his stone, which is surmounted by his
statue reads thus:
WILLIAM PINCKNEY, D. D., L L. D.
APRIL 17, 1820
JULY 4, 1883
Guileless and fearless.
All through his life Mr. Corcoran was a very sociable person. He always
loved to play whist and in the last years of his life his nephews and
nieces and great-nephews and great-nieces used to go often to play with
him and pass the long evenings. A friend of mine remembers being taken
as a little girl, with her grandmother, to call on him. She was
fascinated by the room where he sat, which had medallions of children's
heads, set at intervals into the paneling of the walls. She said he told
her they were his grandchildren. She loved looking at them and was
distressed when told to go out in the garden to play.
That garden to the house where he lived for many years and where he
died, stood on H Street at the corner of Connecticut Avenue. Daniel
Webster had lived there before him. The flowering trees in the spring
hung over the high brick wall on the Connecticut Avenue side and
gladdened the hearts of all who saw them. It was a sad day for
Washington, historically, when that whole square was reconstructed. If
only one could endow old houses!
At last, on the 24th of February, 1888, W. W. Corcoran, as he was always
known, was laid to rest in his own beautiful Oak Hill. I remember as a
little girl standing at the window of my home facing 31st Street and
hearing the bell of near-by Christ Church toll ninety strokes as
carriage after carriage passed slowly up the hill. My brother and I
counted them, and there were ninety-nine.
George Peabody, the third of my trio of philanthropists who got their
start in Georgetown, was born in Danvers, Massachusetts, on February 18,
1795. He was descended from an old yeoman family of Hertfordshire,
England, named Pabody or Pebody. At eleven years he was an apprentice in
a grocery store, and at fifteen, by his father's death, he was left an
orphan and was cheerfully helping to support his mother and sisters. He
soon after left Danvers and became an assistant to his uncle in his
business in Georgetown. When he was seventeen he served as a volunteer
in the War of 1812 in the artillery company of Major George Peter
against the British, which is interesting, as in later life he was
offered a baronetcy by Queen Victoria, which he refused.
[Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY]
After the war, when he was about nineteen, he became a partner with
Elisha Riggs in a dry goods store in Georgetown and through his energy
and skill the business increased tremendously. They moved to Baltimore,
and when his partner retired, about 1830, he found himself, according to
_The Encyclopaedia Britannica_, at the head of one of the largest
mercantile concerns in the world. About seven years afterwards he
established himself in London as a merchant and money-broker at Wonford
Court in the city, and in 1843 he withdrew from the American business.
He was never married. He was a very intimate friend of Mr. Corcoran's,
and in several letters to him speaks jokingly of himself as a confirmed
old bachelor, and in one flouts the idea that he is attentive to a
certain lady, saying that he never but once seriously thought of
marriage.
Of course, he and Mr. Corcoran were near the same age and were both
making their way as young men here in Georgetown at the same time, and
it is very interesting to follow, from many letters, how their
friendship continued through all their lives.
Mr. Peabody made frequent visits to his homeland, and used often to
visit Mr. Corcoran at his home in Washington, and to spend the summers
with him at the White Sulphur Springs.
When hearing of the beginning of the great gifts of his friend on this
side of the water, he wrote in October, 1851:
However liberal I may be over here, I can not keep pace with your
noble acts of charity at home; but one of these days I mean to come
out, and then if my feelings regarding money don't change and I have
plenty, I shall become a strong competitor of yours in benevolence.
He certainly made good his words. In London he entertained in princely
style. The following letter is one of the many telling of his parties
there:
London, May 16, 1853.
My dear Corcoran:
On the 18th I am to give a grand banquet to the American Minister
and about sixty-five English and eighty-five American ladies and
gentlemen, and have invited about fifty more for the evening. Mr.
Van Buren will be of the party and I hope to make it the best dinner
party I have ever given, as I have the Star and Garter, Richmond,
and the proprietor has no limit. I enclose you the programme of
music during and after dinner.
I have taken the house--Star and Garter--for a Fourth of July dinner
to gentlemen only, and expect about 150. I hear from Mr. Ingersoll
that your friend, Mr. Buchanan, will leave in June. Now, although I
only know Mr. Buchanan from his high character and what you say of
him, particularly as he is unmarried, and I would like to invite the
party for the fourth of July to meet "the American Minister, Mr.
Ingersoll, and the new Minister, Mr. Buchanan." Will you confer with
Mr. Buchanan on receipt of this and try to get me permission to give
the invitations as I propose? If Mr. Buchanan leaves 13th or 16th
June, he will arrive in ample time.
Very truly,
GEORGE PEABODY.
In 1867 he gave $15,000 to found the Peabody Library in Georgetown. A
large donation was given by him to the second Grinnell Arctic
Expedition. The museum in Salem, Massachusetts, called by his name, is a
fascinating collection of historic relics. To his birthplace he gave
50,000 pounds ($250,000) for educational purposes; for the Peabody
Institute in Baltimore 200,000 pounds ($1,000,000.00); to the trustees
of the Peabody Educational Fund to promote education in the Southern
States (part went to Washington and Lee University in Lexington). A dear
old cousin of mine has told me of his visit to the White Sulphur to
confer with Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Peabody on this subject. The thing he
is remembered for in London is the erection of a huge block of model
houses for working people at a cost of 500,000 pounds ($2,500,000). I
suppose it was then that Queen Victoria wished to do him honor.
His true nature remained untainted by success, and Gladstone said of
him: "He taught the world how a man may be master of his fortune, and
not its slave."
In 1867 the Congress of the United States awarded him a special vote of
thanks, and two years later, when he died in London on the 4th of
November 1869, his body was brought home to America on a British
warship, to be buried in Danvers, the town of his birth, now renamed
Peabody in his honor.