Anastasia bought several lots on Massachusetts Avenue, a block west of Dupont Circle and across the street from family friend from Nevada, Curtis Hillyer. She then contracted architect Robert Fleming, who had built Hillyer’s house, to build her a very large house. When completed, the house at 2122 Massachusetts Avenue had cost Anastasia more than $70,000 (over $2.3 million in 2025). Even though she was extremely rich, Anastasia was also known to be very frugal and sued Fleming for an unaccounted for $30,000 in the construction of the house.

As soon as they had settled in their new home, the sisters made it a point to get to know everybody in society. They went everywhere, no two of them ever attending the same event to ensure that one Patten would be at every social gathering. The sisters seemed to be interchangeable socially, with society pages daily listing the events attended by “Miss Patten,” but rarely, if ever, saying which one. Once back home, they would compare notes to make sure they were all equally up to date with the latest gossip. This led to the saying, “if you want any news in Washington, there is the telephone, telegraph, and the “tele-Pattens.”

Only two of the daughters, Augusta and Edythe, would ever marry. Katherine Augusta was the first to wed in 1887 to Missouri representative John Milton Glover. The wedding was held in the Pattens’s home chapel and the newlyweds then moved into the house with the rest of the family.

Anastasia Patten died in Portland, Maine in September 1888 at the age of only 44. She had gone to the Maine coast for health reasons, but once there, her health rapidly declined. Her remains were returned to Washington for a funeral at St. Matthew’s Cathedral before being sent to San Mateo, California for internment next to her husband in a mausoleum she had erected over his body. Friend and neighbor and Senator William Stewart served as one of the pall bearers.

Anastasia’s death caused a serious breach between Augusta and her sisters that was never mended. John Glover and Augusta sued the other sisters for Augusta’s share of her parent’s inheritance. But the sisters claimed that Augusta already received her share as Anastasia had already given Glover $100,000. Glover argued that it was simply a marriage gift and did not represent his wife’s share of the estate. The sisters demanded that the Glovers move out of the house. The legal battles went on for years and ended only when the other sisters agreed to pay Augusta $25,000 each to relinquish any further claims on their mother’s estate, but this by no means was equivalent to the amount she was originally due to inherit, which would have been no less than $1,000,000. The Glovers eventually found themselves in New York, where John then retired from political life.

The Patten house came to be known as the “Irish Embassy” or the “Irish Castle” because of the sisters’ devout Irish nature and devotion to Catholicism. They had a private chapel in the house built where priests would come to celebrate Mass for the sisters.

Sunday afternoon teas at the Patten home were the talk of the town, especially with the diplomatic set to whom the sisters catered. Jules Cambon, the French ambassador, referred to the remaining sisters in the house as Quatre Pattes—the four legs.

In 1901, Edythe Agnes Patten, with a pending $700,000 inheritance, married Civil War veteran Major General Henry Clarke Corbin. Corbin was a fifty-nine-year-old widower with three children, and Edythe was already well into her thirties. According to her mother’s will, Edythe could not get possession of her share of the inheritance without the consent of her three sisters, which they gave. Five years prior to this engagement, Edythe had been engaged to another gentleman; however, even with the wedding date already announced, her sisters did not give their consent, and the engagement was broken off.

Widely covered by the press across the country, Edythe’s wedding ceremony was officiated by Cardinal Gibbons in the elaborately decorated drawing room in the Patten home. The three other sisters were Edythe’s only family present. The wedding guests included President Roosevelt, his daughter Alice, representatives of the official and diplomatic corps, and local society.

In 1905, the Corbins travelled to the Philippines with William Howard Taft’s Second Philippine Commission to establish a civilian government. Once there, Corbin took command of the Division of the Philippines— the core U.S. infantry division of the United States Army's Philippine Department.

After Corbin retired, the couple moved to their newly built house at 1701 Twenty-second Street Northwest, only an few blocks away from Edythe’s sisters, and spent the weekends at Highwood, Corbin’s new country house in Chevy Chase, DC that was designed by Corbin’s close friend and famed Chicago architect Daniel Burnham and completed in 1907. The Corbins had one daughter, also Edythe, who would become a prominent member of the next generation of young Washington socialites.

Henry Corbin died in 1909, and Edythe leased out both the downtown and the Chevy Chase houses and moved back in with the three sisters still living in the Massachusetts Avenue house.

In 1911 rumors swirled that Edythe was to marry millionaire financier and Taft supporter J.G. Schmidlapp whom she had met on the 1905 trip to the Phillipines. The engagement supposedly was to be announced at a reunion of the passengers of the Philippine trip at the Boardman mansion in DuPont Circle, but Edythe ended up not attending the event and the announcement was never made. One might wonder if the sisters did not give their consent again this time.

In 1934, Nellie Patten applied for a zoning change to be able to convert the property at 2122 Massachusetts Avenue into an apartment building. Larz Anderson, whose property next door was considered to be the most valuable in the neighborhood at that time, opposed the conversion. Neighbors claimed that Massachusetts Avenue west of Twenty-first Street was still one of the few remaining “high-grade” streets within the limits of the old city of Washington. There was no particular demand for apartments in the neighborhood at that time and such a building would be a disgrace to the neighborhood. But Helen continued to push and by 1936 was now seeking to completely raze the house to allow for the construction of an apartment building on the site. By this time, neighbors were beginning to recognize that that stretch of Massachusetts Avenue was already a string of boardinghouses and now thought that a “high class apartment building” would not be so detrimental to the neighborhood. The D.C. Zoning Commission approved Helen’s request.

Yet the grand Patten mansion and lot did not sell, and the old spinster sisters Mary, Josephine, and Helen continued on in the house, still hosting their high teas. Mathilde Townsend, now Mrs. Peter Goelet Gerry, would sometime make the trip across the street from the Townsend mansion to attend the teas and visit with her mother’s old friends.

By the time they finally sold the house in 1944, the Patten sisters were quietly living in a modest row house on the other side of Dupont Circle at 1726 Massachusetts Avenue.

Josephine died in 1945, and Nellie a year later. Edythe Corbin lived until 1959 when she died at the age of ninety.

Four years after her death, Nellie finally got her wish to have an apartment building on the site of the Patten mansion. In 1950, construction began on a $1 million, 312-unit building that still stands on the site today. The old house was so solidly built that it took almost three months to completely tear it down.

As a result, and as the federal government expanded in the 1960s and 70s, Washington added numerous brutalist buildings by leading architects that have become icons of that architectural movement.

Trump's executive order, which he revived on his first day back in office, mandates that federal buildings in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere should prioritize the "classical architectural style." This order aims to "beautify public spaces" by emphasizing designs that align with regional heritage and American classical traditions, all according to the White House's website.

Brutalism is certainly not a favorite architectural style for a lot of people,…

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Five Washingtonians were first-class passengers aboard the Titanic for its fateful maiden voyage. They were Clarence Moore, Major Archibald Butt, Francis Davis Millet, Major Archibald Gracie, and Helen Churchill Candee. The following are their stories.

Clarence Moore, a noted sportsmen and horseman, had left Washington on March 16, 1912 to vacation in London and to purchase foxhounds for the Loundon Hunt in Leesburgh, Virginia, a live fox hunt that still continues today. On April 10, Moore, along with his manservant, boarded the Titanic at Southampton for the trip home.

Col. Archibald Gracie was a writer, soldier, amateur historian, and real estate investor. In early 1912, he had traveled to Europe on the RMS Oceanic alone, without his wife or their daughter. On the return trip, he boarded the Titanic at Southampton. Once aboard the ship, he seems to have assigned himself the role of keeping an eye on various unaccompanied older women, who included fellow Washington passenger Helen Churchill Candee, who had no need for Col. Gracie’s chaperoning.

Major Archibald “Archie” Butt, then age 46, was an American Army officer, aide to Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, and close personal friend of Taft himself. Butt was concluding a six-week vacation in Europe along with a companion, 63-year-old Francis “Frank” Millet. Archie Butt boarded the Titanic at Southampton and Frank Millet boarded the ship at its stop in Cherbourg later that same day. They had shared a stateroom on their outbound voyage to Europe on the steamship Berlin, but took separate compartments on the Titanic. This may have been due the nature of their relationship, with Archie Butt feeling he was less likely to be recognized by the passengers on the Berlin; the high profile return trip on the Titanic would not provide the same level of anonymity for the pair.

Frank Millet was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1848. At the of 15, he was a drummer boy and served as an assistant to his father, a Civil War surgeon. Millet later graduated from Harvard with a Master of Arts degree. In addition to being an acclaimed artist and sculptor, he was also a writer, a decorated war correspondent, and served as vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts. In 1879, he married Elizabeth ("Lily") Greely Merrill in Paris, with Mark Twain serving as his best man. He and Lily had four children together, but were seldom together themselves.

The relationship between Archie Butt and Frank Millet has been much discussed, with some historians ultimately concluding that it was a homosexual one. On the surface, it may have appeared simply as an arrangement of convenience between two single men in Washington—Archie being a confirmed bachelor, and Frank’s family living abroad. Archie only ever referred to Frank as “my artist friend who lives with me." But, the two men were inseparable and were considered very much a couple by those who knew them.

Archie and Frank ultimately moved in together in 1910 into a large house at 2000 G Street NW. There, they set themselves up with a cook and two young live-in Philippine houseboys. Together, they would entertain with large parties that were attended by members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and President Taft himself. On one occasion, they threw an intimate dinner party to celebrate the completion of Frank’s portrait of Archie that was attended by President Taft, as well as their bachelor friends.

Helen Churchill Candee was an established literary figure, one of the country’s first professional interior decorators, and an activist for women’s rights. Although she had divorced her abusive husband and was raising two small children on her own, she managed to carve out a successful living as an author and journalist. One of her books, How Women May Earn a Living, became an international best seller, enabling her to afford a first class cabin on the world’s most expensive ship.

Helen Candee was traveling in Europe in the spring of 1912, completing research for her latest book, The Tapestry Book, when she received a telegram saying that her son had been injured in a car accident. From Paris, she hurriedly booked passage home on the Titanic, boarding at Cherbourg. On the voyage, she spent her time socializing with the other Washington passengers.

At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles south of Newfoundland, the Titanic struck an iceberg. Helen Candee was able to find a spot in one of the ship’s lifeboats, but had fallen and fractured her ankle in the process. She, along with another first-class passenger, Margaret “Unsinkable Molly” Brown, helped man the oars.

Unlike the other Washington men, Col. Gracie made it off the ship and survived by clinging to the rail of the topmost deck until the last. When the ship made its final plunge down to the sea floor, he was forced to let go and was caught in an eddy caused by the ship’s rapid sinking. After swirling around for what seemed an interminable time, he eventually came to the surface to find the sea a mass of tangled wreckage. Unhurt, he grabbed onto a wooden crate floating nearby until he managed to pull himself onto a large canvas and cork life-raft that had capsized. He immediately helped one man onto the raft, and then began rescuing those who had jumped into the sea and were floundering in the water. When dawn broke, there were thirty people on the raft, standing knee deep in the icy water and afraid to move lest it be overturned. Hours passed before they were picked up by the RMS Carpathia.

Accounts vary widely about the last minutes of the Washington men who remained aboard the ship. According to Col. Gracie’s testimony before a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing soon after the tragedy, at around 2:00 a.m. Clarence Moore, along with Archie Butt, Frank Millet, and another first-class passenger, Arthur Ryerson, had returned to their usual table in the first-class smoking lounge to play a final hand of cards.

Frank Millet’s body was later recovered by the cable boat Mackay-Bennett and returned to East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He was still dressed in formal evening clothes of a light overcoat, black pants, and a gray jacket. On the day of Millet's funeral, President Taft sent a large floral blanket for Millet's coffin. The bodies of Clarence Moore and Archie Butt were never recovered.

Washington anxiously waited for news about survivors of the Titanic. Not since the Spanish-American War had a national disaster held Washington at such a level of painful suspense. It was not until the RMS Carpathia reached New York that Washington knew the fate of its residents who had boarded the ship. When news reached Washington that Clarence Moore, Archie Butt, and Frank Millet were not on the ship, the city went into semi-mourning. Dinner parties at embassies and private homes were canceled.

Archie Butt’s first memorial service was held in the Butt family home with 1,500 mourners. President Taft spoke at the service. At a second memorial service, Taft broke down in tears shortly after starting his eulogy and had to end it abruptly. Taft also skipped the season-opening Washington Senators game in 1912 out of grief for Butt.

Col. Gracie became so obsessed with determining the cause of the Titanic’s sinking that his health failed. He fell into a coma on December 2, 1912 and died of complications from diabetes two days later—only eight months after surviving the sinking, becoming the first adult survivor to die. According to a New York Times article at the time of his death, his last words were reportedly, "We must get them into the boats. We must get them all into the boats." Gracie also died before he could finish correcting the proofs of his book, The Truth about the Titanic, which was published in 1913.

Although the ankle injury Helen Candee sustained while fleeing the sinking Titanic required her to walk with a cane for almost a year afterwards, by March 1913 she was able to join other feminist equestriennes in the "Votes for Women" parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, riding her horse at the head of the procession that culminated at the steps of Capitol Hill.

Two years after the Titanic tragedy, Helen Candee joined the Red Cross in Italy, during the start of World War I. A decade later, she was living in Beijing, where she became involved in the Chinese Civil War on the side of the Nationalists against the Communists, sending periodic dispatches from the front lines to the New York Times. She was nearly seventy years old at this time. After being decorated by the king of Siam for her 1924 book, Angkor the Magnificent, she retired to her summer home in York Harbor, Maine, where she died in 1949 at the age of ninety.

Memorials to the Titanic Victims

Of the two memorials to the Titanic victims in Washington, the first to be installed was a White House fountain in honor of Archie Butt and Frank Millet. The officially-given reason for the fountain was to honor the two Titanic dead who had been part of the federal government. While Butt was an Army officer and aide to both presidents Roosevelt and Taft, Millet had a mostly symbolic governmental role as vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts.

In 1913, friends of Archie and Frank had raised enough money, and with the authorization of Congress, commissioned a memorial fountain for the two. President Taft approved sculptor Daniel Chester French’s design for the memorial and its location on the ellipse just beyond the White House South Lawn, where he could easily see it. It still stands there today.

For the second Titanic memorial, there was a design competition and the winning design by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was selected in 1914. The architect for the memorial was Henry Bacon, who previously designed the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial was finally installed in its original location along the Potomac River at the foot of New Hampshire Avenue in 1930, and dedicated in May 1931.

Some thirty years later, in order to make room for the Kennedy Center, the memorial was removed, placed in storage, and then later reinstalled at its current location at the Southwest Waterfront Park in 1968.

The collapse of the Knickerbocker Theater's roof in Washington, DC on the evening of January 28, 1922 brought tragedy not only to those inside, but also later to its owner and architect. Reborn as the Ambassador Theatre the following year, it would continue to survive until the 1960s.

The Knickerbocker Theater once stood on the southeast corner of Eighteenth Street and Columbia Road NW. It was built in 1917 for the Knickerbocker Theater Company, owned by businessman Harry Crandall. At one point, Crandall owned a chain of 18 theaters in Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.

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In 1794, Massachusetts real estate investor James Greenleaf, with the help of a letter of recommendation from George Washington, bought 3,000 lots from the District Commissioners at a bargain price of $66.50 each, committing to build 70 houses at a rate of twenty a year to be ready in time to house members of Congress when they arrived in the city in 1800.

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Azor Nickerson was born in 1837 in Litchfield, Medina, Ohio, and was studying law when the Civil War broke out. He volunteered with the Eighth Ohio infantry regiment and was appointed a second lieutenant. He then was promoted to captain, leading his company in the Battles of Antietam and Gettysburg and was wounded in both battles.

After the Battle of Gettysburg, Nickerson was nursed back to health by a Quaker family that lived near the battlefield. He later returned to Gettysburg and was on the platform when Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.

Nickerson married his first wife, Ella Nora Riegal, the daughter of the famil…

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For the upper classes during the Gilded Age, winters were the time of the “social season” that took place between Thanksgiving and the beginning of Lent in several of the larger east coast cities. The season was marked by exclusive dinner parties, balls, house concerts, and other events. The Wadsworths would often travel from upstate New York for extended periods of time to participate in the seasons i…

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Charles Van Wyck was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. He completed preparatory studies and graduated from Rutgers College in 1843. He then studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1847, eventually moving to Bloomingburg, New York, where he became the district attorney of Sullivan County, New York in 1850.

Van Wyck had inherited a sizable amount of money and was quite eccentric. Never concerned about his personal appearance, Van Wyck would never have been mistaken for a wealthy man. His appearance was often disheveled, with baggy clothes, collars gone awry, and black string neckties caught up around his ears. His enemies called him “Crazy Horse” on account of his jerky speech and gestures.

Van Wyck first came to Washington when h…

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On December 24, 1793, the real estate syndicate of James Greenleaf and Robert Morris purchased 6,000 lots from the city commissioners in order to help finance the new government and began marketing the lots for sale and development.  Robert Morris was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. He helped George Washington acquire the funds for the Yorktown campaign during the Revolutionary War and was given the moniker “Financier of the American Revolution.” The G…

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The return to Washington was a practical move for Julia Grant. Along with many of her lifelong friends, she also had a considerable amount of family in town: a son, a daughter, and two sisters.

Julia’s divorced daughter, Ellen “Nellie,” who married Englishman Algernon Sartoris in an elaborate White House ceremony in 1874 that was billed as one of the greatest American social events of the 19th century, had returned to Washington the year before her mother and was living in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.

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Levi Ziegler Leiter was born in Leitersburg, Maryland (just north of Hagerstown) in the town founded by and named after his grandfather, Abraham Leiter.  While some of his ancestors were Mennonites, Levi Leiter was raised as a Lutheran.

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While Emory hailed from the old Washington “Cave Dwellers”— wealthy southern Democrat families that were in Washington from its founding—he was also part of a new wave of socialites who would transform the city’s Dupont Circle neighborhood in the 1880s—those with money, and a lot of it.

In 1879, the thirty-three-year-old Emory, then a navy lieutenant, contracted the architectural firm of Smithmeyer and Peltz (which later would design the Library of Congress’s Jefferson Building) to design a house for him, his wife …

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Hamilton Stuyvesant Fish III was from a long line of distinguished politicians. His grandfather, Hamilton Fish, served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York, lieutenant governor and governor of New York, a senator, and the 26th Secretary of State under Ulysses S. Grant.  His father served as Speaker of the New York State Assembly and a also as a member of the United States House of Representatives.

Fish attended Harvard where he graduated in 1909 with a cum laude degree in history and government.  He turned down an offer to teach history there after his graduation, instead opting to sell insurance in New York City.

At the outset of the U.S. involvement in World War I, Fish was made a captain in the 369th U.S. Infantry Regiment, a unit composed of African American enlisted men that came to be famously known as the "Harlem Hellfighters." The 369th spent 191 days on the front lines, which was the longest of any Am…

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John Field, a successful Philadelphia banker and businessman, and his wife Eliza were well established in Philadelphia before they decided to retire to Washington in the early 1880s. They were great patrons of the arts and noted benefactors of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Mrs. Field’s father was one of its founders. The couple’s portrait was painted by John Singer Sargent in Paris in 1882, and Mrs. Field donated it to the academy after John Field’s death. Artist Gilbert Stuart had painted her mother’s (Abigail Willi…

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Until 1850, only three judicial executions had taken place in DC. Although homicide was a common aspect of life in early Washington, the idea of hanging a man for a violent altercation with another, even if it resulted in a death, was alien to the minds of early Washingtonians. As a result, juries were more willing to convict a man of manslaughter, an act with no malice of aforethought, than wade into the murkier waters of motives or passion to determine degrees of murder.

Had McGurk not been an Irishman in Washington in 1802, and/or been tried only a year later, he might have been convicted of manslaughter and lived. But a conviction of first-degree murder and an execution provided the perfect opportunity to release increasing tensions between the locals and Irish immigrants in a small town.  

James McGurk

James McGurk (sometimes spelled McGirk) was among the many Irish immigrants who were part of the earliest labor forces helping to build the new capital city. Many came as indentured servants as early as 1784 to work on the Potowmack Company, and later on the construction of the government’s public buildings. They also bought many of the house lots that the government had been unsuccessful in auctioning off to support its building campaign. They built homes on them, and quickly became an integral part of the population of the emerging city. Although they provided much of the city’s needed manual labor, these Irishmen lacked the necessary skills to enter into the artisan hierarchy and ended up working alongside slaves and freemen.

At the time, the criminal status of the Irish was suspect. Many of the indentured servants were, in fact, newly released convicts. Two cargo loads of Irish convicts were sent to work in Georgetown and Alexandria in 1785 and 1786. James Hoban, the construction superintendent of the White House and native of County Kilkenny himself, was accused of bringing with him a “company of thieves” when he arrived in Washington from Charleston 1792. Known locally as the “Mechanics,” the Irish would continue to be despised in Washington for the next sixty years.

McGurk had come to Washington from Philadelphia and found work as a bricklayer. Along with his wife, he settled amongst his compatriots on F Street between 12th and 13th Streets, NW. He was known for his drunken rages, often returning home drunk, quarreling with and beating his young wife. After a series of beatings in August 1801, she gave birth prematurely to twin boys. The babies had bruises on their bodies, and were either stillborn or died shortly after the delivery. Mrs. McGurk died several days later. Her death may have been the result of childbirth, the beatings, or a combination of both. 

McGurk was arrested and jailed on charges of murdering his wife. The city’s jail at the time was nothing more than a small brick building consisting of three rooms that adjoined a bath house on the north side of C Street between 4th and 6th Streets, NW. In its day, it was the only bath house in the city, offering first-class accommodations. With no competition, its business flourished. By 1802, the lower floor served as a saloon and the rear was used for lock-ups where McGurk was thrown in with debtors, petty criminals, and runaway slaves. Over the years, this building would become known as “McGurk’s Jail.”

A Fledgling Circuit Court

The court that was to try McGurk had only recently been established and was at odds politically with the new Jefferson administration,  When Jefferson, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party and rival to the Federalists, took office on March 4, 1801, he inherited two pieces of legislation that Adams had hoped would leave a permanent Federalist legacy on the country's legal system: the Judiciary Act of 1801, and the Organic Act of 1801. Also known as the "Midnight Judges Act," the Judiciary Act reorganized the federal circuit courts and increased the size of the judiciary, which was then filled by Adams's eleventh-hour appointments of Federalist judges, all with lifetime terms. 

The Organic Act of 1801, also known as an “Act concerning the District of Columbia,” was an emergency measure taken when Congress realized that the land on which the nation’s capital sat had been overlooked and was without a uniform set laws or governance of its own. It combined five separate territories--Washington City, Georgetown, Washington County in Maryland, Alexandria, and the County of Alexandria into just two counties: the County of Washington, and the County of Alexandria. 

The Organic Act also established a federal circuit court with a local jurisdiction to convene four times a year, twice in each of the two newly established counties. This court held the same status as the other circuit courts and consisted of three judges—a chief justice, and two assistant justices— who were also appointed for life. It also established the position of Attorney General of the United States to prosecute cases before the court. This new court covered not only federal crimes, but also any issue that would normally come before a court.

At first, Jefferson was powerless to do anything about Adams’s appointments of federal judges for the circuit courts. While he could not remove them directly, he simply changed the law that had created their positions.  In 1802, the new Congress passed the Repeal Act of 1802 that abolished Adams's newly created circuit courts, putting the midnight judges out of their jobs.

Jefferson did not purge all of the Adams-appointed judges though. Being a practical man, he realized that Washington needed some form of a local legal system and governance and did not repeal the Organic Act. He also knew he would be able to exercise influence over its new Circuit Court with his own choices for its Chief Justice and Attorney General.

For the DC Circuit Court’s Chief Justice, Adams originally had hoped to appoint the highly esteemed Thomas Johnson of Maryland. Among Johnson’s many accolades were a revolutionary war hero, close friend of George Washington, the first governor of Maryland, District of Columbia commissioner, and former Supreme Court judge. But Johnson had been suffering from poor health for years, resigning his Supreme Court seat in 1793 and declined Washington's nomination for Secretary of State. Not unexpectedly, the 69 year-old Johnson declined the appointment to the Circuit Court as well, leaving the Chief Justice seat unfilled when Jefferson took office. Jefferson chose a Marylander and fellow Republican, William Kilty, for the seat in a hasty recess appointment.

For one of the court's two assistant justices, Adams appointed James Marshall, the younger brother of his appointment to the Supreme Court and Jefferson’s arch rival, John Marshall. For the second assistant justice, he appointed his wife Abigail’s favorite nephew and Federalist, William Cranch, who had been working as a land agent for the real estate firm of Morris, Greanleaf & Nicholson, which had gone bankrupt buying and trying to develop the city’s unwanted house lots.  

Although connected to President Adams both politically and through marriage, Cranch quickly earned Jefferson’s respect. He had a reputation of being highly honest and moral, never wore the standard judge’s robe or wig, and yet was able to fully command his authority in the courtroom.

For Washington’s first District Attorney, Jefferson appointed prominent lawyer, John Thomson Mason. Originally from Virginia and a supporter of Jefferson in the elections of 1796 and 1800, Mason was so impressive a lawyer that Jefferson would later twice offer the position of Attorney General of the United States, which he declined both times. 

The law governing all federal circuit courts was the Federal Crimes Act of 1790. It recognized two types of murder: first-degree (premeditated, or willful) and manslaughter (unpremeditated, or an act of passion), and established a separate set of penalties for each. For the penalty for first-degree murder, it specified death by hanging. For manslaughter, it specified imprisonment not to exceed three years, and a fine of no more than one thousand dollars. 

The Prosecution and the Defense

McGurk certainly did not have the means to be able to afford a lawyer for himself. His court-appointed lawyer, Augustus Brevoort Woodward, was inexperienced and relatively unknown in Washington’s legal spheres.  

Woodward was born in 1774 in Virginia. He may have received his college education from William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia. Woodward had gotten to know Jefferson at Monticello when Woodward was teaching school while studying law in Rockbridge County, Virginia. Jefferson was not initially impressed by Woodward, but with their shared interests in the law and education, a friendship, if only a limited one, started to develop.

An ambitious individual and sensing opportunity, Woodward arrived in Washington and was sworn in to the bar in 1802. With Washington’s small bar of only eleven lawyers in 1802 and with a friend in the White House, the city provided a perfect venue for Woodward to launch his legal career. He was the first attorney to establish a private law practice in the new capital, yet his practice was so small that he could barely eke out a living. But opportunity did eventually come his way, not due to his reputation in the courtroom, but because he was the only private lawyer available at the time to defend McGurk. With Woodward’s friendship with Jefferson, McGurk’s hopes for a presidential pardon were undoubtedly heightened.

The Trial

The trial took place on April 10, 1802 and was over almost as soon as it began. Woodward was certainly no match for Mason in the courtroom, giving a poor showing against Mason’s well-prepared prosecution, possibly because he himself may have been convinced of his client’s guilt. 

Mason was certain to make sure that McGurk would be convicted of first-degree murder and sent to the gallows. For his argument, he drew upon old English common law brought to the colonies in the 17th century, arguing that in order to reduce the charge to manslaughter, there had to be evidence of both passion and provocation, neither of which to him seemed to be present in this situation, nor was there any evidence of any motive produced. But, there were no witnesses to the murder or who could speak to McGurk's mental state or potential motives, so Mason’s assumption was ultimately not supportable. The only evidence admitted against McGurk were his dying wife’s declarations of his brutality, which with the lack of any witnesses, was allowable as evidence. This practice was carried over from the medieval English courts dating back as far as 1202, with the presumption that "no-one on the point of death should be presumed to be lying."

After the closing arguments, the jury deliberated only for a few minutes before finding McGurk guilty of first-degree murder. Although Mason had unsuccessfully convinced the jury that McGurk committed premeditated murder, or least that there was not any evidence that he had not, Judges Kilty and Marshall were divided on whether hanging was the most appropriate punishment—Kilty was in favor of death and Marshall was not, but for a jury’s conviction of first degree murder, the law required death. 

The Sentencing

McGurk was brought before Judge Cranch to receive his sentence. Cranch was visibly pained in fulfilling this part of his duty for the first time. After he asked McGurk if he had anything to say, he proceeded to state that he had been found guilty by an impartial trial. He added that the offense was aggravated by the fact that the victim had been McGurk’s wife, who ought to have been protected by her husband than receive such barbarous treatment as to cause her death. 

Cranch would later admit to Jefferson that no “adequate punishment, short of death” was available to the court. He could have meant that no other punishment was available as Washington had no prison at the time to incarcerate a prisoner for a manslaughter sentence. Washington’s first prison, where McGurk might have been sentenced if convicted of manslaughter was not to be completed until 1803, so Cranch probably did not want to risk embarrassment of handing down a sentence that could not be enforced.

When Cranch recited the words no one ever wants to hear, "... that you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead...," McGurk appeared unmoved and asked only for some time to prepare himself, which due to the delays that were to follow, he got more of than he could have imagined.

In reporting the verdict, the Washington Federalist newspaper took the opportunity to expound on the evils of foreigners in the city, namely the Irish:

"The prisoner was neither born nor educated in America. It is a matter of astonishment to those who are accustomed to attend our Courts of Justice to observe how few native Americans are found charged with the different crimes, which stain our records. How long can we expect our native youth to remain uncontaminated, from the examples were are constantly inviting to our shores? 

Legal Confusion and Political Backlash

This first death sentence in Washington exposed yet another flaw in the city’s young legal system that led to extended anguish and suffering for McGurk and political embarrassment for Jefferson.  

McGurk’s crime was committed and tried in the County of Washington, which was still governed by Maryland’s common law. Traditionally, the Governor of Maryland signed writs of execution against persons sentenced to death by any court in the state, but he no longer held jurisdiction over the County of Washington, and therefore could not sign a writ of execution for a man convicted in Washington. 

A 1789 statute had given the federal courts power to issue writs of execution as needed “for the exercise of their respective jurisdictions.” But this language somehow had been overlooked in a 1792 rewrite of the statute and was not included. This omission was not realized until McGurk’s conviction. 

Kilty and Cranch both assumed that authority in the District of Columbia lay with the President and did not consider it part of their duty to set a date and time for the execution. Still, not completely certain of their position, they asked the opinion of John Thomson Mason who agreed with them that that responsibility belonged with the President. But, while authorized to grant reprieves, pardons, and to commute sentences, the President did not have the Constitutional authority to punish, which included signing writs of execution. With the first death sentence, there was seemingly no one to sign the warrant for execution. Jefferson, one of the framers of the Constitution, immediately realized he had a predicament on his hands.

The day after the conviction, Jefferson wrote to both U.S. Attorney General Levi Lincoln and John Thomson Mason concerning the question of who was to sign the writ for McGurk’s execution.  The following day, he received hastily written responses from both men, one contradicting the other. Lincoln wrote that he thought that for convictions in federal courts, the Constitution gave the authority to the President. Mason, who had originally agreed with Kilty and Cranch, had rethought his position, and had now determined that Congress had given the DC Circuit Court all the powers it granted to all other circuit courts whose duty it was to hand down sentences and issue writs of execution. Therefore, the signature of the President was not necessary.

McGurk began writing personal letters to Jefferson pleading for him to spare his life. The letters were written in another, barely literate hand, and signed by McGurk. But whoever actually authored the letters was clearly aware of the legal quagmire uncovered by the conviction. In the first letter, McGurk's ghost writer acknowledged the confusion as to who held the authority to sign the writ of execution, and whether the President thought the responsibility might ultimately fall upon himself, he might therefore consider granting a pardon. But Woodward initially thought his client’s letters were too intrusive to be delivered to the President. It may be the fact that Woodward had written them himself and was concerned that Jefferson might have detected this.

Jefferson ultimately took Mason’s advice and decided that the Circuit Court should set the date and time of McGurk’s execution in its upcoming July session. But due to the amount of time it took Jefferson to decide not to take action on the sentencing, McGurk would end up sitting in jail for three months before he would learn of the final date and time of his end. 

When the Circuit Court finally convened that July, it set the date for McGurk's execution a month later on 28 August, now leaving McGurk sitting in jail for more than four months after his conviction. The accepted practice at the time was that an execution should be done within a reasonable amount of time--Virginia law granted a convict only up to thirty days to live after a sentence was passed.

By mid-August, time was running out for McGurk. Woodward realized that Jefferson was not inclined to intervene on his behalf to commute the sentence. Woodward may have been the first lawyer to have lost a capital case in Washington, but he would make up for it as an advocate on behalf of his convicted client. 

He decided to make the long trip from Washington to Monticello to plead for McGurk’s life. Along with McGurk’s previously undelivered letters to Jefferson that Woodward held withheld earlier, he brought a petition with more than 150 signatures. The petition’s signers were some of the city’s leading Irish citizens including the architect of the White House ,James Hoban, Hoban’s real estate partner Pierce Purcell, architect John Kearney, and a number of other signers who had Irish surnames as well. The list of the petitions signers revealed how close-knit the Irish community was at the time and that it was undoubtedly concerned that one of its own was to be the first Washington resident to be sent to the gallows. This would not help their status in the city.

The petition argued that the extended amount of time that McGurk had already spent in “severe and rigid confinement,” due to Jefferson’s and the judiciary’s indecision should have been punishment enough for a crime that was not premeditated and intentional, and that the punishment was disproportionate to the offense, were it the result solely of his unfortunate temper and habits.

By now, Jefferson began weighing the possibility of a pardon for McGurk. But because Kilty and Marshall had been divided as to recommending him to mercy, Jefferson had also solicited Cranch’s opinion. While awaiting word from Cranch, and one week before McGurk was scheduled to be hanged, on August 21, Jefferson signed another week's reprieve for McGurk until August 28. 

When the news of the reprieve reached Washington, it first came as a rumor that Jefferson had actually granted McGurk a pardon. After the news was corrected, the Washington Federalist newspaper—not a friend of the Irish or immigrants in general—rallied against the stay of execution: “the prisoner was neither born nor educated in America,” and that native-born Americans rarely committed such violent crimes. It also condemned immigration laws (namely those pertaining to the Irish) “that for the sake of gaining a few bawling patriots, would thus hasten the strides of vice, disturb the peace, and security of our country.”  

Open wounds from the recent presidential election still festered and came to the surface. Some Federalists used the delays to argue that Jefferson was too lenient on McGurk, suggesting that he may have been an agent of Jefferson acting as one of a gang who lurked about Washington intimidating Aaron Burr’s supporters early in 1801, before the resolution of the presidential election in favor of Jefferson by the House of Representatives. Such rumors may have had an effect on Jefferson’s interest in pardoning McGurk. Were he to grant a pardon, he may have appeared complicit in McGurk's alleged actions. Others felt that McGurk was being scapegoated by Federalists as an agent of Jefferson and therefore unfairly tried by a court where two of its three judges were Federalists condemning him to an unjust sentence. 

In September of 1802, William Cranch finally responded to the numerous letters he had received from Woodward and McGurk. They had hoped that Cranch had changed his mind and now sided with Jefferson in being opposed to McGurk's death sentence and in favor of a pardon, but Cranch remained steadfast to his original verdict. He wrote, “whatever I might be disposed to do as a private citizen, I can not, as a judge, recommend the criminal to the mercy of the President. The interests of society, which it is my duty to protect, demand that crimes like these should be severely punished.” 

Three weeks after Woodward received Cranch’s letter, a copy of that letter reached Jefferson at Montecello. Cranch's response was the final and strongest opinion that Jefferson would hear from the three judges. Knowing that McGurk was now apprised of Cranch’s opinion, Jefferson became concerned that McGurk would try to escape and wrote to Washington’s mayor, Robert Brent, who was a fellow Catholic and parishioner with McGurk of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, recommending that he spare no vigilance to prevent his escape. The mayor responded quickly to Jefferson’s concerns and confined McGurk in a seven feet square room and shackled with nearly 60 pounds of irons. McGurk found no peace, with his ears assailed every hour of the day with the cursing and obscene expressions of the other prisoners. His small cell got very little air, and was covered with excrement from an adjoining apartment.

Five days before McGurk's scheduled hanging, Woodward made one final and desperate attempt to try to sway Jefferson. Jefferson received an anonymous letter, signed only as “Friend.” Although the letter was not in Woodward’s handwriting, Jefferson must have known that it was from him. Some of the phrasing used by its author was very similar to wording in documents and letters that Woodward had sent to Jefferson earlier and in letters he wrote to the Washington Federalist arguing against capital punishment for McGurk, going so far as to blame his wife for not having a strong enough constitution to endure his physical abuse. 

Jefferson remained unmoved. McGurk sent two more direct appeals to Jefferson begging for clemency, the last arriving on the day of the execution. Jefferson did not respond to either of the pleas, and McGurk was to be hanged on October 28th. 

McGurk's Execution and Burial

This was the first hanging in Washington, so a scaffold had to be constructed for the event. It was erected on the western grounds of Capitol Park in a grove of oak trees which stood a little north of the Pennsylvania Avenue approach to the Capitol Building. The scaffold could be seen from Pennsylvania Avenue, which was then little more than a country road. There were other few buildings along the way except the new jail, still under construction, and Blodget’s Hotel.

In the morning of an overcast October day in 1802, McGurk, attended by Father Young of St. Patrick's Parish who had been attending to McGurk’s soul, was taken from the jail in a cart to the gallows, surrounded by a strong guard, and followed by a mob of screaming, hooting men, women, and children all the way to the gallows.

After McGurk had climbed the thirteen steps to the top of the makeshift platform, he was asked if he had anything to say—the final courtesy given a condemned man. McGurk took a long look at the sea of eager, angry faces and exclaimed: “When a man’s character is gone, his life is gone.” 

After the noose was placed around McGurk’s neck and before the sack was placed over his head, and as if looking to heaven, he cast his eyes upward to where the rope was fastened to the crossbeam. Suddenly, he jumped off the platform before the henchman could pull the canvas cap over his head. Father Young shouted out to him “McGurk, don’t hang yourself!" The hangman immediately ran up the steps and tried to pull McGurk back onto the platform. Swinging wildly at the end of the rope, the hangman only succeeded in getting McGurk’s feet back on the platform. McGurk then pushed off again. While dangling the air, someone hastily cut the rope that held the trap door on the platform to keep him from regaining his footing. After three or four convulsive shrugs, was dead. Following an old Medieval custom, immediately after the body was cut down, crowds rushed the scene and started cutting the rope hoping to secure a small piece thought to have curative powers.

Even though this was the first execution in the nation’s capital, it received scant notice in a local paper. The National Intelligencer simply stated: “Yesterday was executed James McGurk, sentenced to death for the murder of his wife.” 

McGurk’s body was buried Holmead’s Cemetery, then a privately-owned family cemetery at the edge of the city (present day Florida Avenue and 19th Streets NW). He was placed next to a young woman who had been buried there the week before. Her brothers found out and when they informed their mother, she told them she would not regard them as men if they allowed the murderer to rest there. A group headed by a Mr. Sniverly, armed with shovels and torches, moved McGurk to another part of the cemetery. On a Sunday night, a large band of McGurk’s fellow Irishmen moved it back to the plot where it was intended and kept guard over it at night. Supplied with enough whiskey to pass the night, they awoke the next morning and discovered that the body had once again been removed by Sniverly’s band of men. This time, they buried the body close to the banks of Slash Run and damned the stream to change its course so that its water would run perpetually over the site.

Some 40 years later, the owner of some land south of the cemetery was digging a post hole and struck a human skull and some fragments of wood. One of Sniverly’s resurrecting party members admitted that it was the location where they had laid McGurk for his final rest.

Postscript

William Kilty resigned as Chief Justice of the DC Circuit Court in 1806 to become Chancellor of Maryland. He held that office until his death in Annapolis in 1821.

William Cranch was appointed by Thomas Jefferson in 1806 to become the Circuit Court's Chief Justice, filling the seat vacated by William Kilty. Cranch would go on to serve on the court for the next fifty-four years until his death in 1855 in Washington, D.C. He is buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington.

Soon after McGurk's trial, Woodward left Washington for the Michigan territory, where Jefferson had appointed him as judge of the Territorial Court, where he served from 1805 to 1824. He would remain in Michigan for twenty years and would also be instrumental in the founding of the University of Michigan.  In 1824, President James Monroe appointed him to a judgeship in the new Territory of Florida. Woodward served in that capacity until his death in Tallahassee in 1827 at the age of 52. 

John Thompson Mason twice declined the office of United States Attorney General when it was offered by Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He later ran for one of Maryland's seats in the United States Senate, but lost. Mason died on 10 December 1824 at the age of 59 and was interred at his Montpelier estate in Clear Spring, Maryland.

Holmead's cemetery became the burial site of many notable Washingtonians, including McGurk's compatriot and supporter James Hoban, itinerant preacher in the Second Great Awakening Lorenzo Dow, and William and Rhoda O'Neale, the owners of Franklin House. In addition to McGurk, another of the more notorious later burials there was also Lewis Payne, one of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, who was also to face the noose. 

The city took ownership of Holmead's cemetery in 1820 and expanded it to become the Western Burial Grounds.  The cemetery started going into steep decline around 1850, and in1870 it was condemned as a health menace. Cemetery record books accounted for over nine thousand burials within its small area, not including a large number of unofficial burials as well, of which McGurk may have been one. Removal of remains, most of which were reinterred at Graceland Cemetery or Rock Creek Cemetery, continued until 1885. James McGurk's remains were not among them.

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