Part 17 (1/2)

Mr. Linthic.u.m 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 const.i.tute the only a.s.surance 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 Linthic.u.m Inst.i.tute incorporated by Congress were prevented by Charles Sumner, Senator from Ma.s.sachusetts, for the reason that the benefits were confined to white youths.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDWARD MAGRUDER LINTHIc.u.m]

The Linthic.u.m Inst.i.tute 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 Linthic.u.m 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. Linthic.u.m 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.sical 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 Was.h.i.+ngton in a little store 10 x 16 feet on Pennsylvania Avenue near 15th Street. He was so successful that he eventually took into partners.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sist 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 grat.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 pa.s.sing the sub-treasury bill at present.