Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -

Sale 2708 - Lot 89

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.) 19th-century copies of Georgetown records relating to Potomac River navigation. [37] manuscript pages of loose documents written transcribed circa 1810-1819, plus a "Register for Georgetown" ([5], 77 manuscript pages) of records from 1751-1789 and transcribed in 1866; worn with substantial edge wear, the "Register" disbound with original boards present. Georgetown, DC, 1810-1866
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The town of Georgetown, the original settlement within the District of Columbia, had long made efforts to improve navigation along the Potomac River, along with the private Potomac Company. These documents were mostly transcribed circa 1810-1813 and 1866 from official Georgetown records on the subject.

Contemporary manuscript copies of Georgetown documents such as the minutes of the Georgetown commissioners (5 January 1810). A Georgetown "Ordinance for Improving the Channel of the River Below the Town" (16 June 1810), has the secretarial copies of the signatures of Mayor Thomas Corcoran and Board of Alderman president Francis Scott Key (the Star-Spangled Banner author). A few documents also relate to Georgetown roads, such as an extract from "A Supplement to the Ordinance . . . for Paving Part of Gay Street" (24 May 1813) and a small undated sketch map of C Street North.

An Autograph Letter Signed from engineer Thomas Moore (1760-1822) to David Wiley (1768-1812) discusses the competing plans for the navigation channel, 1 June 1810. The recipient Wiley was a leading citizen of Georgetown who later served a term as mayor. Moore writes: " The sentiment in favour of the Virginia Channel may be traced to two sources. The first and principal one I take to be the extreme reluctance and I may say aversion that many of your citizens feel to having connection with or making any application to the City Corporation on the subject. . . . The other is evidently an error in judgment resulting from a deficiency in knowledge of the principles of hydrostatics."

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