Maryland State Archives

2000/11/11 1515-1700 Explored Series 5-8.

2000/11/10 1330-1730 Reconfigured QuickTime so it wouldn't interfere with image viewing, then explored Series 1-4.

2000/11/10 1115-1215 Spent an hour on the phone with ecp introducing the system and working on making kodakimg.exe work as a viewer.

2000/11/08 1000-1515 Meeting with Adam Snyder, Ed Papenfuse, Mary Jeske, and Ron Hoffman (by telephone) about the goals of the research project and what our research team will tackle. Mary will work on legislative matters; I will read the letters of the main characters.

Robert A. Rutland, ed., 3 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1970).

Excerpts only from those documents dealing with the Virginia-Maryland border or the Potomac River:

• 1749-1772 Documents: nothing pertinent.

• 1773 Documents:

• 1774 Documents: nothing pertinent.

• 1775 Documents:

• 1776 Documents:

• 1777 Documents: nothing pertinent.

• 1778 Documents:

• 1779 Documents:

• 1780 Documents:

• 1781 Documents: nothing pertinent.

• 1782 Documents:

• 1783 Documents: nothing pertinent.

• 1784 Documents: nothing pertinent.

• 1785 Documents:
  Link here to images of the 12 pages dealing with the Mount Vernon Compact of 1785

• 1786 Documents:

• 1787 Documents:

• 1788 Documents:

• 1789-1791 Documents: nothing pertinent.

• 1792 Documents:

  
  

2000/11/19 1030-1230, 1430-1530 More scanning of the Mason Papers. During these years (I've reached 1779), at least, there isn't much to interest us. The trouble is that the index omits about half of the references to any one topic (for example, the Potomac River), so there seems little alternative but to continue skimming through the documents one by one. Most, fortunately, can readily be dismissed as of no interest to the matter at hand.

2000/11/18 1030-1230 Continued with the Mason Papers. 1530-1600 Worked with Mary Jeske on constructing links to our files. 1600-1715 Reconstructed my Mason notes and the links thereto.

2000/11/17 1400-1745 Began combing George Mason's papers (Robert Rutland, ed.) for items related to the Potomac or relations between Virginia and Maryland. Began with 1775 (although I picked up an earlier item from 1773). I note that the index is not very complete, with many mentions of the Potomac and other rivers not showing in the index.

2000/11/15 1200-1500 Finished reading Everstine's report on the Compact of 1785. Downloaded and viewed items from Series 11-14

2000/11/13 1200-1600 Spent two hours downloading articles from Series 10 and 11, and two hours reading part of Carl Everstine's 1948 treatise on the Compact of 1785.

2000/11/12 1030-1200, 1530-1730 Continued to explore and download materials from Series 8 & 9.

2000/11/26 1130-1245, 1515-1800 Read Mason papers through 1786. So far I don't see anything one way or another about whether the Compact of 1785 applied only to the Tidewater. Mason certainly was interested in issues involving tidewater ports, as witness his opposition to the 1784 Port Bill in Virginia.

2000/11/25 1030-1330, 1545-1645 Read Mason through 1784. Not too much there, except for more documents relating to Virginia's western lands.

2000/11/24 1400-1700 Finished Mason through 1779. There was nothing explicitly about the Potomac boundary, but several pieces dealing with Virginia's attempts to secure its claim to lands west of the Appalachians, against claims made by private speculators with Maryland connections, reveal the enmity between the two states. It seems apparent that Virginia was eager to confirm not only the bounds described in its own charter, but those described in the charters of other states, too, because that was the surest way of preventing encroachment on Virginia's transmontane lands. I doubt that Virginia cared very much that it was thereby ceding its claims to any part of the Potomac River: that was a tiny matter compared to the main prize.

2000/12/3 1000-1415 Finished combing the Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Vols. 7-9 only), having looked in the index under the following entries: Mount Vernon, Potomac, Potomac Navigation Project, Maryland, Virginia, Navigation, George Mason, Alexander Henderson, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Samuel Chase, and Thomas Stone. Nothing was found under Tidewater or Boundary. I will not skim through the individual documents in these three volumes (as I did with Mason's papers) unless directed to do so.

2000/12/2 1000-1615 Began working through Boyd's Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Vols. 7 thru 9: March 1784 thru June 1786). Fortunately, the index for these volumes appears to be much more complete than was the index for the Mason Papers, so I should be able to avoid the letter-by-letter skimming that was needed with Mason. (The index is not perfect, though, the mention of the Potomac from Vol. 7, p. 280, was not indexed, for example.)

Some points to note so far: Madison mentioned at least three times (see his letters of 25 April 1784, 9 January 1785, and 27 April 1785) that the Virginia-Maryland commission would be, or had been, concerned with that part of the Potomac BELOW the falls. Furthermore, in his 9 January 1785 letter, he cleared up a question I had: If the Compact of 1785 dealt only with tidewater Potomac, why did the commissioners include with it a communique to Pennsylvania advocating tri-state cooperation in the region beyond the headwaters of the Potomac? The reason was that the communique had been intended to be included with an earlier agreement between Maryland and Virginia to open up to navigation the upper reaches of the Potomac. But, through an accident of timing only, the communique was not passed by the Virginia Assembly until too late to be sent with George Washington (who negotiated the earlier agreement). So the message to Pennsylvania was left for the Mount Vernon commissioners to pass on, even though it wasn't directly connected with their enterprise.

2000/12/1 1200-1445 Finished reading Mason. He had very little to say about the Potomac after 1788, except in passing within remarks about the planned federal district and bridges across the river.

2000/11/29 1600-1830 Read Mason 1787 and part of 1788. In the latter year, notice Mason's recollections of the 1785 Compact, in which he says "Maryland was very glad to get what she got by this compact." This entry was not mentioned in the index, another indication of the poor quality of the indexing for these three volumes.

2000/11/27 0945-1030 Spent some time downloading materials from Series 9 for Mary Jeske, my cable modem being faster than her dial-up. Then tried to see if I could use my OCR program to generate readable text from the GIF files I had downloaded. Failed for at least this one source: its pages weren't clear enough of extraneous marks. 1700-1800 Started reading Mason papers for 1787. Don't expect to find much, if anything, on the Potomac, because Mason was fully involved with the Constitutional Convention in Philly for much of the year. It's difficult not to slow down and read carefully Mason's opinions about electing or impeaching presidents, given our own recent history!

Excerpts only from those documents dealing with the Virginia-Maryland border or the Potomac River:

Excerpts only from those documents dealing with the Virginia-Maryland border or the Potomac River:

2000/12/10 0800-1630, 1800-1900 Wrote up my comments on Virginia's brief. Called Mary Jeske to discuss the project.

2000/12/09 1800-2130 Read and commented on Virginia's "Brief in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment."

2000/12/06 1000-1300, 1600-1800, 2300-0000 Decided to go back to Mason's Papers and check his pre-1775 papers for anything pertinent. I found a long entry in which Mason extracted parts of the several Virginia Charters and wrote extensive notes. Included was a discussion of Maryland's claim to own to the south shore of the Potomac, which was not included in editor Rutland's inadequate index.

2000/12/04 1100-1630 Mined Volume 1 of the Papers of George Washington for items related to the Potomac case. Many of the hits were letters to and from Thomas Jefferson, which I had also collected from Jefferson's Papers. There were interesting little editorial differences between the two sets of papers. The Washington Papers, however, have more extensive editorial notes, the germane ones of which I have included in my notes. Next, I went to the UMBC Library to return Vols. 7-9 of the Jefferson Papers, and withdraw Vols. 1-3, 6, 10, and 12 of the same. I have uploaded notes related to the case from Volumes 10 and 12 (which see).

2000/12/17 1100-1930 Consulted with Mary Jeske by phone, then continued with Volume 2 of Washington. Began work on a "A Time Line of Events and Letters Concerning the Navigation of the Potomac" (which see).

2000/12/16 1300-1800 Started Volume 2 of Washington.

2000/12/15 1700-1900 Finished Volume 1 of Washington.

2000/12/13 1200-1530 Finished Volume 1 of Jefferson's Papers, and started Volume 1 of Washington's Confederation Series.

2000/12/12 1000-1230 Mary Jeske and I met with Adam Snyder, Andy Bada, Ed Papenfuse, Ron Hoffman, and Doug Richardson (the last two by conference call) to discuss research strategies.

2000/12/11 0830-1200, 1300-1530, 1615-1815 Went back to Jefferson's Papers, and revised my notes on Volumes 7-12 by including references to the Mississippi, rivers, waterways, and a few other index terms I had not thought to look up before. Then began Volume 1 of Jefferson.

This is just a work in progress, intended to help me (and others) keep the order of events straight.

The Time Line is in WordPerfect 8 format. Mary, please look at it, add to it, and offer suggestions.

2000/12/24 1600-1900 Continued extracting from Volume 6 of Jefferson's Papers.

2000/12/23 1400-1800 Decided to return to Jefferson's Papers, because they have to go back to the library much sooner than Washington's. So I began to go through Volume 6.

2000/12/22 1315-1615 Continued with Vol. 2 of Washington's Papers, bogged down in his obsession with the Potomac Company in nearly every letter he wrote. Downloaded and began to read Mary's entries from Madison's Papers.

2000/12/21 1730-1800 Mary Jeske and I conferred with Ron Hoffman by phone.

2000/12/20 1045-1245, 1600-1700 More of Vol. 2 of Washington's Papers. Entered more data into the time line.

2000/12/27 0930-1130, 1330-1545 Finished Volumes 3, 4, & 5 of Jefferson's Papers, which makes our collection complete up through Volume 12. Nothing of any particular interest found today, but I post the notes nonetheless.

2000/12/26 1230-1500, 1600-1845 Finished abstracting from Volume 6 of Jefferson's Papers. My most important finding is that Jefferson argued several times that if Virginia could not win support for Georgetown as the permanent seat of Congress (this in 1783), it should try to prevent the seat from being established in Annapolis. If not, Maryland would pull trade up the Chesapeake, past Virginia, and into its own hands. Could this reasoning concerning Georgetown have played a part in Virginia's subsequent decision to re-open talks with Maryland over the jurisdiction of the Potomac? Virginia wanted to ensure full access to its own shores of ships sailing to the new capitol. If, on the other hand, Maryland were to claim full jurisdiction, then Virginia would benefit much less than its sister state if Congress were to settle at the falls of the Potomac.

2001/01/07 0900-1200, 1300-1730 Continued with Washington's Papers, Vol. 2, until I couldn't stand it any more (too much there to transcribe on the Potomac River Company!), then went back to Jefferson, Vol. 6, and added in a number of transcriptions of material dealing with the location of Congress's permanent seat. Re-posted WordPerfect and HTML versions of all recently altered files: WashingtonVol2Confed.wpd/html; jeffersonvolume6.wpd/html; jeffersonvolume7.wpd/html; and jeffersonvolume8.wpd/html.

2001/01/06 0930-1345, 1615-1900 Went back to Jefferson's Papers (Vols. 7 & 8) and transcribed passages dealing with the push to make Georgetown the permanent seat of Congress. Then more of Washington papers, Vol. 2. Ended with a successful search in Maryland's votes and procedings for the October Session, 1777: found the appointment of commissioners for the first (abortive) Potomac conference. The MD commissioners had the same instructions they seemed to have had in 1785.

2001/01/05 1400-1530, 1630-1900, 2300-0100 Transcribed relevant letters from Vol. 2 of Washington's Papers (most of the letters deal with the "opening and extending the navigation of the Potomack"), discussed the project with Mary Jeske.

2001/01/04 0900-1130, 1600-1630 Mary and I FAXed Ron's notes to Ron and to Adam; discussed the background of the 1785 Compact (specifically our need to know more about why commissioners were named in 1778 and in 1784, and how much effect the search for a permanent seat for Congress had on the second appointment); and talked with Adam by phone about our next moves. In the afternoon, Mary and I nailed down our weekend strategy.

2001/01/03 0845-1145, 1245-1815 First typed up some notes written by Ron Hoffman. Then Added the full text of the Compact of 1785 to my notes from the Mason Papers, and re-posted that document to this site. Included are some of my comments in preparation for analyzing the meaning of certain words in the compact ("navigation," "ship," "vessel," "port," etc.) which refer to primarily to sea-going navigation, and not to inland navigation.

2001/01/02 1000-1230, 1615-1730 Mary Jeske and I met with Adam Snyder, Andy Bada, Ed Papenfuse, Ron Hoffman, and Doug Richardson (the last two by conference call) to discuss research strategies. Talked more with Mary and Ron in the afternoon, and picked up some books on the founding of Washington, D.C., at the UMBC library.

2001/01/14 0900-1200, 1400-1600 Worked on writing about the antecedents of the 1785 Compact during the morning. Spent the afternoon poring over, and downloading pages from, Ed's online stash of Votes and Proceedings of the Maryland senate and house. Was able to reconstruct a detailed timeline of events leading from the Virginia Constitution of 1776 right up to the appointment of commissioners by VA and MD in December 1777.

2001/01/13 0945-1500, 1700-1930 Began writing. Completed drafts of two sections dealing with the initial effortson the jurisdiction and navigation of the Potomac, and on the cession of Western lands.

2001/01/12 1000-1200 Met with Mary to plan our report on the Compact of 1785.

2001/01/11 0900-1600 Reviewed notes before meeting; Mary & I met with Adam Snyder; attempted to secure a copy of Shepherd's Laws of Virginia at the Peabody Library (no luck: they close at 3, and have a slow computer; we can get it Tuesday); called Ron; made plans for tomorrow's meeting.

2001/01/10 0945-1130 Looked up and transcribed records from Vol. 1 of the Calendar of Virginia papers, and skimmed over the other likely entries Mary found for Volumes 2-4 (I'll post the little I found in Vol. 1 on Mary's page).

2001/01/08 1000-1400, 1500-1800 More Washington, Vol. 2, then spent some time going over what I've collected so far, and organized it into a looseleaf notebook that contains all of the writings Mary and I have collected so far from Jefferson, Madison, Mason, and Washington. Click on the name above for a WordPerfect file containing all we've transcribed for that person so far.

2001/01/21 1015-1800 Writing, coordinating with mary.

2001/01/20 1230-1330, 1400-1830. Conversed with Mary about how we'll merge our two drafts. She had made a great start on that, so I researched the reaction of the MD assembly to the Compact, and began rewriting my section on the meaning of the words therein. Mary and I talked some more about her efforts to interleave our sections. She'll email me what she's done tonight, so I can work on it late.

2001/01/19 1300-1500, 1700-1800, 0000-0100 Edited my draft for a few hours; read and made comments on Mary's draft starting about midnight.

2001/01/18 0900-1100 Wrote and edited my writing.

2001/01/17 1400-1800 Spent time writing, emailing to Mary and Ed, reading the Journal of the Virginia House of Delegates, October 1777 Session, and downloading the first volume of the Sharpe letters to send to Mary.

2001/01/15 0815-1400, 1500-1745 Revised what I had already written, based on the new info I uncovered yesterday. Have now managed to reach the start of the Mount Vernon conference, but haven't yet written anything about the attempts to locate a permanent seat for Congress. Lots more to do, so you shouldn't expect a draft tomorrow, Adam. Mary and I will call you in the morning.