The document is signed by Dr. Beall, as well as Justice of the Peace William Wates. Elizabeth Davidson Brook, the wife of Samuel Brook has written her name Elizabeth twice on the verso side. She inherited the property from her Father Samuel Davidson and due to the legalities of the time, she could not sell the property herself and as you will see from the transcript was forced to sell the property under her husband’s name. From the personal archive of the late autograph dealer Gary Combs. We have included the history of the home that was built by Cutts for his sister-in-law Dolley Madison. He broke ground the same month he acquired the land, but the home took a decade to complete. The home has a storied history as you will see. Additionally as you scroll, you will see a transcript of the document, as well as biographies of Thornton and Cutts. Condition: Edges have flecking as seen in the scan. There was separation at the folds which have been repaired with archival tape. The Cutts-Madison House (also known as the Dolley Madison House) is an American colonial-style historic home located at 1520 H Street NW in Washington, D. The house is best known for being the residence of former First Lady Dolley Madison, who lived there from November 1837 until her death in July 1849. The Cutts-Madison House is part of the Lafayette Square Historic District, a National Historic Landmark District. On March 31, 1793, the U. Davidson died in 1810, and his son and two daughters inherited the property. The house had two stories, a gabled roof, dormer windows, and chimneys at the north and south ends of the house. The exterior was originally grey stucco. The front of the house faced Lafayette Square. The lot on which the house sat was a large one, with extensive space on all sides. Dirt roads bordered the house on the west and north sides, and a large garden with flowers and fruit trees occupied the east and south sides of the house. The garden extended south as far as the Tayloe House on the south end of the block. The home was considered one of the more “pretentious” domiciles in the city at the time. The city gravelled the street in front of the house in 1823. When James Madison died in 1836, Dolley Madison held the mortgage. Her husband’s death had left Dolley Madison in a financially difficult position, so to reduce her expenses she took up residency in the house in November 1837. Presidents James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor all visited her in the home, as did John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster. Dolley Madison’s financial difficulties continued, however. She also owned Montpelier, her husband’s country estate and farm in the Piedmont of Virginia. But Montpelier’s finances were in poor condition, and Dolley moved out of the Cutts-Madison House in 1839 to live once more at Montpelier and see if she could save the estate. She rented out the Cutts-Madison house, but was unable to stabilize Montpelier. In 1844 or 1845, after her return to the Cutts-Madison House, arsonists put lit matches into the shutters in the rear of the house, and Dolley Madison had to be wakened and saved from death by a servant. The fire was quickly put out, and the damage to the building not extensive Mrs. Dolley Madison lived in the house on Lafayette Square until her death on July 12, 1849. Her only surviving child, John Payne Todd (from her first marriage to Quaker lawyer John Todd), inherited the property. Wilkes moved the entrance from Madison Place NW to H Street NW, and turned the porch on the west side of the house (facing Madison Place NW) into a window. The gable roof (which sloped east and west) was eliminated and a flat roof installed, an out-building added in the rear, and a bay window added on the south side. Wilkes also cut all windows on the first floor down so that they now reached the floor. During the 1850s and 1860s, the house had a number of notable occupants in addition to the Wilkeses. After being named Special Envoy to Central America, Sir William Gore Ouseley rented the house in 1858 on his way to the region and entertained lavishly while living at the Cutts-Madison House. McClellan used the house as his Washington-based headquarters after the First Battle of Bull Run during the Civil War. McClellan first occupied the house on July 26, 1861, and left in late October for new headquarters at a house at the corner of H Street NW and 15th Street NW (where the Sofitel Lafayette Square Hotel now stands). After the Civil War, the Cutts-Madison House was briefly used by the French Claims Commission. Wilkes mortgaged in the house in 1855, and the mortgage passed through several hands over the next 15 years until George B. Warren secured it in 1870. Upon Warren’s death in 1880, the mortgage was assigned to his daughter, Phebe Warren Tayloe. She died in 1882, and her niece Elizabeth H. Price came to hold the mortgage. Meanwhile, Charles Wilkes deeded the house over to his wife and three daughters in 1870. Plans for the renovations of the first floor of the Cutts-Madison House, made by the Cosmos Club in 1886. The Cosmos Club immediately improved the height of the third floor by raising the roof, and added a large meeting hall by building a single-story 23’8 (7.21 metre) extension to the south side of the house (with skylight). The Cosmos Club made further improvements in 1893. Electricity was installed, the heating system upgraded, and general refurbishing of commons areas completed. Two additional stories were built over the assembly hall: The second story consisting of one large room, and a third story consisting of four meeting rooms. A bathroom was added to the third floor of the old building, above the existing second-floor bathroom. The eastern garden was removed, and a three-story addition built. The addition consisted of a ground floor with an entrance to the building on H Street NW, a cloakroom, and a connecting door to the assembly hall on the south side of the building; a second story with meeting rooms for the Cosmos Club as well as other societies which might use the premises; and a third story with lodgings and a meeting room for the Cosmos Club’s Board of Directors. The basement of the original building was renovated and upgraded to include a kitchen, a bathroom, and an underground passage to the new addition. The goal of building the addition was to permit visiting societies (such as members of the National Geographic Society) to enter and use the building without disturbing members of the Cosmos Club. Hornblower & Marshall were the architects of the addition, which was completed in January 1894. 25 Madison Place NW, the building immediately to the south of the Cutts-Madison House (against which its three-story assembly hall addition abutted). [2] This property (and the one to the south of it) were razed in 1909, and a five-story Cosmos Club lodging house built. Government and used for offices. The Cutts-Madison House (corner), with the Cosmos Club headquarters (in tan) to the right and the National Courts building in the rear. In 1900, the United States Congress passed a resolution establishing the U. Senate Park Commission also known as the “McMillan Commission” because it was chaired by Senator James McMillan R-Mich. The Park Commission’s charge was to reconcile competing visions for the development of Washington, D. And in particular the National Mall and adjacent areas. The Park Commission’s proposals, which came to be known as the “McMillan Plan, ” proposed that all the buildings around Lafayette Square be razed and replaced by tall, Neoclassical buildings clad in white marble for use by executive branch agencies. For a time, it appeared that the Cutts-Madison House would not survive. William Wilson Corcoran’s Corcoran House at 1615 H Street NW was torn down in 1922 and replaced with the Neoclassical United States Chamber of Commerce headquarters. The Hay-Adams Houses were razed in 1927 by real estate developer Harry Wardman, and the Hay-Adams Hotel built on the site. Several million dollars were spent in the late 1950s on designs to raze all the buildings on the east side of Lafayette Square and replace them with a white, modernist office building which would house judicial offices. Opposition to the demolition of the Cutts-Madison House and other buildings on Lafayette Square began forming shortly after the plan to raze the structures was announced. Murray and Wayne Morse, several members of the House of Representatives, and citizens of the District of Columbia lobbied to defeat the legislation authorizing the demolition of the buildings. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) devoted the February 1961 issue of its journal to a Lament for Lafayette Square. The AIA established a committee to develop plans to save the buildings and adapt the new structures so that they incorporated the style and feel of the older homes. The newly elected Kennedy administration indicated on February 16, 1961, that it was anxious to retain the existing historic homes on Lafayette Square. In November, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City (an influential group of city leaders) asked President Kennedy to save and restore all the remaining buildings on Lafayette Square. In February 1962, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy lobbied General Services Administration (GSA) director Bernard L. Boutin to stop the demolition and adopt a different design plan. “The wreckers haven’t started yet, and until they do it can be saved, ” she wrote. Kennedy enlisted architect John Carl Warnecke, a friend of her husband’s who happened to be in town that weekend, to create a design which would incorporate the new buildings with the old. Warnecke conceived the basic design over that weekend and worked closely with Mrs. Kennedy over the next few months to formalize the design proposal. The design was presented to the public and the Commission of Fine Arts (which had approval over any plan) in October 1962, and with Mrs. Kennedy’s backing the Commission adopted the revised Warnecke design proposal. Warnecke’s design was based on the architectural theory of contextualism, where modern buildings are harmonized with the urban forms usual to a traditional city. Not only did Warnecke’s design build the first modern buildings on Lafayette Square, but they were the first buildings in the city to utilize contextualism as a design philosophy. Warnecke’s design for the National Courts Building was to create tall, flat structures in red brick which would serve as relatively unobtrusive backgrounds to the lighter-colored residential homes like the Cutts-Madison House. The Cutts-Madison House, Cosmos Club building, and Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House were joined, and a courtyard built between them and the National Courts building. The Cutts-Madison House has remained part of the National Courts building complex ever since. Since the mid-19th century, witnesses have claimed to have seen the ghost of Dolley Madison rocking in a chair in the space where the porch on the west side of the house used to be, smiling at passersby. Transcription of the indenture. Recto of the document. To have and to hold the said Lot number Nine and the said Lot number Thirteen in square number Two Hundred and twenty two with the appurtenances to said Richard Cutts and to his heirs and assigns forever and to and for no other use, benefit or behalf whatever; and the said Samuel Brook for himself, his heirs, Executors and administrators doth hereby grant covenant and agree with the said Richard Cutts that he the said Samuel and his heirs, the premises unto the said Richard and to his heirs and assigns against the claims and demands of all persons claiming and right title or interest in the premises by through or under him the said Samuel or his heirs, shall and will forever warrant and Defend. In testimony whereof the said Samuel Brook hath here unto set his hand and seal the day and year first herein written. Signed, sealed & delivered. Verso of the document. County of Washington Sct. This thirty first day of August A. 1818 personally appears before the subscribers two of the Justices of the Peace of said county Samuel Brook, the party grantor of the within instrument and acknowledged the same to be his voluntary act and deed, delivered for the purposes there in mentioned; at the same time also personally appears Elizabeth Brook the wife of the said Samuel and acknowledges the within instrument to be voluntary sct and Deed and the said Elizabetrh being by us examined privately and apart from and out of the presence & hearing of her husband, whether she doth make this her acknowledgement of the same willingly, freely & without being induced thereto by fear of threats of, or ill usage by her said husband or through fear of his displeasure, acknowledgeth that she doth. Biographies of Thornton and Cutts. William Thornton (1759 – 1828) was a British-American physician, inventor, painter and architect who designed the United States Capitol. He also served as the first Architect of the Capitol and first Superintendent of the United States Patent Office. From an early age William Thornton displayed interest and discernible talent in “the arts of design, ” to employ an 18th-century term that is particularly useful in assessing his career. Thornton was born on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, West Indies, in a Quaker community. Where he was heir to sugar plantations. He was sent to England at age five to be educated. Frary Thornton was brought up strictly by his father’s relations, Quakers and merchants, in and near the ancient castle town of Lancaster, in northern Lancashire, England. There was never any question of his pursuing the fine arts professionally-he was to be trained for a useful life, according to the Quaker ways. The earliest of Thornton’s known writings, a journal he began during his apprenticeship, records almost as many entries for drawing and sketching as notes on medical treatments and nostrums. His subjects were most often flora and fauna, but he also did portraits, landscapes, historical scenes, and studies of machinery, such as the Franklin stove, and managed to construct a camera obscura. This pattern continued when he enrolled as a medical student in the University of Edinburgh in 1781. He interned at St. The architecture of Edinburgh, especially that of the New Town that was being built, surely exerted considerable influence. More direct evidence of his interest in architecture is found in the landscapes and sketches of castles he drew while travelling about Scotland, notably in the Highlands, during these years. In 1783, Thornton went to London to continue his medical studies; characteristically, he also found time to attend lectures at the Royal Academy. In the summer of 1784, he explored the Highlands with Faujas de St. He received his medical degree in 1784 at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Thornton then spent time in Paris, before returning to Tortola in 1786. There, he saw his mother for the first time since boyhood, where he came face to face with the source of his income-half interest in a sugar plantation and ownership of some 70 slaves, the possession of whom had begun to trouble him. Eager to achieve fame (and undoubtedly some expiation) in the cause of anti-slavery, he emigrated to the United States of America in the fall of 1786, moving to Philadelphia. His unsuccessful efforts to lead a contingent of free black Americans to join the small British settlement of London blacks at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River in West Africa were looked on favorably by Philadelphia’s Quaker establishment. Some leaders of the new republic-notably James Madison, with whom he lodged at Mrs. Mary House’s prominent boarding establishment in 1787 and 1788-were cognizant of Thornton’s abolitionist activities. However, after moving to the City of Washington, he took advantage of slavery. According to a diary his wife kept in 1800, he frequently shopped for slaves and bought and hired them. In 1788, he became an American citizen. Thornton married Anna Maria Brodeau, daughter of a school teacher, in 1790. In 1789, after briefly practicing medicine and pursuing an interest in steamboats, Thornton submitted a design to the architectural competition for the Library Company of Philadelphia’s new hall. His design won but was somewhat departed from during actual construction. Library Hall was described as the first building in the “modern [classical] style” to be erected in the new nation’s leading city. During his visit to Tortola between October 1790 and October 1792, Thornton learned of the design competitions for the U. Capitol and the “President’s House” to be erected in the new Federal City on the banks of the Potomac. Because a design for the Capitol had not been chosen, he was allowed to compete upon his return to Philadelphia. Hallet and Turner had been summoned to the Federal City in August 1792 to present their ideas to the “Commissioners of the District of Columbia” and local landholders. Both were then encouraged to submit revisions of their designs to accommodate new conditions and requirements. At the beginning of November, Turner’s new designs were rejected. The painter John Trumbull handed in William Thornton’s still “unfinished” revised plan of the Capitol building on January 29, 1793, but the President’s formal approbation was not recorded until April 2, 1793. Thornton was inspired by the east front of the Louvre, former royal palace later turned art museum, as well as the Pantheon, famed former Roman temple in Roma and later converted to a Christian church, for the center portion of the design. After more drawings were prepared, enthusiastic praise of Thornton’s design was echoed by Secretary of State Jefferson: simple, noble, beautiful, excellently distributed. Hallet proceeded to make numerous revisions, including removing the rotunda under which Washington was to be enshrined upon his death. So, on September 12, 1794 the President appointed Thornton as one of the three “Commissioners of the Federal District” in charge of laying out the new federal city and overseeing construction of the first government buildings, including the Capitol of which he became supervisor and remained in charge until 1802. Despite important changes and additions, (especially the substitution of a lower copper-clad wooden dome during the 1820s to 1856, for Thornton’s original design), especially by second Architect of the Capitol, Latrobe and third Architect Bulfinch, much of the design of the façade of the central portion of the Capitol is his. The Octagon House (1800), Washington, DC. Woodlawn Plantation, Fairfax County, Virginia (1805). 1808, Georgetown, Washington, DC. Library Company of Philadelphia (recreated 1954), now Library Hall, American Philosophical Society. As a consequence of winning the Capitol competition, Thornton was frequently asked to give ideas for public and residential buildings in the Federal City. He responded with designs on several occasions during his tenure as a commissioner, less so after 1802 when he took on the superintendency of the Patent Office. It was during this time he was asked to design a mansion for Colonel John Tayloe. The Tayloe House, also known as The Octagon House, in Washington, D. Was erected between 1799 and 1800. It served as a temporary “Executive Mansion” after the 1814 burning of the White House by the British and the house’s study was where President Madison signed the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. In 1899 the building was acquired by the American Institute of Architects, whose national headquarters now nestles behind it. Around 1800, he designed Woodlawn for Major Lawrence Lewis (nephew of George Washington) and his wife, Eleanor (Nelly) Parke Custis (granddaughter of Martha Washington), on 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) of Mount Vernon land. Sometime around 1808, he designed Tudor Place for Thomas Peter and his wife, Martha Parke Custis (another granddaughter of Martha Washington). Many buildings designed by Thornton have been added to the National Register of Historic Places including. Library Company of Philadelphia, 5th & Chestnut Sts. Philadelphia, PA; 1789 (demolished 1887; recreated as Library Hall, American Philosophical Society, 1954). United States Capitol, Washington, DC; 1793 – exempt. Octagon House, 1741 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC; 1799 – added in 1966. Woodlawn, W of jct. 235, Fairfax, VA, 1800-05 – added in 1970. Tudor Place, 1644 31st Street, NW, Washington, DC; 1816 – added in 1966. Founding of the Washington Jockey Club. In 1802 the Club sought a new site for its track, which at the time lay at the rear of what is now the site of Decatur House at H Street and Jackson Place, crossing Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue to Twentieth Street (today the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,) was being overtaken be the growth of the Federal City. With the leadership of John Tayloe III and Charles Carnan Ridgely and support of Gen. John Peter Van Ness, Dr. Threlkeld of Georgetown and George Calvert of Riversdale, Bladensburg, Maryland, the contests were moved to a new site near Meridian Hill, north of Columbia Road at Fourteenth Street, between present-day Eleventh and Sixteenth Streets. Thornton designed this new track, one mile in circumference, and named the Washington City Race Course. It sat on land leased from the Holmead family, and lasted until the mid-1840s. Superintendent of the Patent Office. Upon the abolition of the board in 1802, President Jefferson appointed Thornton the first Superintendent of the Patent Office. When Washington was burned by the British in 1814, Thornton convinced them not to burn the Patent Office because of its importance to mankind. He held the position from June 1, 1802 until his death in 1828 in Washington, DC. During his tenure, he introduced innovations including the patent reissue practice, which survives to this day. Some of Thornton’s reputation as an inventor is due to abuse of his position in the Patent Office. His improvements to John Fitch’s 1788 steamboat are patented but didn’t work. When John Hall applied for a patent on a new breech-loading rifle in 1811, Thornton claimed he had also invented it. As proof, he showed Hall a Ferguson rifle, a British gun dating from 1776, refusing to issue the patent unless it was in his name as well as Hall’s name. During the 1820s, Thornton was a member of the prestigious society, Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences, who counted among their members former presidents Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams and many prominent men of the day, including well-known representatives of the military, government service, medical and other professions. In the 1820s, Thornton wrote of having been summoned to Mount Vernon in December 1799, in the hopes that he would be able to treat George Washington, but of having arrived after Washington’s death; as a result, he devised a plan to resurrect Washington’s frozen corpse by first to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, & by degrees & by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the Lungs by the Trachaea, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb. Thornton’s plan was rejected, however, despite there (being) no doubt in (Thornton’s) mind that (Washington’s) restoration was possible. Thornton died in 1828 and was buried in Congressional Cemetery in eastern Washington, DC. Richard Cutts (1771 – 1845) was a United States Representative from Massachusetts. Born on Cutts Island, Saco, Massachusetts (now part of Maine), he attended rural schools and Phillips Academy, Andover. He graduated from Harvard University in 1790, studied law, and engaged extensively in navigation and commercial pursuits. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1799 and 1800, and was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Seventh and the five succeeding Congresses, serving from March 4, 1801 to March 3, 1813. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1812 to the Thirteenth Congress, and was appointed superintendent general of military supplies and served from 1813 to 1817. He was then appointed Second Comptroller of the Treasury on March 6, 1817, and served in this capacity until March 21, 1829. Cutts died in Washington, D. Initial interment was in St. John’s Graveyard, and in 1857 reinterment was in Oak Hill Cemetery. He was the husband of Dolley Madison’s sister Anna, and thus President James Madison’s brother-in-law. Cutts was a recipient of the Medal of Honor. Harmonie Autographs and Music, Inc. Music Antiquarian and Appraiser. New York, New York. All items guaranteed authentic.
