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

[Dwight Holmes]

RE the first telegraph, this is the version I'd read and heard before:
http://www.hmdb.org/Marker.asp?Marker=6072
(That's the text of the historical marker at Bladensburg Waterfront)

On some belated and not-so-profound reflection, it seems that Mr Weber
must of course be wrong. Since they didn't have WiFi in the day,
presumably the first telegraph must have been sent from where the
wires were laid - and those would have been next to the RxR tracks -
not on the property of the mansion.  So, yes, "near the mansion" but
not "from" the mansion.

That being said, I'm glad to know of Mr Calvert's role in getting
funding for the telegraph project. He obviously had appreciation for
things like science, education, infrastructure...

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:25 AM, Dwight Holmes <dwightrholmes at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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."
>>
>
>