William Thornton, M. D. Gentleman of the Enlightenment. George W. Paulson, M.D. William Thornton, M. D. Gentleman of the Enlightenment. George W. Paulson, M.D. Emeritus Professor of Neurology, The Ohio State University 2007 Dedicated to my beloved wife, Ruth B. Paulson, D.D.S. William Thornton, M.D. - Gentleman of the Enlightenment Table of Contents page Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Young Immigrant and His Coming to America, 1786 7 Chapter 2 Education and Thornton 29 Chapter 3 Tortola, Slavery, and Thornton 53 Chapter 4 City of Washington, and Thornton 87 Chapter 5 The Capitol Building 123 Chapter 6 William Thornton, Residential Designer 135 Chapter 7 Republican versus Federalist in the Time of Dr. Thornton 151 Chapter 8 Publishers and Publications in the Time of Thornton 163 Chapter 9 The Friends of Thornton 169 Chapter 10 William Thornton and the Patent Office 241 Chapter 11 Thornton’s Business Ventures and His Legacy to His Wife 257 Chapter 12 Thornton, South America, Greece, and Liberty 265 Chapter 13 Scientific and Religious Interests 279 Chapter 14 Anna Maria Thornton 297 Chapter 15 Last Days 309 Sources/Bibliography 317 WILLIAM THORNTON, M.D. - GENTLEMAN OF ENLIGHTENMENT INTRODUCTION Introduction William Thornton: He was born May 20, 1759, at Tortola, British West Indies; served a medical apprenticeship 1777-1781; attended medical school at the University of Edinburgh, 1781-1784; and received his M.D. degree from Aberdeen University in 1784. He moved to the United States in 1787 and became a citizen in 1788. Encouraged by Benjamin Franklin, Thornton won the competition to design the Philadelphia Library in 1789. Living in Philadelphia he married Anna Maria Brodeau in 1790, and then returned to Tortola (1790-1792) to live on his plantation there. Writing from Tortola, he submitted the winning design for the U. S. Capitol and returned for a lifetime of involvement in the new Federal City. He was appointed by President Washington to be a Commissioner of the District of Columbia (1794-1802). He was the founder of the U.S. Patent office, and was its Director from 1802 until 1828. On March 28, 1828 he died. Is that all there was? Not really, and to remember him is to celebrate his times, and to cherish our own. William Thornton, M.D. (1759-1828), one of the most gifted men of his time, never became as famous as many of his contemporaries during the exciting childhood of the United States of America, the time the Federal City became Washington, D.C. If not famous, then should anyone care to hear about him? Even if he was actually only a lesser light among the revered Revolutionary Band of Brothers, he was an intriguing polymath who contributed, wrote, and dreamed along with the best of them. His and their efforts, and his friendships 1 WILLIAM THORNTON, M.D. - GENTLEMAN OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT and multiple conflicts, are presented as a tribute to the time, to the dreams, and to the man. The time has been referred to as the “Enlightenment”, and the ideal for the educated gentleman of the day was to be involved, at least a dilettante, in many things. Agriculture and the mechanic arts were to be understood, that at least, and for sure. It may not have seemed so at the time, but probably those who cared and were also literate could master much of the entire body of knowl- William Thornton. edge in Science and Medicine. Literature, Classics, Art and Architecture were other obvious areas the cultivated gentleman should pursue. Jefferson is one example of a polymath of the Age, and gentle- man Thornton was similar but perhaps less talented than Jefferson. He was certainly less politic. Theirs was an age a man was expected to be skillful in many areas, not necessarily to specialize in a single focus of scholarly activity. Thornton was a gentleman of that age, and a slave owner, to boot. The national motto “E Pluribus Unum” fits Thornton himself. Just as one united nation was forged out of many units, units from several states and from various cultures, so too from a rich mix of creative individuals a new American citizen appeared. This new American, and there were many of them, including Thornton, was not purely English, was surely not French, but was firmly launched on the road to become an authentic and uniquely American patriot. New immigrants arrived in America daily and gradually much of their prior identity was shed or rubbed off. It was in the process of such loss, the inevitable change, that they became truly American. William Thornton was one of these new immigrants at a time we were blessed with a remarkable cluster of leaders, brothers in the spirit of the new freedom. He had turned to America from his native West Indies, and from the home of his youth, England, to seek a better life. Thornton was top-heavy with his many areas of interest, and with a soul burdened by a conflicting variety of aspirations and skills, but judged by modern times he may have lacked “bottom”, “stick-to-itiveness”, persistence. His true personality, the true heart of the man, was hard for others to fathom then, and is even harder to comprehend two hundred years later. He had 2 INTRODUCTION independent financial support, possessed intense hunger for fame, evidenced aristocratic graces, and demonstrated scientific and artistic talent. Why was he not more successful, then? And why has he been so easily forgotten now? The ironies, the ambivalences and alternatives in his character, are readily apparent. Who was this man, this gentleman, Dr. William Thornton? He was a trained physician who had been educated at superb schools, but a physician who practiced everything except medicine. He either did not believe in fees or, perhaps, was sure they were too small ever to merit his attention. The daily routine of medicine may have failed to interest him, since it seemed to lack the finer virtues, and a busy practice could have limited the upper class ties he so eagerly sought. His recognized skills, for a time in great demand, were else- where than in medicine. Whatever the reasons, Thornton certainly never became recognized as a skillful practitioner of medicine, the one occupation for which he was actually well qualified. He was respected as a designer. He often reminded others that he was untrained as an architect, but his was the plan accepted for our U.S. Capitol, and several of our national architectural treasures owe their beauty to him. He was intensely, and always, uncomfortable as a slave owner, as his writings testify again and again, and he was a devout apostle of John Lettsom, his mentor, who was also a Quaker and physician and who freed his own slaves. Lettsom was a leader during the decades of British efforts to free all slaves. Nevertheless, Thornton, who wrote frequently and eloquently about the tragedy of slavery, always relied on his personal slave holdings in the West Indies for his basic income. He bought and sold, but he did not free, his slaves. Were there other inconsistencies in his character? Thornton wrote persuasively of the need for general and universal education for the average child in the United States, but he himself was most comfortable in the company of the privileged and aristocratic class of Washing- ton. Certainly he never became a teacher. His papers, those that are still preserved through the Library of Congress, reflect the typical religious senti- ments of the time, sentiments that sound sanctimonious to a modern reader. Nevertheless he readily expressed boredom with his native Quakerism. Thornton was clever and talented in multiple areas, but despite this managed to lose much of his fortune not only through unwise speculation, as in gold mining 3 WILLIAM THORNTON, M.D. - GENTLEMAN OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT in North Carolina, but also by continued devotion to racehorses, many of whom were simply not fast enough. There are similar contrasts in Thornton’s business and creative life. Thornton’s fertile imagination presaged the development of both the steamboat and the machine gun, but he never manifested enough sustained effort to deserve full credit for any single major invention. As the first Superintendent of the United States Patent Office, he set the pattern for much of America’s later creativity and productivity, but in the process he also received official repri- mands for overt conflicts of interest. In the Patent Office he established what served as the first museum in Washington, a collection of models now long since destroyed, and he was once a friend of James Smithson, the Englishman whose legacy stimulated a national effort in collection and display. The Patent Office was important for young America, but Thornton felt that his position in the Patent Office was inadequately supported financially by his superiors and inadequately respected by his colleagues. Described by some as charming and witty, he seemed unable to avoid friction with other men who manifested a clearer focus, and he was particularly quarrelsome with several who displayed true creative genius. Thornton was not the first person to write novels that were neither published nor read, but he published dozens of short articles and many sage comments in the category of letters to the editor. His interest in language led him to a once honored, but now totally ignored, concept of a universal system of instruction in language and orthography. These techniques preceded the suggestions of the much more famous Noah Webster (1758-1843), author of An American Speller. Thornton’s concepts of dreams and sleeping were decades ahead of their time, but this scientifically trained physician was convinced that fish could be frozen for months and then still restored to life.