Sometimes a 250-year-old clipping from the Maryland Gazette sends me down a research rabbit hole. The welcome mat into this week’s warren was laid out by an advertisement placed in the August 15, 1771 issue of the Annapolis newspaper.
Isaac Greentree wished to inform “the Publick in general and his Friends in particular, that he has set up a Livery Stable, in Mr. Charles Bryan’s Yard, opposite to William Paca’s, Esq; in Prince-George’s-Street, where Gentlemen may depend upon having the greatest Care taken of their Horses.” He assured potential patrons that he had “the best of Oats and Hay, as well as Plenty of Straw for Litter.” He also had horses for hire as well as a rider and mount that could be dispatched “to go express to any Part of the Country.” If Greentree were working today, we might describe his multi-faceted business as a combination auto garage / car rental / messenger service company.
It was the location of Isaac Greentree’s livery stable—right across the street from my office in the William Paca House—that caught my eye. There is no “Yard” there now, but thanks to a research report sponsored by Historic Annapolis, funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, and compiled by Dr. Edward C. Papenfuse and Jane W. McWilliams more than 50 years ago, we do know a great deal about that area and how it was used in Mr. Paca’s time.
Greentree’s livery stable was on lot 86, opposite Paca’s impressive brick house on lot 93. The curious thing about lot 86 is that it was split diagonally by East Street, with a little more than half on the north side of the street and a little less than half on the south side. The northern wedge was originally surveyed for Annapolis’s first mayor, Amos Garrett, and the southern slice for John Navarre.
From 1720 to 1759, Charles Carroll of Annapolis (father of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a future signer of the Declaration of Independence) owned the southern portion of lot 86, including Navarre’s former house, which he leased to a series of tenants. Catherine Jennings bought the property in 1759 after eight years as a renter. After she died, a 1768 Act of Assembly awarded the title to the entire lot to Thomas Jennings.
The act also changed the course of East Street so it wouldn’t cut right through the center of lot 86. The offending stretch of road was diverted to run along the line between lots 86 and 85 (highlighted on the left edge of the map detail). William Paca’s house now faced a new intersection, and the owner of lot 86 could make better use of his full property without people and horses tramping through the middle of it. The Navarre house sat somewhere on the southern side of the reconstituted rectangular lot, and the “Yard” extended northeasterly to Prince George Street. Lawyer Samuel Chase rented the house until Jennings decided to sell the property, at which point Chase started building a new house for himself on what is now Maryland Avenue.
Shoemaker Charles Bryan bought lot 86 in 1769. He lived and worked there for about a year and probably also kept a tavern in the Navarre house. As we’ve already seen in his Maryland Gazette ad, Isaac Greentree was running a livery stable in Bryan’s yard by August 1771, but that appears to have been a short-lived endeavor. In 1772, Bryan leased his property to John Warren, who ran it as the “Rose and Crown” tavern, complete with “convenient Stalls for Horses, and a Shed for Carriages,” for the next two years. Warren gave up tavern keeping in 1774 and sold the lease to John King, former coachman to Governor Robert Eden. King continued to run the site as an ordinary with stables but went out of business in 1775 and sold his tavern equipment to Allen Quynn and Francis Fairbrother. The old Navarre house may have burned, fallen down, or been demolished about this time.
Thanks to a few online search hits, I discovered that Isaac Greentree managed to pop up in the historic record a few times after his brief stint running a livery stable across the street from William Paca’s Annapolis house. After keeping a tavern in Talbot County, in early 1775 Greentree relocated to Rock Hall, where he ran an ordinary and operated a ferry service between Annapolis and the Eastern Shore. In June 1775, Thomas Jefferson paid Greentree for his bay crossing and a night’s lodging while traveling north from Williamsburg to Philadelphia. That August, Jefferson took Greentree’s ferry while heading back south to Richmond.
Jefferson encountered Isaac Greentree again in the historic summer of 1776. Greentree was now keeper of the “Sign of the Conestoga Wagon” tavern on Philadelphia’s Market Street, just a block away from the Pennsylvania State House (today’s Independence Hall) where the Continental Congress met. Jefferson paid Greentree for dinner, club, wine, and other unspecified expenses in June and July. On August 1, 1776—just a day before he and other congressmen signed the formal parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence—Jefferson spent 2 shillings 6 pence on punch at Greentree’s tavern. One wonders whether Isaac Greentree’s former Annapolis neighbor, Declaration signer William Paca, also stopped by the “Conestoga Wagon” to raise a glass to freedom.
It’s a bit of an anticlimactic end to this trip down the rabbit hole, but the section of East Street that was diverted in 1768 was returned to its original course in 1819. Today’s picturesque view from Prince George Street up East Street to the Maryland State House once again runs right through the middle of lot 86.
Read the August 15, 1771 issue of the Maryland Gazette starting here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/sc4872/001281/html/m1281-1337.html
Glenn E. Campbell
HA Senior Historian
