21 Apr 2014

Lost Capitol Hill: The Widow Wheeler

tnLast week, we looked at Acquila Wheeler and the ferry that he ran across the Anacostia River in the early days of the Federal City – and its importance to the fledgling capital. Today, we’ll look at its demise – and replacement.

The year 1795 proved to be the beginning of the end of the Wheeler ferry. On December 24 of that year, Congress passed “An act for erecting a Bridge over the Eastern Branch of Potomac River.” In it, Notley Young (No relation to Elizabeth – there were two prominent families named Young on the Hill in the early days of the Federal City) Daniel Carroll, Thomas Law, William Mayne Duncanson, George Walker and Matthew Wigfield were given the opportunity to found a company that would build a bridge from the lower end of Kentucky Avenue across the Anacostia to the land of Matthew Wigfield – which had been the terminus of the ferry up until then.

In order to generate the money needed for this enterprise, Young was allowed to sell 225 shares “at a rate not exceeding two hundred dollars for each share.” With their $45,000 dollars, they were to build a bridge “in the most secure and substantial manner, [it] shall be secured and supported at each end by good and sufficient abutments or piers of stone, and shall not be less than twenty feet wide, and that there shall be a draw in the aforesaid bridge, sufficient to admit vessels to pass and repass, of at least thirty feet wide.”

Finally, the act stated that, for the next thirty years, the owners would not be allowed to charge more to cross the bridge than it currently cost to take the ferry. While the act does not disclose how much this was, an article from the Records of the Columbia Historical Society does: Three cents for a pedestrian, twice that for a horse and rider; for horse drawn conveyances seven cents per axle plus three cents per horse; large animals at three cents a head, smaller ones too.

Acquila Wheeler was never to find out how this played out, as, in 1796, he “crossed a ferry as a passenger; crossed it in Charon’s boat” in the overblown words of another paper published in the Records. In short, Acquila Wheeler died, leaving Elizabeth Wheeler in charge of the ferry. For the next couple of years, she plied the trade, and it was in this time that another Frenchman, this time the Baron Rochefoucould, wrote of his trip on the boat:

Map 1796

Detail of map showing the Widow Wheeler’s lands in 1796. The ferry is named “Upper Ferry” to differentiate it from the lower ferry, which left from Barry’s Wharf, located near the canal. (Google books)

The Eastern-branch is passed in a tolerably good boat, a little too flat, and a great deal too small for the quantity of horses which are taken into it. I passed in this boat with ten horses and a carriage, and was uneasy till I arrived on the other side. The passage over this river is from three quarters of a mile to a league.

In 1797, thus, the bridge opened, and in April of that year, James Wallace and R. Anderson ran an advertisement in the Washington Gazette, in which they attempted to rent “to the highest Bidder” the “well-known Ferry and Fishing Landing, with the Tenements thereto” that had previously been owned by the Wheelers. There is no indication of their being able to successfully pawn off this business, whose end was certainly nigh. The Widow Wheeler, for her part, is known to have been “non compos mentis” in 1799; when she died is unclear.

 


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