#52 Ancestors 2024 Week 28 Trains: The Bowie Cousins and the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad

In the early 19th century, Prince George's County felt that having a better connection to Washington DC and Southern Maryland was essential to its economic success. From Baltimore north, a continuous line of railroads stretched through Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Portland. From the Potomac River south, another long line of railroads ran through Richmond, Wilmington, Augusta and on to New Orleans. The missing link?  A connection between Baltimore and the Potomac River. The answer, according to my Bowie cousins, was a new railroad line.  

My Bowie cousins--Walter William Weems Bowie, Thomas Fielder Bowie, Robert Bowie, William Duckett Bowie, and Oden Bowie--lobbied extensively for this project and eventually succeeded in 1853 when the Maryland legislature chartered the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Company, authorizing it to construct a line from Baltimore via Marlboro in Prince George's County and Port Tobacco in Charles County to a point on the Potomac River in St. Mary's County, the southernmost in the state. Importantly, the charter also allowed the construction of branches to the line up to 20 miles in length. 

As the map below shows, this last provision allowed the railroad to build a line to Washington DC, which is what the promoters wanted all along. 

William Walter Weems "Three W" Bowie (1814-1891), a prominent planter and merchant in Prince George's County, was respected throughout Southern Maryland for his agricultural expertise as well as his talent as a raconteur who could set a room roaring with laughter. (He and his wife, Adeline Snowden, were also the parents of Confederate spy Wat Bowie, about whom I have previously written.) 

Under his nom de plume of A Patuxent Planter, WWW wrote extensively about issues such as tobacco culture and rebuilding worn out land. It was at least partly his devotion to agriculture that led him to argue in The Planter's Advocate for the efficiency of having rail transport for Prince George's produce instead of the then-current method of Patuxent rivercraft. 

"But only let a railroad be built through the country . . . connecting with Baltimore, . . . it will then take an exceedingly short time for our produce to reach the market: the road will, unlike the river, be always open and always ready for the transmission of produce. . . . Above all, we earnestly and anxiously look forward to the building of this road because it will infuse a spirit of life and animation in our country. It will arouse public spirit. It will foster enterprise and activity."

WWW's cousin, Robert Bowie (1804-1881) was likewise very interested in agriculture.  He was active in agricultural societies, helped organize the Maryland Jockey Club, and through personal appeals gained enough subscriptions to erect the Maryland Agricultural College. Like his cousin, he did not seek political office, but used his influence among the planters of Prince George's County to lobby energetically for the creation of a rail line through their county. 

WWW's eloquence and Robert's zeal certainly helped make the case for the railroad, but it also needed the political skills of the other Bowie cousins to seal the deal. 

Robert Bowie's brother, General Thomas Fielder Bowie (1808-1869), educated at Charlotte Hall and Union College, was admitted to the bar at the age of 21. A man of commanding presence and a powerful voice, like his cousin, he was passionately interested in agriculture, including race horses and cattle, and served for years as the secretary of the State Agricultural Society. He was elected three times to the State Legislature and elected to Congress in 1854. Thomas Fielder Bowie used his political position to lobby for the proposed railroad.  When the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad was finally enacted in 1853, both Thomas and WWW were charter members. 

Colonel William Duckett Bowie (1803-1873) was one of the wealthiest planters in Prince George's County, having inherited considerable property from his grandfather, his father and his uncle. William ran several times for the State Legislature, losing to his cousin Thomas (above), but was elected to the House of Delegates in 1840 and later to the State Senate where he served two terms. In both houses, he argued strenuously for the railroad project.  When the company was finally organized, he was elected one of its directors and regularly re-elected by the stockholder thereafter. 

Oden Bowie (1826-1894) later Governor of Maryland was the eldest son of Colonel Bowie and his first wife, Eliza Mary Oden. Oden was a prodigious student, sent to St.John's College in Annapolis at the age of nine.  He ran for a legislative seat at the age of 20, but was defeated by ten votes because he was underage (but would have been 21 before the Legislature convened). Two years later in 1849, he won that seat. A few years later, he was elected to the State Senate. In 1867, he was elected governor, becoming the second Bowie to hold that position. It was due to his energy and perseverance, amid much public doubt, an attempt to annul the charter, and the strenuous opposition of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, that the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad achieved success. He was made president of the company when it first organized and served in that capacity until his death. As an aside, Oden Bowie also put Baltimore on the national thoroughbred racing map by building Pimlico Race Track. 

The Baltimore and Potomac was chartered in 1858 and began surveying routes in 1859.  Construction started in 1861, but the Civil War delayed completion, and the line was eventually purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1867, the chief competitor to the Baltimore and Ohio, which already had a line from Baltimore to Washington, but one that did not go through Prince George's County.  By 1869, the railroad had reached the hamlet known as Odenton, named in honor of Governor Bowie. 

Washington Station

Using the Baltimore and Potomac's charter, the PRR built a "branch" line off of the main Pope's Creek line that traveled into Washington by a different route. (See map above.) The new branch opened in 1872, while the supposed "main line" to Pope's Creek opened in 1873 and was promptly relegated to branch status. (Note: the Pope's Creek Line is still in use today, but almost entirely for freight rather than passengers.)

The Baltimore and Potomac opened a substantial station in Washington at the present site of the west building of the National Gallery of Art.  It was in this station (since demolished) that President James Garfield was assassinated in 1881. 

When the Washington Line opened in 1872, it branched off of the Pope's Creek Line at the town of Huntington. But by 1873, the station had been renamed Bowie in honor of Governor Oden Bowie. A few years later the entire town was renamed Bowie. After completing his workday in Baltimore, former Governor Bowie rode home on the Pope’s Creek train to Collington Station near his Fairview plantation. He insisted on sitting in his favorite seat, which was the third seat on the left in the train’s last coach car. Often he would send one of his office workers to save the seat for him until he arrived. According to his great-grandson, “Rumor had it that he diverted the railroad to Bowie so he could get home at night.” 

The Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, opened in 1873, allowed the Pennsylvania Railroad to directly connect its northern lines through Baltimore to Washington.  The tunnel is still in use by Amtrak today and remains one of the worst bottlenecks in rail traffic in the Northeast. In 2021, Amtrak and Maryland announced the construction of the new Frederick Douglass Tunnel, scheduled to open in 2035. 

So, next time you ride the train from Baltimore to Washington, thank the Bowie cousins for their perseverance in lobbying for the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad. 

Ironically, the railroad that was so passionately argued for as a boon to agriculture actually helped to transform Southern Maryland from an agricultural economy to a commercial economy. 

#52 Ancestors 2024 Week 15 School Days: Villa Regina Academy

As a child, I attended Catholic schools taught by the Sisters of Mercy and the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND).  By the time I graduated from 8th grade at St. Mary's in Annapolis, I wanted to be a nun and a teacher and join the SSND order.  The SSNDs ran a high school in Baltimore specifically for girls who wanted to enter their order: Villa Regina Academy (VRA).  And that is where I attended high school.

Villa Regina was a very small school.  At any given time, there were between 100 and 120 girls enrolled. My class (1966) had about 30 girls in freshman year and 16 graduated four years later as many young women decided against a vocation as a nun. The school was only open for about ten years, closing about 1968, a few years after I graduated. There were about six nuns who lived at the school and supervised the students.  Some other nuns came in during the day to teach various classes. 

VRA was located in Baltimore, next to the SSND Motherhouse, so the aspirants, as the students were called, had frequent inspiring glimpses of the postulants and novices of the order across the parking lot and occasionally got to attend services in the big Motherhouse chapel. 

The school had two buildings: the old Villa, an early 20th century mansion house and a more modern school building with dorms and classrooms and dining and recreation facilities as well as a chapel where we attended daily Mass. The picture at the right shows me and my Dad with the Old Villa in the background. It has since been torn down.

The curriculum was pretty standard for a Catholic high school.  It was run by a teaching order, after all, which also ran several other girls' schools in Baltimore.  So, we studied what other girls studied, more or less: Latin, French, Biology, History, Theology, Music, Literature, with lots of personal attention since the classes were so small. No chance of hiding if you were unprepared.

I will never forget my terrifying piano lessons with Sister Ceciliana. (I was a very mediocre musician, but she was determined to make me an acceptable accompanist for the Villa musicals.  It was a losing battle!)  I still have a few medals lying around from the Auxilium Latinum exams we took every year.  And I can still sing La Marseillaise in French (which was how we started every French class). There was only a small library at the Villa, so assigned research projects meant taking the bus downtown to the Pratt Library, trips that I still remember fondly. 

Outside of class, there was a strict schedule of meals, chores, recreation and study with bells rung to tell us when to get up in the morning, when to pray, when to eat, when to study, when to go to bed. Chores rotated every month, so someone didn't get stuck with the same job for months.  Taking care of the chapel was a highly coveted assignment, peeling potatoes not so much. In the study hall each girl had a desk, seated in alphabetical order with her classmates. In the evening, when silence was observed, laundry would be delivered in big carts. Everyone went to the laundry baskets and helped distribute the clean clothing to the proper desk. (Of course, every piece of clothing had a name tag.  I still occasionally come across a handkerchief with a name tag in the back of a drawer.)

Mario Lanza The Drinking Song

Recreation on Friday nights often consisted of movies rented on big reels that we ran on a cantankerous projector.  The movie fare, of course, did not include any current hit films; it mostly ran to religious movies like The Song of Bernadette or classics like The Student Prince.  Not exactly sure why the good sisters thought this was a suitable film for teenage girls who were considering a religious vocation.  Perhaps they were Mario Lanza fans! But, I saw that film often enough that I can still belt out the Drinking Song sixty years later. 

Let every true lover salute his sweetheart! Let's Drink!

On one memorable occasion, we were actually taken on a field trip to see The Ten Commandments which was being featured at a local theater.  Perhaps even more memorably, after the feature film, the theater ran previews of coming attractions, including a steamy Station Six Sahara.  Our English teacher made us all write letters to the theater scolding them for their appallingly bad judgment. 

While I was a student at the Villa, the nation was rocked by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I can vividly remember the day. Classes were cancelled, and we spent the day huddled in the recreation room eyes glued to the small television at the front of the room where Walter Cronkite gave us the unbelievable news. Most of us sobbed quietly throughout the day and prayed many decades of the rosary. 

However, some of my most cherished memories of the Villa are the many musical skits we created to celebrate various holidays or significant occasions.  Each class was expected to create a production with dialog, music, and costumes (which were usually pretty minimal since we didn't have a lot of wardrobe options to choose from).  To call the plots convoluted would be a wild understatement, and the lyrics stretched the rules of rhyme to the breaking point.  But we did have a lot of fun exercising our creativity.  I have a picture, below, from one of my class's productions, but do not ask me to explain what was going in the picture. That explanation has been lost in the mists of time. (And no, I am not in the picture.  I was taking the picture, probably a wise decision on my part.)

I did eventually graduate from Villa Regina along with fifteen other dear friends. As you can see from the picture, it was strictly a formal affair, white gloves and all. 

The following fall, I did enter the SSNDs as a postulant.  The order sent me to college that year at Notre Dame of Maryland College (now University) which was just down Charles Street from the Motherhouse. There I had the great good fortune of being taught by one of my literary heroes: Sister Maura Eichner, a gifted poet who inspired me to write poetry myself. 

For a variety of reasons, I eventually decided that being a nun was not my calling, and I left the order at the end of my postulant year. I came back over the next several years to visit my classmates as they moved through the various steps of religious life. 

Over the years, there were only rare group gatherings.  We didn’t really have an alumni association.  But, in  2008, the Villa held a rather spectacular reunion. One of the former aspirants won the Maryland lottery that year for about $80 million. She decided to spend part of the money to bring together the women who had attended the Villa during its ten-year life.  She paid for a weekend of hotels, meals, and activities for 150 or so former Villa girls. I was lucky enough to be able to attend and had a wonderful time catching up with the women who had played such an important part of my teenage years. 

Class of 66 in 2008

Even though I did not ultimately enter the SSND order, being a student at VRA made an indelible mark on my life. I still cherish my friendships with my classmates both inside the SSNDs and outside. (One of my fellow graduates is now a Mother Superior in the order and another is a member of the governing council.) I have made a number of trips around the country to visit with these women over the years. And thanks to an email list, we now have regular reports on the lives of our beloved fellow Villa girls.

I often wonder how different my life might have been if I had attended a bigger school with different opportunities.  But in the end, I cherish the experience that so largely shaped me. 

The words of the VRA Alma Mater have proved true:

As we go onward, 

there will be

in each of us, 

a part of thee.

Villa Regina, Hail!

#52 Ancestors 2024 Week 16 Step: Mary Skinner's Four Marriages and the Intermarriages of her Step-Children

My 7X-great grandmother, Mary Skinner, married four times and saw multiple intermarriages between the children of her four husbands. The picture above is not of her wedding, but I think it suggests the lively household that witnessed her fourth and final marriage with Dr. James Weems.  Between them they had 14 children under 21 at the time of their marriage.  I imagine it was quite a lively affair. 

Mary Skinner, born about 1703, was the eldest of the eight children of Dr. William Skinner and his wife, Elizabeth Mackall, of Calvert County MD. She grew up at his estate "The Reserve" with five younger brothers and two younger sisters and is named along with them in the 1715 will of her grandmother, Mary Mackall. (Note: Dr. William Skinner was the son of Robert Skinner and Ann Clarke (my 9X-great grandmother), about whom I have previously written.)

Mary's first marriage, about 1720, was to Robert Wheeler, the son of Roger Wheeler. Mary and Robert had two children: Elizabeth (about 1724) and Roger (about 1722).  Robert was dead by February 1728, age about 30, when his estate was administered by his wife, Mary. 

By 1730, Mary was still administering Robert Wheeler's estate, but was then shown as the wife of Joseph Wilkinson. Captain Joseph Wilkinson was born in Durham, England, about 1690 and began his naval career as an apprentice to his brother John who was a master gunner in the British Navy.  Joseph was later the captain of the ship, Judith.  Joseph and Mary Wilkinson had two children: Joseph (about 1730) and Elizabeth (about 1732). Captain Wilkinson died at sea in February 1735, on his way to England to settle his brother John's estate.  Captain Wilkinson was buried in St. Anne's Cemetery in Limehouse. He left a will that named his son and daughter and appointed his brother-in-law, John Skinner, as the guardian to his children.

Cedar Hill

Within a few years, by 1738, Mary had married Major Thomas Crompton, a wealthy landowner in Calvert County MD. Major Crompton and Mary had four children: Ann (about 1738), Thomas (about 1740), Mary (1741), and Catherine (about 1742). Major Crompton owned the property called "Bigger" after its first owner and later built or expanded "Cedar Hill," now listed on the National Register as one of the last surviving examples of cruciform architecture. 

The Maryland Gazette noted the death of Major Crompton in December 1744. 

About 1746, Mary Skinner Wheeler Crompton married for the fourth time to Dr. James Loch Weems, a prominent merchant and plantation owner in Calvert County. Dr. Weems also served in the Maryland legislature and as a sheriff and justice of the peace in Calvert County. 

James and Mary had no children together, but even so, the Weems house was full.  There were six Weems children in the household from Weems' first marriage to Sarah Parker, ranging in age from 4 to 15.  Mary brought eight children into the marriage ranging in age from 3 to 21.  Must have been quite a lively household. Dr. Weems also took on the management of the estates of Mary's three previous husbands. Given all the minor children involved, the estate management was quite complex.

That close family living resulted in several marriages among the stepsiblings.

About 1750, 16-year-old Susanna Weems (my 6X-great grandmother) married her stepbrother, Roger Wheeler and had four daughters with him: Mary Wheeler (my 5X great grandmother through her marriage to Dr. John Thomas Bond), Elizabeth Wheeler, Sarah Weems Wheeler, and Ann Weems Wheeler (also a 5X-great grandmother through her marriage to Daniel Kent, and the mother of Governor Joseph Kent, about whom I have written elsewhere). 

Sadly, Susanna Weems Wheeler died in 1761, shortly after the birth of her daughter Ann. Roger Wheeler died soon after in 1763. As a result, the four Wheeler girls were raised by their grandfather Weems, adding even more to the already large household. 

Billingsley

About 1753, Elizabeth Wilkinson married her stepbrother William Loch Weems. They had one daughter, Willimina Weems, 1754. Elizabeth died about 1757, and William Loch Weems married Amelia Chapman of Virginia in 1758 and had three sons and two daughters with her: Nathaniel Chapman Weems (1760), James William Loch Weems (1761), Sarah Louise Weems (1762), Dr. John Weems (1768), and Wilhelmina Chapman Weems, who was one of the four Weems wives of Henry Wright Gantt, about whom I have previously written.  William lived and died at Billingsley, an estate in Prince George's County MD inherited from his father.

About 1759, John Weems married his stepsister, Catherine Crompton, the first of his four marriages. I have previously written about this marriage because I had to do considerable research to determine which Crompton daughter John had married.  John and Catherine had three sons and two daughters together: James (1760), Mary (1765), Sarah Margaret (1766), William Loch (1772) and John Crompton (1777). After Catherine's death in 1781, John married Elizabeth Miller of Philadelphia (1784), Alice Lee (1788), and Mary Swan (1792).  He had seven children in his fourth marriage and emigrated with that family to Louisville KY, where he died in 1813 and is buried there in Cave Hill Cemetery. 

So, Mary Skinner's four marriages produced a marriage between a child of each of her first three marriages with a child of her fourth husband, James Weems. 

Mary Skinner Wheeler Wilkinson Crompton Weems died in Calvert County MD in 1769. Dr. James Weems died at his son’s home—Billingsley—in 1781.