#107/1844.
10 Will of Alexander Shepherd, dated Apr. 28, 1845, D.C. Recorder of Wills, Washington, D.C., Office of the Probate Clerk; the estimated current value of the advance to Alexander is from measuringworth.com, a nonprofit website providing U.S. currency equivalents from 1776 to the present.
11National Intelligencer, June 6, 1845.
12U.S. Census, 1820, District of Columbia, microcopy no. 33, reel 5, Washingtoniana Room, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.
13Robert Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction: Race and Radicalism (Cambridge, 2011), p. 2.
14Ibid.
15Kenneth Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea and Location of the American Capital (Fairfax, Va., 1991), pp. 127–60.
16Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 3; Scott W. Berg, Grand Avenues: The Story of the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D. C. (New York, 2007), pp. 78–80.
17Berg, Grand Avenues, pp. 97–100.
18Bowling, Creation of Washington, D.C., p. 12.
19Tindall, “A Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd, pp. 49–50.
20This information is from a biographical fragment from Mary Grice Shepherd, narrated in Mexico in the 1880s and dictated to Fred Martin, based on information provided by Shepherd. Mrs. Shepherd noted, “In earlier years I had driven past the home which Mr. Shepherd pointed out as his birthplace, a statement his mother confirmed” (copy courtesy of Shepherd grand daughter Mary Wagner Woods). Identifying the location of Shepherd’s birthplace has generated controversy, which is all the more surprising since it was misidentified by no less an authority than Dr. William Tindall, author of A Standard History of the City of Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1914) and “A Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” as well as personal secretary to Governor Shepherd and his successors. Tindall named another birth location in southwest Washington, for which there is no land deed showing it was owned by Shepherd’s father. Much later, Tindall identified his source for the incorrect birthplace address as Thomas Shepherd, Alexander Shepherd’s somewhat unreliable younger brother (Evening Star [Washington, D.C.], May 8, 1919).
21Tindall, “Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” p. 50.
22Ibid.
23Typescript account written in Mexico in the 1880s by a family member, possibly Mary Grice Shepherd, pp. 1 and 50, copy given to the author by Shepherd great-grandson W. Sinkler Manning Jr. (hereafter Mexico Typescript).
24Although the Mexico Typescript says only that the widow Shepherd supported the family by her own exertions, the 1850 city directory (Edward Waite, The Washington Directory and Congressional and Executive Register for 1850 [Washington, D.C., 1850]) cites a boarding house operated by a Mrs. Shepherd at a slightly different address on Ninth Street, but no doubt refers to the same person. A new Washington quadrant and house-numbering policy in 1869 dramatically altered house numbers.
25Mexico Typescript, p. 1.
26Tindall, Standard History of the City of Washington, p. 262.
27“Sessions Book, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., First Book, Session 1828–1878,” National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C.
28George W. Evans, The Master Mind and Rebuilder of the Nation’s Capital: A Paper Read before the Society of Natives of the District of Columbia, October 20th, 1922 (Washington, D.C., 1922), p. 6.
29Mexico Typescript, p. 1.
30Tindall, “Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” p. 66.
31William F. Mattingly, “The Unveiling of a Statue to the Memory of Alexander R. Shepherd in front of the District Building, Washington, D.C., May 3, 1909,” pp. 24–25, Kiplinger Research Library, Historical Society of Washington, Washington, D.C.
32Tindall, “Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” p. 62.
33Evening Star, May 16, 1857; and Walter Clephane, “Lewis Clephane: A Pioneer Washington Republican,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 21 (1918):276.
34Evening Star, July 3, 1885. The article went on to say that silting up of the Potomac River flats created a major problem for reaching deep water. The onset of the Civil War saw the boat club forgotten, and members fought for one side or the other.
35Carl Abbott, “National Capitals in a Networked World,” in Berlin-Washington, 1800–2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representation, and National Identities, ed. Andreas Daum and Christof Mauch (Cambridge, 2005), p. 112.
36Bowling, Creation of Washington, D.C., p. 12.
37Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 4–6.
38Kenneth Bowling, “Siting Federal Capitals,” in Daum and Mauch, Berlin-Washington, 1800–2000, pp. 37–38.
39The Grices were from Philadelphia and the Youngs were from Portsmouth, Virginia; ancestors from both families had served with distinction in America’s early wars.
40Alan Lessoff, The Nation and Its City: Politics, “Corruption,” and Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861–1902 (Baltimore, 1994), p. 5.
41Howard Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Baltimore, 1995), p. 18.
42Report [with Senate Bill no. 136], 23rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1835, S. Rep. 97, Feb. 2, 1835, reprinted in full in Board of Public Works 1872 Annual Report (Washington, D.C., 1872), pp. 25–32.
43Ibid., p. 26.
44Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation, 2 vols. (London, 1842), 1:281–82.
45Walter Erhart, “Written Capitals and Capital Topography,” Daum and Mauch, Berlin-Washington, 1800–2000, pp. 57–58.
46Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty, pp. 22–23.
47Ibid., pp. 25–26.
48In Ronald C. White Jr., A. Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 2009), p. 251.
49Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 (New York, 1941), pp. 9–10.
50Lessoff, The Nation and Its City, p. 18.
51U.S. Census, 1860: Recapitulation of the Tables of Population, Nativity, and Occupation (Washington, D.C., 1864), pp. 616–19.
52Carl Abbott, Political Terrain: Washington, D. C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (Chapel Hill, 1999), pp. 64–65.
53Ibid.,
