Visitors to Annapolis: An American Story, now open at the Museum of Historic Annapolis, get an up-close view of the original metal-clad wooden acorn which stood atop the Maryland State House for more than two centuries.
We Marylanders are proud of our venerable State House, whose distinctive dome, cupola, and acorn (now a modern replacement) grace the downtown Annapolis skyline. It’s the nation’s oldest state capitol building in continuous legislative use and the site of two historic events—Washington’s resignation of his military command and Congress’s ratification of the Treaty of Paris—which marked the end of the Revolutionary War. But before any of that could happen, the State House first had to be built, and today, March 28, 2022, is the 250th anniversary of the laying of its first foundation stone.
Our State House is actually the third capitol building to stand in Annapolis. The first was constructed in 1698 and destroyed by fire in 1704. Its replacement, built in 1706, wasn’t a very grand edifice. When the young Thomas Jefferson passed through Annapolis for the first time in May 1766, he wrote a friend that Maryland’s legislators met in “an old court-house, which, judging from it’s form and appearance, was built in the year one.” Ouch!
Jefferson was equally unimpressed by the chaotic work of colonial government he found going on inside:
The first object which struck me after my entrance was the figure of a little old man dressed but indifferently, with a yellow queue wig on, and mounted in the judge’s chair. This the gentleman who walked with me informed me was the speaker, a man of a very fair character, but who by the bye has very little the air of a speaker. At one end of the justices’ bench stood a man…reading a bill then before the house with a schoolboy tone and an abrupt pause at every half dozen words. This I found to be the clerk of the assembly. The mob (for such was their appearance) sat covered on the justices’ and lawyers’ benches, and were divided into little clubs amusing themselves in the common chit chat way. I was surprised to see them address the speaker without rising from their seats, and three, four, and five at a time without being checked. When [a motion was] made, the speaker instead of putting the question in the usual form only asked the gentlemen whether they chose that such or such a thing should be done, and was answered by a yes sir, or no sir: and tho’ the voices appeared frequently to be divided, they never would go to the trouble of dividing the house, but the clerk entered the resolutions, I supposed, as he thought proper. In short every thing seems to be carried without the house in general’s knowing what was proposed.
[See Jefferson’s full letter here: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0012]
William Eddis wasn’t much kinder in October 1769 when he described the second State House, or Stadt House, as it was called back then:
This building has nothing in its appearance expressive of the great purposes to which it is appropriated; and by a strange neglect is suffered to fall continually into decay; being, both without and within, an emblem of public poverty, and at the same time a severe reflection on the government of this country, which, it seems, is considerably richer than the generality of the American provinces.
In December 1769, the General Assembly decided that “the Stadt House in the City of Annapolis is so much gone to Decay that it is become necessary to Build a new one.” The legislators named Daniel Dulany, Thomas Johnson, John Hall, William Paca, Charles Carroll the Barrister, Lancelot Jacques, and Charles Wallace as project superintendents. In January 1770, the Maryland Gazette printed their request for “any who please to be at the Trouble of forming Plans and Estimates” to submit proposals by mid-April. The committee of superintendents also needed to identify someone qualified “to overlook the Execution of the Plan.”
Apparently, the committee wasn’t bowled over by a rush of experienced builders and construction supervisors, all clamoring to bid on the contract. In June 1771, one of the superintendents, Charles Wallace, agreed to fill the senior role of “undertaker” himself, but he wanted someone else to do the preliminary work of demolishing the old State House and clearing the ground. Writing to Wallace in December 1771, his mercantile partner Joshua Johnson confided he had heard that Jonathan Pinkney took on the demolition job “in Order to make Friends with you.” Whatever his motivations, Pinkney got the State Circle site ready for construction work to begin.
As recounted in the following Thursday’s Maryland Gazette, Governor Robert Eden and “a Number of the principal Gentlemen of this City” gathered about noon on Saturday, March 28, 1772 to celebrate the official start of work on the new State House. No doubt, Charles Wallace, William Paca, and the other superintendents were there to applaud Eden as he “was pleased to lay the First Stone of the Foundation of the Stadt House.” The men enjoyed a “cold Collation”—think the colonial equivalent of light hors d’oeuvres served at a reception—and lifted their glasses to “a few loyal and constitutional Toasts.”
The newspaper account ends with an unintentionally humorous line that always makes me chuckle: “the Gentlemen retired, the Workmen giving Three Cheers on their Departure.” I imagine the workers exchanging glances, shaking their heads, helping themselves to whatever might be left of the food and drink, picking up their shovels, and getting back to the task at hand now that the VIPs were finally out of their way.
You can read the April 2, 1772 issue of the Maryland Gazette beginning here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/sc4872/001282/html/m1282-0076.html
Glenn E. Campbell
HA Senior Historian
