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

[Dwight Holmes]

OK, this passage comes from the draft of a
never-finished/never-published book by George O. Weber who was the
Director of Physical Plant for the University of Maryland at the
College Park campus from 1946 until 1972.  I got that info from here:
http://cgl-md.com/gow.html

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Dwight Holmes <dwightrholmes at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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."
>



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