[RP TownTalk] Charles Benedict Calvert, Riversdale & the telegraph

[Dwight Holmes]

poking around dusty corners of the Internet for references to the Old
Post Road and Washington-Baltimore Turnpike, I came across this very
interesting book that someone has put on line. It's not clear what the
title or who the author is, but it is a history of what is now the
University of Maryland.  I found this passage interesting, for I've
not previously heard this historical claim for the role of Calvert and
Riversdale in the history of the telegraph.

http://cgl-md.com/GOWbookUMD.pdf

"By all accounts, the hardest working and most influential planner was
Charles Benedict Calvert of Prince George’s County. A descendant of the
Lords Baltimore and a graduate of the University of Virginia, Calvert had
returned from school to manage his father’s 2,200 acre “Riversdale” estate.
An advocate of the newly popular scientific approach to farming, he helped
gain national attention for the plantation by use of machines, fertilizers,
irrigation and experimental crops. He also helped the struggling Samuel
Morse get congressional backing for his experimental telegraph, and the first
successful message was sent from his mansion, which still stands on
Riverdale road about 2 1/2 miles from the University. A president of the
Maryland Agricultural Society, a leader in the United States Agricultural
Society, he had earlier offered to donate 200 acres to endow a national
college of agriculture. He served in the state legislature and in 1861 in
congress, where he led the fight to establish the United States Bureau of
Agriculture, the forerunner of the present Department of Agriculture. The
first to advocate the cause of the Maryland Agricultural College, the most
persistent in pleading for its support, Calvert would provide the college with
a home, supervise the initial construction and later serve as its second
president. Wealthy and well educated, he was a “patrician in the finest
Jeffersonian tradition,” as were most of his fellow founders. And he, like
they, believed that science and education held solutions for the problems of
impoverished farmers."