Susan Decatur (Collection of Priscilla Machold Loeb and Family, Photograph, Georgetown University Archives)
The Question
Stephen Decatur, whose exploits, on the shores of Tripoli and elsewhere, had earned him the adulation of his country, was killed in a duel in 1820. His widow Susan withdrew from society, moved to a small house near Georgetown College, and converted to Catholicism. In 1837, a widow’s pension awarded by Congress enabled her to become a financial benefactor of the College. When she died, in 1860, she was laid to rest in the Old College Ground, on the College campus. There she remained until 1953, when Georgetown removed the neglected burial ground to make way for the construction of Reiss Science Building, and the remains of Georgetown’s benefactor were quietly transferred to an unmarked grave in Holy Rood Cemetery (which was also University property). It was not until 1988 –– when Georgetown was contemplating commercial development of Holy Rood, and Susan Decatur’s grave was again a problem to be resolved –– that her remains were at last taken to Philadelphia, to be reunited with those of her husband.
“GU to Transfer Ancient Graves,” Washington Post, April 17, 1953; “Reunited, A Naval Hero And His Belle,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 30, 1988; Jordan Baker (C’90), “History,” Georgetown Magazine, Summer, 1988; Judy Franks, “Decatur’s Triumphs; Saga of His Widow,” Washington Times, September 22, 1988, p. 50.
But why had Susan Decatur not been buried beside him in the first place? This question had come up more than once. In 1904, William Decatur Parsons, a great-nephew of Stephen Decatur, appears to have been asked about it by a reporter when he came to Georgetown to supervise the restoration of Susan Decatur’s neglected grave. “It is deemed more appropriate that the remains of Mrs. Decatur be permitted to remain undisturbed here than to have them transferred to Philadelphia, even though her husband lies there.” The Evening Star brought it up again in 1931 –– “Decatur was buried in the cemetery of St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia, but Mrs. Decatur, for some unknown reason, was interred in the local cemetery.” –– and it came up once more a year later –– “It was too bad that the remains of Mrs. Decatur were not placed beside those of her illustrious husband in the Philadelphia cemetery.”
“Restoring The Tomb of Susan Decatur––Descendant of the Admiral of National Fame in Georgetown for That Purpose,” Washington Times, November 3, 1904, p. 13; “Cemetery Yields Forgotten Graves at Georgetown U.,” Evening Star, January 24, 1931, p. 15; John Clagett Proctor, “Old Georgetown in History of District,” Evening Star, March 27, 1932, p. 68; William Decatur Parsons, The Decatur Genealogy (1921).
The answer, it turns out, has to do with Susan Decatur’s many years of petitioning Congress for the reward that a grateful nation had promised to her husband and his crew. Her lobbying was complicated by the competing claims of Stephen Decatur’s nieces in Philadelphia, who asserted that they had been adopted by him as daughters. (The quarrel appears to have been poisoned by insinuations that Susan Decatur’s “obscure” origins –– and rumored illegitimacy –– should have disqualified her as a suitable match for her husband.) In 1860, Susan Decatur gave in, consenting that “whatever Congress may appropriate” be equally divided between herself and her husband’s nieces, “I receiving one half the amount, & those Ladies the other half.” She died a few months later. In the end, there was no reward, and all the nieces got was the satisfaction of having denied Stephen Decatur’s widow the honor of being buried beside her husband.
Dennis G. Terez, “The Long and Involved Claim of Susan Decatur and the Men Who Burned the Philadelphia,” (1984), Joseph Kennedy, S.J. Papers, Georgetown University Special Collections.
Origins
During her lifetime, Susan Decatur was typically described in print as the daughter of Luke Wheeler, of Norfolk, Virginia. It was also understood that she was born in Elk Ridge, Maryland, where her father had been in business at the time, and that a good deal of her youth was spent in the nearby house of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (whose mail was addressed to him “at Elkridge”). As her July, 1860 obituaries are firm in saying that she died “in the 84th year of her age,” the year of her birth was most likely 1775 or 1776. While there is no indication that her father was married at the time, there is a record that, in 1778, Luke Marbury Wheeler, born 1754 in Charles County, Maryland, married Lilly Loockerman, of Dorchester County. (The 1800 census of Charles County lists a Luke Wheeler (age 26-44), whose household consists of a young woman (age 16-25)––and six enslaved persons.)
“Deaths,” National Intelligencer, July 23, 1860, p. 1; “Georgetown,” Evening Star, July 24, 1860, p. 3; 1800 Census, Port Tobacco Parish, Charles County, Maryland, p. 83; Kate Mason Rowland, The Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 1737–1832 (1898), p. 219, 232 321-2; Charles Carroll of Doughoregan to his son, March 27, 1764, in Unpublished Letters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and of his Father, Charles Carroll of Doughoregan (1902), p. 85; Joshua D. Warfield, The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland (1905), pp. 339, 502; Albert Gallatin Wheeler, The Genealogical and Encyclopedic History of the Wheeler family in America (1914), p. 874; Joseph S. Ames, “The Loockerman Family of the Eastern Shore of Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. XI, March, 1916, p. 295; Luke Marbury Wheeler,FamilySearch, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The later movements of Luke Wheeler can be traced primarily through newspapers. In 1778 he was still in business with the Dorsey family, owners of the iron works at Elk Ridge Landing, and with Samuel Chase, who represented Maryland in the Continental Congress. (Many years later, after Chase had taken a seat on the Supreme Court, a critic accused Chase of having tipped off his business partners when the Continental Congress was in the market for military provisions. “Mr. Wheeler was sent to Potowmac, to purchase as much wheat and flour as he possibly could.”) Another venture Wheeler was connected with was for sale in 1780. “To Be Sold, the Distillery at Elk-Ridge Landing, with the stills, tubs, and all other necessaries … apply to William Hammond or L. Wheeler.” Wheeler was still in Baltimore in 1785, but six years later he was with “sundry Merchants in Petersburg,” lobbying for a bank in Virginia. In Norfolk, Wheeler was elected to the board of directors of the Branch Bank of the United States in 1800, and, three years after that, to the board of the Marine Insurance Company. Wheeler must also have been in Washington in 1800, when “Miss Wheeler, of Norfolk,” in the company of two other “belles,” Samuel Chase’s daughter Mary, and Catherine Carroll “of Carrollton,” graced a party attended by William Hyslop Sumner. By 1806, when his daughter met and married a national hero, Wheeler was a leading citizen of his adopted city. “At Norfolk … the gallant Captain Stephen Decatur … to the accomplished and much admired Miss Susan Wheeler, only daughter of Luke Wheeler, Esq. Mayor of that Borough.”
“To Be Sold,” The Maryland Journal, and Baltimore Advertiser, January 11, 1780, p. 2; “Notice” Maryland Journal, June 28, 1785, p. 4; “At a meeting,” The Norfolk & Portsmouth [Virginia] Chronicle, December 24, 1791, p. 3; “For London, The Ship St. Tamany,” The Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg & Falmouth Advertiser, May 5, 1797, p. 3; “Norfolk, March 29,” The Philadelphia Gazette, April. 8, 1800, p. 3; “Anglo-Federalism, Illustrated By Judge Chase,” [Philadelphia] General Advertiser, September 20, 1800, p. 2; “Norfolk March 17,” Alexandria [Virginia]Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer, March 25, 1803, p. 3; “Norfolk, June 25,” The True American and Commercial Advertiser, July 2, 1805, p. 3; “Married,” The Enquirer [Richmond, Va.], March 18, 1806, p. 3; “An annual meeting,” Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger, April 8, 1811, p. 1; “Notice,” National Intelligencer, May 7, 1811, p. 3; “The Dismal Swamp Canal-Company,” Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger, July 18, 1816, p. 3; “By Authority Of The State Of Virginia,” American Beacon and Norfolk & Portsmouth Daily Advertiser, October 20, 1819, p. 3; “Cohen’s Lottery and Exchange Office,” American Beacon and Norfolk & Portsmouth Daily Advertiser, May 20, 1820, p. 3; William H. Sumner, A History of East Boston: With Biographical Sketches of Its Early Proprietors (1858), p. 21; Edward C. Papenfuse, et. al., A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature 1635-1789, vol. 426, p. 278.
Thanks to her father’s rise in the world, and her connection to the Carrolls, by the time she was a young woman, “the accomplished and much admired Miss Susan Wheeler” moved in the best circles of Baltimore, Annapolis, Washington and Norfolk. The social position she occupied before and after her marriage are described by Charlene M. Boyer Lewis. “With professional, political, and martial spheres closed to them, ambitious women found other ways to gain public acclaim by using their beauty, clothes, writings, marriages, or even children, though many of these factors remained linked to men.” “Young ladies competed fiercely, within the bounds of appropriate behavior, for the coveted title of “celebrated.” It not only gave a woman high status among her peers; it also made her known throughout her community and sometimes beyond.” “A renowned belle’s manners, beauty, and fashions, her flirtations and possible betrothals received close scrutiny and provided much fodder for gossip among her community’s elite and, if she were truly celebrated, among the nation’s elite and perhaps even beyond.” “Decatur’s wife, Susan Wheeler, had been celebrated as a belle around Norfolk, Virginia, for her beauty, manners, and conversation while single, but she became a real celebrity only as the wife of a war hero and a widow after her husband’s dramatic death in a famous duel.”
Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte: An American Aristocrat in the Early Republic (2012), pp. 16, 22, 26-7, 131.
The flattering image of the celebrated belle still held sway in 1846, when the first serious biography of her late husband was published. “Norfolk being the rendezvous of Decatur’s flotilla, he was thrown much in contact with the agreeable society of that place, where he had made the acquaintance of Miss Susan Wheeler, the only child of an intelligent and wealthy merchant there. In addition to a commanding beauty, which had rendered her celebrated both at Norfolk and in the more extended society of Washington, this young lady possessed great superiority of intellect, which a careful education and the contact of society had remarkably developed; nor had the lighter graces that embellish beauty and intellect been neglected in her training.” If Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, who knew and interviewed Susan Decatur, was aware of anything other than what she wished the world to know, he kept it to himself.
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Life of Stephen Decatur: A Commodore in the Navy of the United States (1846), pp. 143, 327, 367, 442.
But an entirely different tone was heard after Susan Decatur died. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, the proud son of generations of Tidewater gentry, began to write his memoirs sometime after 1861. “At the suggestion of a friend, Mr. Tayloe, during the dark and gloomy days of the Civil War, was induced to record the following Anecdotes and Reminiscences, to relieve his mind from the depressing influence of the times.” (The outbreak of war had cost him a bundle because he had invested his capital, and his enslaved labor, in seven cotton plantations in Alabama.) Tayloe’s reminiscences, posthumously added into a memorial biography commissioned by his widow, include word sketches of his neighbors on Lafayette Square. Aware that Susan Decatur had died some years back, Tayloe felt free to say what he knew. He opened with a compliment. “Commodore and Mrs. Decatur lived comparatively in splendor, and were much courted for their different high qualities, —Decatur, the Bayard of the Navy, for his renown; his wife for her accomplishments and intellectual attractions.” In the very next breath, however, Tayloe revealed what had evidently been said behind her back. “Mrs. Decatur was a natural daughter of Mr. Wheeler, an eminent merchant of Norfolk, and the proprietor of ironworks at Elkridge Landing, in Maryland, where Mrs. Decatur was born, her mother an obscure woman of that place.”
Winslow Marston Watson, In Memoriam: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (1872), pp. 158-164.
That she was able to surmount the handicap of her birth, Tayloe attributed to her close contact with the first family of the Maryland gentry. “Miss Wheeler had the advantage of a fine education, and was at the head of her school. Among her schoolmates were the three beautiful Misses Caton, granddaughters of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, with whom she was a great favorite.” As such, she was eligible to be courted by royalty. “Miss Wheeler, on leaving school, was the reigning belle of Norfolk, and greatly admired in Baltimore, which she often visited as the guest of the Misses Caton. Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, then Emperor of France, paid his addresses to her, which she rejected by the advice of her friend, the Hon. Robert G. Harper, who accurately predicted, as the subsequent marriage of Jerome with Miss Patterson proved, that the marriage, if it occurred, would be repudiated by the Emperor, who was ambitious of allying his family with the royal families of Europe.” Tayloe finishes this anecdote with something that Robert Goodloe Harper––whose wife Catharine was the daughter of Charles Carroll nearest in age to Susan Wheeler, and her closest friend––later confided to Tayloe. “Mr. Harper, who detested the character of Madame Bonaparte, the American wife of Jerome, told me that she invented the story that her husband had only intended to make Miss Wheeler his mistress.”
Tayloe goes on to suggest that Susan Wheeler had prevented the naval hero from making a more appropriate match, and to confirm that Luke Wheeler’s investments in Washington property had failed. “It was reported that Miss Wheeler made advances to Commodore Decatur, then engaged to another lady. His marriage has been regarded as a blot on his escutcheon. Mr. Wheeler, when rich, offered property to Commodore Decatur, which he declined. By his failure he became bankrupt, and died in penury, some years after the death of Decatur.” Next, Susan Decatur’s comportment as a widow came in for censure. “For a year or more after her husband’s death, Mrs. Decatur lived in great style, and at much expense, making a great display, at her recherché dinners, of the Decatur plate. It was said by some persons that she had chiefly in view a marriage with the present renowned diplomat, Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, then Mr. Stratford Canning, H. B. M. Minister to this country.” (Canning was the British envoy, 1819-1823.) Tayloe even imputed Decatur’s religious conversion to husband-hunting. “Late in life, Mrs. Decatur became a Roman Catholic, with a view, as the expectant heirs of the of that gentleman thought, to a marriage with Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, then far advanced in years and verging on senility, but a great admirer of Mrs. Decatur.” Tayloe concludes on a note of faint praise (and with a guess at the year of her death). “Mrs. Decatur was a very accomplished woman, with fine manners and great powers of conversation. The last years of her life were spent in Georgetown, and she died in the convent there in 1855.” Apart from her close connection to the Carroll family, and her marriage to the naval hero, Mrs. Decatur was, in the eyes of the aristocrat, otherwise disqualified by her lack of lineage.
Although Tayloe’s memoir was unlikely to be widely read, its juiciest bits made the front page of the Evening Star andwere soon picked up in other cities. Kate King, “Our Lady Correspondent In Washington” of the Cleveland Leader, filled in some details for her readers. “Mrs. Decatur was a Miss Wheeler, of very common parentage, and when she lost the prince [Jerome Bonaparte], took the Admiral [Decatur], much to the disgust of the high society of the time, who thought the Admiral too good for her, as he was, judging from Mr. Tayloe’s recollections.” “After her husband was killed, Mrs. Decatur, so says Mr. Tayloe, entertained, dined, and danced, all for the hope of winning the then British Minister, Stratford Canning, and finally became Catholic to marry Charles Carroll, of Carrollton. All that is left of her lies in Georgetown now, under a modest little slab marked ‘Susan Decatur.’” Another correspondent was more specific about her birth. “She was an illegitimate child, though her father legitimized her afterwards. Her mother was an Irishwoman at a place called Elk Ridge, near Baltimore, where her father had established iron works.” “Commodore Decatur was not aware of his wife’s illegitimacy till after he was married.”
“A History of Lafayette Square. Its Mansions And Its Tenants. Review of B. O. Tayloe’s Memorial,” Evening Star, January 24, 1874, p. 1-9; Kate King, “Our Lady Correspondent In Washington,” The Cleveland Leader, February 27, 1874, p. 6; “Commodore Decatur’s Wife. Washington Letter to Cincinnati Enquirer,” St. Paul Daily Globe, St. Paul, Minnesota, March 23, 1884, p. 11.
Tayloe’s gossip about Susan Decatur’s origins had to be considered by subsequent biographers of her husband. Although decorum still required Charles Lee Lewis to relegate Susan’s illegitimacy to a footnote in 1937, times had changed enough by 2004 that James Tertius De Kay could write of the “obscure woman” Tayloe had said was Susan’s mother that “it was whispered in some quarters she was mulatto.” Although De Kay did not cite a source, Leonard Guttridge appears to have been persuaded. “Not much is known of Luke Marbury Wheeler, seventy-third mayor of Norfolk, and still less of his daughter Susan. There is reason to believe that her mother was a mulatto Wheeler took as his wife while he managed an ironworks at Elk Ridge, Maryland. He was born in that state in 1754, and his itinerary thereafter is difficult to trace. After Susan’s birth, presumably at Elk Ridge, he appears in Petersburg, Virginia, where by 1793 he is a justice of the peace and a director of the Dismal Swamp Canal Company. The record shows nothing of a wife or a daughter until the turn of the century when he is first a merchant on Main Street, Norfolk, charter member of the chamber of commerce, and in 1805 city mayor. Susan was then thirty and, quadroon or not, among the city’s most charming belles.” The authors of two Stephen Decatur biographies that came just one year after De Kay’s, on the other hand, appear to have been unconvinced. Robert J. Allison––who was more curious about Susan Decatur than any other biographer of her husband––made no reference to De Kay’s guess at Tayloe’s meaning. Spencer Tucker limited himself to the observation that De Kay’s book suffered from “unsubstantiated suppositions on the part of the author.” Katey Ryan, in her 2023 article, “The Mysterious Life of Susan Decatur,” also ignored De Kay’s speculation.
Charles Lee Lewis, The Romantic Decatur (1937), pp. 82, 279-80; James Tertius De Kay, A Rage for Glory: The Life of Commodore Stephen Decatur, USN (2004), pp. 73-74, 209-210; Robert J. Allison, Stephen Decatur American Naval Hero, 1779–1820 (2005), pp. 75-77, 191, 194-195, 199, 209-219; Spencer Tucker, Stephen Decatur, A Life Most Bold and Daring (2005), pp. xi, xii, xvii, 81, 86, 133, 146, 149, 171, 179-80, 182-85; Leonard F. Guttridge, Our Country, Right or Wrong: The Life of Stephen Decatur (Forge Books, 2006), pp. 83-87, 216, 267-277; Katey Ryan, “The Mysterious Life of Susan Decatur,” The White House Historical Association (August 2, 2023).
Insolvency
After the death her husband, Susan Decatur first stayed with the Carroll family. “I was removed to the residence of my venerable friend, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, in whose family I had been domesticated from my childhood.” A biographer of Charles Carroll describes the scene. “The death of Decatur in a duel with Commodore Barron took place March 22d, 1820, and the grief-stricken widow was staying with her friends in Annapolis in May. Charles Carroll writes on the 10th: ‘Mrs. Decatur continues much in the same state as when you left us. She cannot be prevailed on to go out in the carriage, or even to walk in the garden; she eats little and sleeps little.’ He was at ‘Doughoregan’ soon after, where Mrs. Caton and Mrs. Decatur join him June 3d; ‘the exercise and change of air,’ he says, ‘has greatly benefited Mrs. Decatur, her spirits are more composed, she dines with us and converses more.’” Annual stays with the family of Charles Carroll of Carrollton continued though 1831, if not longer. “One of Emily’s well-wishers was their old friend Susan Decatur, fresh from Washington City and full of accounts of ‘the Eaton woman’ whom the president ‘continually and mistakenly champions.’” (The reference is to Margaret “Peggy” Eaton, ostracized by prominent Washingtonians in the Petticoat Affair.) Carroll died 1832; his daughter, Mary Caton, in 1846; only Emily Caton MacTavish was still alive when Susan Decatur died.
Kate Mason Rowland, The Life and Correspondence of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, 1737-1832 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898), 321-2; Jehanne Wake, Sisters of Fortune: America’s Caton Sisters at Home and Abroad (2011), p. 245.
In Washington, the widow Decatur took up residence in the west wing of Kalorama, which was then the property of George Bomford, one of her husband’s executors. Her husband’s remains were placed in the Barlow-Bomford family mausoleum, near the present intersection of Florida and Massachusetts Avenues. Accounts differ as to how much time passed before she began to receive visitors or to entertain. Because of her suspicion––justified, in the opinion of historians––that her husband’s death had been contrived by rival officers, she would not go out to any house where she might have encountered one of them. Stephen Decatur’s estate, rumored to have been worth $100,000, appears to have melted away after his death. Although some blamed his widow’s lavish entertainment at Kalorama, the size and timing of the debts incurred in the first two years as a widow suggests mismanagement on the part of her husband’s executors.
Allen C. Clark, “Commodore James Barron, Commodore Stephen Decatur: The Barron-Decatur Duel.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 42/43, (1940/1941) pp. 189-215; David. F. Long, “William Bainbridge and the Barron-Decatur Duel: Mere Participant or Active Plotter?” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 103 (1979), pp. 34-52.
The role played by Decatur’s father, whose earlier speculation in Washington real estate had gone sour, is also open to question. In 1801, on behalf of a consortium of Norfolk investors, Luke Wheeler had invested in 79 city lots; ten years later, still unsold, they were put up for auction. “The above property is the same which was some years back purchased of Benjamin Stoddert … by a company of gentlemen in Norfolk, associated for that purpose … Sale to continue until all are sold. Luke Wheeler, John Cowper, Trustees.” In the aftermath of the auction, notice was given in the press that title to the property was claimed by the assignees of Robert Morris, John Nicholson, and James Greenleaf, with the result that the high bidders refused to pay Wheeler.
“Washington City Lots For Sale,” National Intelligencer, February 12, 1811, p. 4; Bob Arnebeck, “Tracking the Speculators: Greenleaf and Nicholson in the Federal City.” Washington History (Spring/Summer 1991), pp. 112-125; DC Liber G7 (1801) ff. 410/544, in Wesley Pippenger, Index to District of Columbia Land Records, 1792-1817 (2009).
Seven months after Susan Decatur became a widow her father’s name appeared in newspapers for the next-to-last time. “For Rent. ––That very commodious and elegantly situated residence on Smith’s Point, now in the occupancy of Luke Wheeler, Esq.” He disappeared from the news until 1827. “On Saturday morning last, at Norfolk, Virginia, Luke Wheeler, Esq., in the seventy-third year of his age. More than thirty years a resident of that borough … merchant of the first standing … On the establishment of the present National Bank, he received the appointment of Cashier of the branch of that institution located at Norfolk––a situation which he filled with great credit, until incapacitated by a most distressing attack of paralysis, which terminated his existence after several years’ painful endurance.” With a flowery reference to the ups and downs of business––“In the throes and convulsions of commerce, it was Mr. Wheeler’s misfortune, in his old age, to be numbered among the sufferers” ––we are given to understand that he died broke.
“For Rent,” American Beacon and Norfolk & Portsmouth Daily Advertiser, October 28, 1820, p. 4; “Deaths,” National Intelligencer, August 15, 1827, p. 3; Luke Wheeler, 1820 Census, Norfolk, Virginia, p. 101.
Susan Decatur later blamed the disappearance of her husband’s estate on the financial speculations of one her husband’s executors, who (with her father’s help) had persuaded her to relinquish her role as executrix, and then assumed sole control of the estate.
“In the course of two or three days after my arrival at Mr. Carroll’s, my father, who was with me, came with a letter, which he had just received from Col. Bomford, one of my husband’s executors, informing me that he had induced Mr. Tazewell, and Gen. Harper to decline acting as my executors, as they did not reside in the District, and to become his securities, for the proper settlement of the estate, and he wished me also to decline; and in that case the estate would be settled immediately. I requested my father to write to Col. Bomford that I would not depart from my husband’s will! That so soon as I was capable of attending to business he should hear from me; in the course of two or three days there came another letter from Col. Bomford, requesting my father to urge me to decline; I told my father that if my husband had been willing to trust all my means of subsistence in the hands of Col. Bomford, he would not have named the other gentlemen nor myself; that he never did anything without reflection. My father appeared so unwilling to do any thing that might mortify Col. Bomford, that I told him if it would be any satisfaction to himself he might write to him that I declined acting as Executrix, and he did so forthwith ––(he not being acquainted with Col. Bomford except by name) so soon as he had sent off his letter, I told him that I had permitted him to write the letter to please himself; and that he must then write one to please me. That I would never receive a single cent from the estate until I could get it out of Col. Bomford’s hands [ ] I knew that he had such an unconquerable passion for speculation that he did not know where to stop unless he had some person to control him; and that was his motive for getting rid of the other executors, thinking that he could easily govern me. I caused my father to write immediately to the late Robert Oliver, of Baltimore, with whom I had been intimately acquainted from my childhood; requesting him to lend me $3000 for my subsistence until the estate was settled, that I did not wish to have a thing to do with it while it was in the hand of the executor; that I preferred to manage my own accounts, and I being the sole legatee, would give him a mortgage on the property. Mr. Oliver wrote a very amiable letter in reply: stating that it was a great pleasure to him to be able to contribute to my comfort, and that I must not hesitate to draw on him for any amount that I might have occasion for, and that he did not desire any mortgage. I however, sent the mortgage, and the money was deposited in the U. S. Bank at Washington. I remained several months at Mr. Carroll’s and my father came frequently to see me; in one of his visits, I requested him to write to Col. Bomford, and request him to engage for my future habitation, a house on one of the Heights of Georgetown, that I had seen too much of Washington, and would never live there again! Col. Bomford replied that his beautiful country seat, Kalorama, was without a tenant, and that I should have it at as low a rent as any house in Georgetown, and pay the rent at my own convenience! I agreed to take it, and in the following autumn I took possession of it––my father accompanied me from the residence of Mr. Carroll.”
“A Memorial, Georgetown D. C., Nov. 24, 1849, To the Hon. President, and Members of the Senate,” Georgetown Advocate, March 2, 1850, p. 1 (continued on March 9); A Memorial, to the Honorable President and Members of the Senate, 2 January, 1850, Legislative Division, National Archives.
As would later emerge in court, Oliver’s loans to Susan Decatur in the first two years after her husband’s death would amount to $23,000. One of the ways that Decatur found to economize was to send the three nieces of her husband, who were living with her at Kalorama, back to Philadelphia. Although they had not been named in Stephen Decatur’s will, they maintained that it had been their uncle’s intention to adopt them, and that their inheritance had been squandered, as they saw it, by his profligate wife. This was the origin of the rupture that, four decades later, would prevent Susan Decatur from being laid to rest beside her husband when she died.
Oliver v. Decatur, 4 D.C. 461, 4 Cranch 461 (1834), United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia; Priscilla Decatur Twiggs letter, February 5, 1832, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Decatur Family Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, cited in Robert J. Allison, Stephen Decatur American Naval Hero, 1779–1820 (2005), pp. 218-219.
In 1804, the ketch Intrepid, under the command of Stephen Decatur, slipped into the harbor of Tripoli and set afire the American frigate Philadelphia, which had been captured by the enemy. Under the terms of the Prize Act of 1800, the officers and crew of the Intrepid were entitled to claim a bounty for their exploit, but sixteen years elapsed without Decatur, whose share of the prize would have been highest, taking any action. In the end it would fall to his his widow to bring a claim. Her purpose was twofold: to honor her husband, and to extricate herself from her debts; if successful, her share would amount to $31,000. “In the House of Representatives, a petition was presented by Mrs. Decatur, on behalf of herself and the officers and crew who had been associated in the destruction of the Frigate Philadelphia, at Tripoli, praying recompense.” Decatur made her case in a pamphlet entitled “Documents Relative to the Claim of Mrs. Decatur, With the Earnest Request that The Gentlemen of Congress Will Take The Trouble To Read Them” (1826), that included statements by officers and men who had participated in the action at Tripoli, memorials and legal opinions by her late husband and others, and letters from prominent supporters of her claim. “I cannot help fearing that, in the interval which has elapsed since the adjournment of Congress, the merits of my claim may have escaped from your memory, and my documents from your hands; and I therefore again beg leave to draw your attention to them.” In 1834 she had a second pamphlet printed, which included the language of “An Act to compensate Susan Decatur, widow and representative of Captain Stephen Decatur, deceased, and others,” which had passed the Senate in 1829. The bill was held up in the House––primarily over disagreement over who should get how much––and died in committee. “The claim of Mrs. Decatur for compensation for the frigate so gallantly destroyed by her husband under the walls of Tripoli, was openly opposed by Webster, Storrs, &c.”
“Washington,” National Journal, December 22, 1825, p. 3; “New Attachments,” United States Telegraph, May 13, 1826, p. 3; Documents Relative to the Claim of Mrs. Decatur, With the Earnest Request that The Gentlemen of Congress Will Take The Trouble To Read Them. (Georgetown, D.C., 1826); Documents Relative to the Claim of Mrs. Decatur, With the Earnest Request that The Gentlemen of Congress Do Her The Favor To Read Them. (Georgetown, D.C., 1834); Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Life of Stephen Decatur: A Commodore in the Navy of the United States (1846), p. 366.
While she waited, Decatur lived from renting out her former mansion on Presidents’ Square. One of its earliest tenants was the French ambassador, Baron Hyde de Neuville. He was followed by the ambassador of the Tsar, Diederik Tuyll van Serooskerken. “Baron de Tuyll, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from Russia, is about to avail himself of the permission of his Government to absent himself from his mission, for the recovery of his health, and with that view leaves this City in a few days, to embark for England.” The Baron’s departure meant that Decatur House became available. “That large and commodious House, situated North of the President’s, at present occupied by Baron Tuyll, the Russian Minister. Possession may be had on the 1st of May. Inquire of Chs. H. Goldsborough, G Street.” The ambassador’s staff seized the opportunity. “Persons are requested not to purchase from the domestics of the Baron de Tuyll, the flowers and shrubbery in the Gardens attached to the house in which he resided. The Baron was permitted to occupy the house at a reduced rent, in consequence of his putting the grounds in order, and therefore they have not a right to deface them.” Baron de Tuyll died two weeks later, on his way to England. After that, Decatur House was the residence of three successive secretaries of state: Henry Clay (1827-1829); Martin Van Buren (1829-1831); and Edward Livingston (1831-1833). “Edward Livingston … leased the Decatur residence on Lafayette Square … and there gathered … the Calhouns … Adamses, Webster, Clay, Chief Justice Marshall, Martin Van Buren, Mrs. Madison, their neighbor across the Park, and the widow of Admiral Decatur.”
“For Rent,” United States Telegraph, March 21, 1826, p. 3; “Diplomatic,” The Columbian Star, March 25, 1826, p. 3; “Notice,” National Intelligencer, March 27, 1826, p. 1; Virginia Tattnall Peacock, Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century (1901), pp. 84-5; Ann Hollingsworth Wharton, Social Life in the Early Republic (1903), p. 189.
By 1830 it was evident that Decatur’s debts still loomed. “To be sold at public auction … some of the most valuable unimproved property in the City of Washington … most desirable situations … for private residences.” There was also the house itself. “There is on one of the lots a spacious dwelling house, occupied at present by the secretary of State. It was built for the residence of a Foreign Minister; having every accommodation for an extensive household, with Stables for five or six horses, Coach House, Ice House, and every convenience requisite for a complete and splendid establishment.” The outcome of that auction is unknown. Another auction was advertised in 1832. “This property was selected by the late Commodore Decatur, in the year 1816, as commanding greater advantages than any other in the District.” “On lots 16, 17, and 18 there are very extensive improvements, consisting of a superb dwelling house, with spacious back buildings, ice house and stabling for six horses, with every accommodation for a numerous household. It has been occupied by a succession of Foreign Ministers, and for the last eight years, by the Secretary of State. The terms of sale for all or any part of said property will be ten per cent. Cash, and the balance due in one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine years, with interest paid semi annually.” In 1833 the furniture went on the auction block. “On Thursday … in Mrs. Decatur’s house, President’s Square … a large assortment of Elegant Household and Table Furniture, consisting in part of … Brussels and Ingrain Carpets, Rich Silk and Muslin Curtains … Marble Top Centre Tables … Beautiful Bronze and Gilt French Clocks, Superb Cut Glass Table Lustres … Cut Decanters, Tumblers, Wines, Punch Glasses, Champaignes and Hock Glasses, &c. &c.”
“President’s Square. A fine opportunity for speculation!” National Intelligencer, May 12, 1830, p. 3; “A Fine Opportunity For Speculation,” National Intelligencer, November 13, 1832, p. 1; “Sale Of Elegant Furniture, By Richard Wright, Auctioneer,” The Globe, April 23, 1833, p. 2.
In 1834, Robert Oliver took Decatur to court over promissory notes going back to 1820, amounting to $23,000. Decatur’s lawyers argued that it was usurious for the interest to be compounded, but Judge Thruston ruled for the plaintiff, who died later that year. In 1836 Oliver’s executors forced Decatur to put her former home, and about fourteen adjacent city lots, on the block one more time. “Pursuant to a decree of the Circuit Court … case of Robert Oliver’s executors against Susan Decatur, the subscribers, as trustees, will sell at auction, to the highest bidder … at the dwelling house in Washington city built and occupied by the late Commodore Decatur, the following valuable real estate … [including the] spacious dwelling and offices erected by Commodore Decatur. Jas. Dunlop, Jno. Marbury, Trustees.” The winning bid, $12,000 from John Gadsby, went toward satisfying Robert Oliver’s executors.
Oliver v. Decatur, United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, March Term, 1834; “Valuable Improved Real Estate At Auction,” The Globe, September 20, 1836, p. 3; Kristin A. Collins, “Petitions Without Number”: Widows’ Petitions and the Early Nineteenth-Century Origins of Public Marriage-Based Entitlements,” Law and History Review, Vol. 31, No. 1 (February 2013), pp. 1-60.
Susan Decatur in Georgetown
When Susan Decatur left Kalorama is unclear. The first clear evidence of her in Georgetown comes in the form of an 1828 real estate advertisement by Thomas Plater. “Having retired to the country I wish to dispose of my house and lot, late my residence on Gay street, Georgetown, now occupied by Mrs. Decatur.” As Plater had first advertised the house in 1824, that is the earliest year Decatur could have lived there. (A search of the house files in the Peabody Room of the Georgetown Library did not turn up an address for Plater’s house. Grace Dunlop Ecker wrote that “a tradition has persisted” that Susan Decatur lived at 2812 N Street (Morsell House), but that house was not owned by Thomas Plater in the relevant years, and more recent authors appear to be skeptical.)
“For Sale Or Rent,” National Intelligencer, August 23, 1824, p. 2; “Private Residence For Sale,” National Intelligencer, March 1, 1828, p. 3; Grace Dunlop Ecker, A Portrait of Old George Town (1933), pp. 157-160; Deering Davis, Stephen P. Dorsey and Ralph Cole Hall, Georgetown Houses of the Federal Period 1780-1830 (1944); Harold D. Eberlein, Cortland V. Hubbard, Historic Houses of George-Town & Washington City (1958), p. 78; Mary Mitchell, Robert Lyle, “A New Look at Old N Street in Georgetown,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, vol. 63/65 (1963/1965), pp. 392-4; Nancy Simons Peterson, “Guarded Pasts: The Lives and Offspring of Colonel George and Clara [Baldwin] Bomford,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 86 (1998), p. 291.
Moving to Georgetown may have been connected with her conversion to Catholicism, for which the ground had been prepared by the Jesuit education Susan Wheeler had shared with the granddaughters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton. She was baptized in the students’ chapel at Georgetown College, November 25, 1828, and received her first communion at Trinity Church, December 31, 1828. “After her baptism in 1828 she renounced the social life of Washington and devoted herself to charities for the poor and support of the church. Taking a small house near the college, she became a strong presence in the community and had many of the faculty as friends, especially Fathers John Beschter and Benedict Fenwick.” (The house to which Decatur was to move was one that had had been available to the College for many years. “Father Vanlomen, a benevolent and devout Catholic priest, then pastor of the Holy Trinity Church, who not only gave this interesting enterprise his hand and his heart, but for several years himself taught a school of colored boys three days in a week, near the Georgetown College gate, in a small frame house, which was afterwards famous as the residence of the broken-hearted widow of Commodore Decatur.”)
Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Condition and Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia (1870), pp. 204-5; William W. Warner, At Peace With All Their Neighbors: Catholics and Catholicism in the National Capital, 1787-1960, pp. 199, 280.
Between March and May of 1829, when Susan Decatur exchanged letters with President Andrew Jackson, her return address was the Union Hotel, Washington. She was in Georgetown again by the end of the year, when she received an anonymous warning about social contact with Margaret Eaton. “Madam, I take the liberty to tell you that you will injure your cause by associating with Mrs. E––your best friends are her enemies.” And there was a succession of small houses, each of which was closer to Georgetown College. The 1834 Directory lists Mrs. Decatur on south side of Prospect Street, and there were at least two moves after that. The first was to a brick house (later occupied by Raphael Prosper Thian) at 91 Fayette Street, opposite what is now 1545 35th Street. Her final move, to the “small house near the college” at 36th and P Streets, occured some time after that. “The house was afterwards purchased by Miss Lucretia Hobbs, who occupied it until Mrs. Decatur expressed a desire to rent it from her, when she accommodated her and moved to a dwelling in the vicinity.”
Susan Decatur to Andrew Jackson, March 11, 1829; Susan Decatur to Andrew Jackson, May 26, 1829; Unknown to Susan Wheeler Decatur, December 12, 1829; Andrew Jackson to Susan Wheeler Decatur, January 2, 1830, Andrew Jackson Papers, Library of Congress; Georgetown College Journal, Vol. 5, No. 7, p. 73-4, April 1877; Vol. 6, No. 3, p. 34, December 1877; Vol. 6, No. 5, p. 52, February 1878.
Although Decatur’s prize claim had, by 1834, taken the form of a private bill “for the relief of Susan Decatur and others” ––i.e., a pension––it was nonetheless understood to be connected with the prize money that she believed had been owed to her husband. When the bill was debated in May of 1834, Thomas Chilton, of Kentucky, asked why Susan Decatur should be entitled to a reward for something her husband did before he married her? “But now we are called upon to appropriate an enormous sum for this service; and to whom? There is no difficulty in determining to whom the lion’s part is given. It is to a lady, having, as I understand, a large real estate in this city––not a child on earth to provide for––a stranger to the services rendered––and even a stranger to Decatur himself, while he rendered them.” The widow’s cause was taken up by Henry Hubbard, of New Hampshire. “Of one fact, however, I have no doubt; that this claim has been doomed to encounter all the power of prejudice, from the mere circumstance that the bills which have been heretofore presented for its proper adjustment, have purported, on their face, to provide “for the compensation of Susan Decatur, the widow and legal representative of Captain Stephen Decatur,” &c.” Hubbard argued that, if the application had been made by her husband, Congress would have passed it without hesitation.
“House of Representatives,” United States Telegraph, May 1, 1834, p. 3; “Speech of Mr. Hubbard of New Hampshire,”The Globe, May 22, 1834, p. 2.
Decatur’s pension bill did not pass until 1837. To add a further complication, on the same day her pension was approved, Congress passed an act awarding pensions to the widows of officers who had died in the naval service. The Secretary of the Navy told Decatur to pick one or the other. Under protest, she opted for payment of the general pension: $600 a year, and back pay to the year of her husband’s death. It was the latter, which came to about $10,000, that allowed Susan Decatur to become a benefactor of Georgetown College, at a time when it, and the Maryland plantations of the Jesuit Province that supported it, were heavily in debt, and needed an infusion of cash. (The scandalous sale of 272 enslaved men, women, and children was just a year away.) For $7,000, the College sold Decatur an annuity carrying an interest of 9½ percent; in return, Decatur would earn $644 a year for the rest of her life. (That same year, she advanced an additional $3,100, at just 6 percent.) In the meantime, Decatur took the Secretary of the Navy to court for the other pension. The Circuit Court of Washington County overruled an order to the Secretary to show cause, and refused Decatur’s application for a mandamus. Finally, in the question, did the Circuit Court have the power to issue a mandamus to an officer of the federal government commanding him to do a ministerial act, the Supreme Court of the United States, in Decatur v. Paulding (1840), said no. Meanwhile, Congress, having regretted the generosity of the 1837 pension for naval widows, repealed it. Decatur received no pension from 1842 until 1856, when Congress in reinstated it: $50 a month for five years, “to cease on the death or marriage of said Susan Decatur.”
“Died,” Alexandria Gazette, December 27, 1839, p. 4; “Deaths,” National Intelligencer, December 28, 1839, p. 3; “We copied,” National Intelligencer, December 30, 1839, p. 3; “Thirty-fourth Congress,” The Daily Globe, July 12, 1856, p. 2; “In Senate,” National Intelligencer, July 12, 1856, p. 8; “Congress––Yesterday,” National Intelligencer, July 12, 1856, p. 3; “Thirty-Fourth Congress,” The Daily Globe, August 29, 1856, p. 1; Georgetown College Journal, Vol. 5, No. 7, p. 73-4, April 1877; Vol. 6, No. 3, p. 34, December 1877; Vol. 6, No. 5, p. 52, February 1878; Robert Emmett Curran, The Bicentennial History of Georgetown University: From Academy to University, 1789-1889 (1993), pp. 117-118, 363; William W. Warner, At Peace With All Their Neighbors: Catholics and Catholicism in the National Capital, 1787-1960 (1994); Adam Rothman, “Georgetown University and the Business of Slavery,” Washington History, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Fall 2017), pp. 18-22. Summations of the convoluted story of the prize appear in Spencer Tucker, Stephen Decatur, A Life Most Bold and Daring (2005), p. 185; and in Kristin A. Collins, “Petitions Without Number”: Widows’ Petitions and the Early Nineteenth-Century Origins of Public Marriage-Based Entitlements,” Law and History Review, Vol. 31, No. 1 (February 2013), pp. 1-60. A detailed account can be found in Dennis G. Terez, “The Long and Involved Claim of Susan Decatur and the Men Who Burned the Philadelphia,” (1984), Joseph Kennedy, S.J. Papers, Georgetown University Special Collections.
The households that can be glimpsed in successive censuses make it clear that Susan Decatur always had servants, and that some of them were enslaved. What is not always clear who owned them. In the 1810 census, the Norfolk household of Commodore Decatur and his wife had been listed with five enslaved persons––who may have been the same five people listed with Luke Wheeler, living alone nearby. Guttridge cites an 1819 manumission in which Stephen Decatur manumitted Philis Ash, who may have been brought from Norfolk; Decatur’s father-in-law witnessed his signature. In 1820 (when the newly widowed Susan Decatur had closed her Washington house and did not appear in the census) her father’s four-person Norfolk household included one enslaved person. By 1830, Susan Decatur’s four-person Georgetown household included two Black women, of whom one was free and one enslaved. In 1840 the census indicates that Decatur had two Free Colored women to serve her. In 1850 (when the census begins to be much more informative) Decatur employed a 22-year-old free Black woman named Ellen Thomas, and the Slave Schedule shows that she was also the owner of a 60-year-old Black woman. Finally, in 1860, when she lived with Lucretia Hobbs, the Slave Schedule shows that Hobbs had hired a 45-year-old enslaved woman from Ann M. Stewart, who lived next-door, and that Susan Decatur owned a nine-month-old girl! How this came to be is unknown––as is the reliability of the census enumerator, who entered Decatur’s age as 61 instead of 84, and her housemate’s surname as Boggs rather than Hobbs.
Luke Wheeler, Commodore Decatur, 1810 Census, Norfolk, Norfolk Borough, Virginia, pp. 98, 112; L. Wheeler, 1820 Census, Norfolk, Virginia, p. 101; 1830 Census, Georgetown, D. C., p. 153; 1840 Census, Georgetown, D. C., p. 187; 1850 Census, North West Ward, Georgetown D. C. p. 167a; 1860 Census, Ward 4, Georgetown D. C., p. 206; Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Emancipation of Slaves in the District of Columbia, 1861–1863; Leonard F. Guttridge, Our Country, Right or Wrong: The Life of Stephen Decatur (Forge Books, 2006), p. 216.
The Grave of Stephen Decatur
For whatever reason, a full quarter century passed before plans were put in motion for the remains of Stephen Decatur to be moved from the mausoleum at Kalorama and reinterred near the graves of his parents. “An interesting correspondence appears in the Philadelphia papers, between Mrs Susan Decatur and Mr F. G. Smith, on behalf of a committee of citizens of Philadelphia. Mr S asks Mrs Decatur’s consent to the removal of her husband’s remains from near Washington to St. Peter’s Church Yard, Philadelphia, at as early a day as arrangements can be made. Mrs D. yields her assent in a very feeling letter.”
“Commodore Decatur’s Remains,” [Richmond, Va.] Times and Compiler, October 9, 1846, p. 2; Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Life of Stephen Decatur: A Commodore in the Navy of the United States (1846), pp. 327, 442; Corra Bacon-Foster, “The Story of Kalorama.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Vol. 13 (1910), pp. 98-118; Mary Mitchell, “Kalorama: Country Estate to Washington Mayfair,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Vol. 71/72 (1971/1972), pp. 164-189.
“The melancholy office was performed, this forenoon, of removing the remains of the gallant and accomplished Decatur from the vault at Kalorama, where they had reposed for more than twenty years. He fell on the 22d of March, 1820. Kalorama is a beautiful country seat, within a mile of this city, and was for some time the residence of the celebrated Joel Barlow. Being recently disposed of by Col. Bomford to Mr. Fletcher, from the north, it was thought proper, with the consent of Mrs. Decatur, (the commodore’s widow, who now resides in Georgetown,) to transfer the ashes of Decatur to Philadelphia, where his father had lived. They are to be deposited in the church-yard of St. Peter’s, and a monument erected over them. Major Twiggs, on the part of a committee of Philadelphia, came on to superintend the removal of the remains––Care was taken to avoid all publicity, and not even to notify the performance of the ceremony in the public papers. Few attended, of course, with the exception of the Secretary of the Navy, and the heads of the bureaus of that department. The lid of the inner coffin was opened, and every lineament of the fine face was gone. Nothing remained but the skeleton, and a few fragments of the dress.” In the ceremonies in Philadelphia, four male relatives walked as mourners behind Decatur’s coffin: Maj. Levi Twiggs USMC, and Navy Purser Francis B. Stockton, who were each married to one of Stephen Decatur’s nieces; Andrew Jackson Decatur, a nephew, and George Decatur Twiggs, a grandnephew of Stephen Decatur. There was no mention of Stephen Decatur’s widow.
“Remains of Commodore Decatur,” The Daily Union, October 27, 1846, p. 4; “The Decatur Obsequies,” The Dollar Newspaper [Philadelphia], November 4, 1846, p. 2.
In 1847, not long after her husband’s remains had been taken to Philadelphia, Susan Decatur made her will, in which she bequeathed her share of the prospective prize money to the nephew and the nieces of her late husband. It was all had she had to leave.
“I give and devise to my friend Lucretia Hobbs all my Household and Kitchen furniture; with all my wearing apparel –– and I appoint her with my friend Mary Fenwick, to be Executors of this my Will.
The government of the United States is indebted to my deceas’d Husband Stephen Decatur (to whom I am sole heir) for the full value of the Frigate Philadelphia, captured by him in the harbour of Tripoli, and burnt in the year Eighteen and four by order of the Commander of the United States Squadron on that Station; and for which no compensation has hitherto been made –– whenever it shall be paid, I bequeath one half the amount to Lieut. William Stephen Decatur Hurst, of the U. S. Navy –– and the other half to be equally divided between the Nephews and Nieces of my lamented Husband, Children of the late John P. Decatur.
I bequeath all the property which may accrue to me from the settlement of the Estate of my deceas’d Father, Luke Wheeler of Norfolk, Virginia, to my Cousin, John Williams, Clerk of the Court in Norfolk.”
“If there be any residue after all my just debts shall have been paid, I bequeath fifty dollars to Lucretia Hobbs, and the same amount to Mary Fenwick, and the remainder, whatever it may be, to be distributed by them and the then pastor of Trinity Church, to the Widows and Orphans of George Town.”
Will of Susan Decatur, August 2, 1847, filed August 11, 1860, District of Columbia Archives.
The Battle for the Prize
Stephen Decatur’s will, drafted shortly before the duel in which he was fatally wounded, was succinct, and left no doubt that his wife was his only heir. “I give and devise to my beloved wife, Susan Decatur, and her heirs, all my estate, real, personal and mixed, wheresoever situated, and I appoint my friends, Littleton Waller Tazewell, of Norfolk, Robert G. Harper, of Baltimore, and George Bomford, of the city of Washington, together with Mrs. Decatur, my wife, to be the executors of my will.” Twenty-nine years after Stephen Decatur’s death, his widow learned that her husband’s nieces now claimed to have been adopted by him, and that they were therefore entitled to a share of the prize money that she had been pursuing for more than two decades. Susan Decatur, who was having none of it, wrote a letter to the editors of the National Intelligencer.
“My beloved husband directed me, if I survived him, to apply to Congress for the amount due to himself and his associates for the recapture and destruction of the Frigate Philadelphia. I did so; and, when I had almost the whole talent of the House in favor of my claim, I withdrew it in consequence of an attempt being then made to set aside my beloved husband’s Will! He never directed me to apply to Congress for a gratuity; and if they choose to consider the money now expended as such, they have the power to dispose of it in favor of those whom they believe to be the most deserving. And, if I have done any thing since my husband’s death to forfeit my respectability, I am perfectly willing to take all the punishment; only desiring that it may be inflicted without casting the slightest shade upon the perfection of his moral character, to say nothing of the honor and glory which he achieved for his country. My beloved husband’s Will is recorded in the office of the Register of Wills, in Washington. I remain, gentlemen, very respectfully, yours, &c., Susan Decatur.”
DC will, executed March 22, 1820; “To the Editors,” National Intelligencer, February 6, 1849, p. 3; Charles Lee Lewis, The Romantic Decatur (1937), p. 279.
The quarrel with her nieces also caused her to revise her will, crossing out the bequest to their brother, William Stephen Decatur Hurst, the youngest son of her sister-in-law Ann Pine McKnight Hurst. “N. B. The opposite erasure was made with my own hand: in consequence of the ingratitude of the children of Mrs. McKnight, in attempting to set aside my belov’d Husband’s Will: sig’d with his own hand, in which he never mention’d them in any manner, and never promis’d during the whole course of his life, to leave them any thing whatever. Susan Decatur Feb 20th, 1849.” She detailed her grievances in a sworn statement that she furnished to the Daily Union.
“I hereby certify that … the late Commodore Decatur, never, during the whole course of our married life… communicated to me …that I would, in the event of his death, make provision for the ladies who have been brought forward … as his adopted children––ladies termed the Misses McKnight, the youngest of whom was married twenty-seven or twenty-eight years ago to Lieut. Twiggs … a man of fortune; another of them was married nineteen or twenty years since to Dr. Klappe … a man of fortune also; after his death she married Mr. Stockton … he being the sole heir to a considerable fortune in Philadelphia. The eldest of those ladies … has ample funds of her own … and has always resided, gratuitously, with her connexions.”
“I have never heard my beloved husband express any sentiment of attachment towards those ladies, beyond the ordinary feeling of regard which a man ought to have for his female relatives … never lived in the same house with them for more than a few days at a time … never once invited those ladies to his house.”
“While the claim which I laid before Congress (by my late husband’s direction) was pending … the present Miss McKnight addressed a letter … to one of the honorable gentleman, claiming a portion of the prize money for herself and her sisters … stating that I had treated the memory of their uncle with the greatest disrespect … that the swords and other articles presented to him by the government for his public services, I had given to the Indians. The gold box which had been presented to him by the corporation of New York, for the capture of the frigate Macedonian, I had given to the British minister, who had recently returned to England. (A pretty present for the British minister!) These charges were followed by others of similar character, and all false. A person of my acquaintance was in the House of Representatives when the letter to which I have alluded was read to the House, and came immediately to inform me of its contents. I then wrote a note to the Hon. George C. Washington, who was then a member of the House, and living in Georgetown, requesting him to call upon me, and take charge of all the articles about which I had been so maliciously calumniated, and to place them on the Speaker’s table, asking every honorable member of the House to look at them, and see, with his own eyes, how maliciously I had been traduced.”
“I have … the testimony of one of the most respectable gentlemen in Philadelphia … intimately acquainted with the present Miss McKnight from her earliest childhood … that she does not hesitate to depart from the truth whenever she thinks it will be for her interest to do so; and I have many proofs of it from my own knowledge.”
“On this16th day of February, 1849, personally appeared before the subscriber, a justice of the peace in and for said county, Mrs. Susan Decatur, widow of the late Commodore Stephen Decatur, and made oath, in due form of law, that the foregoing statement, signed by her and hereunto attached, is just and true as therein stated, to the best of her knowledge and belief. Sworn to before me, Lewis Carbery, J. P.”
“To The Editor,” The Daily Union, February 23, 1849, p. 1.
Two weeks later the Daily Union carried a reply from the niece who “does not hesitate to depart from the truth whenever she thinks it will be for her interest to do so.” Mary H. McKnight rebuffed her aunt’s accusations. “Mrs. Decatur will excuse Miss McKnight from addressing her in a style so entirely differing from her usual intercourse for forty-three years. She had intended not to notice that most extraordinary letter of the 23d, under oath, as she did the first; but friends thought it due to herself to deny the many gross untruths it contains.” McKnight closed with a defiant reference to the unnamed Philadelphian who had questioned her honesty. “With many regrets that you have compelled me to contradict you thus publicly, I do assure you I have received such strong testimonials in favor of my veracity, that I can assure you, and the very highly respectable gentleman of Philadelphia, that I heed him not.” That was the only statement that McKnight made, and her sisters, Anna Pine (Klapp) Stockton and Priscilla Decatur Twiggs (whose husband had been in charge of conveying Stephen Decatur’s remains to Philadelphia), kept out of the public eye.
“A Card,” The Daily Union, March 8, 1849, p. 4.
The prize question was before Congress again in 1850 and 1851. “The Vice President laid before the Senate a memorial of Susan Decatur … asking that the prize money due for the capture and destruction of the frigate Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli may be distributed among the captors, and protesting against any portion of it being paid to Priscilla Decatur Twiggs or her sisters, which was referred to the Committee on Naval Affairs.” A copy of her husband’s will, drafted on the day before he died, was read before the Senate. Although there was no mention in Decatur’s will of heirs other than his wife, Senator John M. Berrien of Georgia maintained that there was “abundant testimony” to show that Decatur’s property ––“ascertained by his declaration made a short time before his death … of the value of one hundred thousand dollars”––“was bequeathed to the widow with the express declaration of his confidence that she knew his wishes in regard to these his orphan nieces, and would provide for them better than he would do.” Senator David Levy Yulee of Florida replied that the commodore’s widow had not inherited anything. “So far from Mrs. Decatur having received from the estate, she has been obliged to sell the plate which her husband left her, in order to redeem part of the debt contracted on account of his estate, and which she believed honor required should be paid; and she is living now upon the scanty annuity of money Congress gave her as a pension, which, I believe, is not sufficient to give her more than her bread, being dependent on charity for the house she occupies.”
“Congress,” National Intelligencer, February 8, 1850, p. 2; “Reports From Committees,” The Daily Globe, August 24, 1850, p. 3; “Congress,” National Intelligencer, February 11, 1851, p. 1; “Thirty-First Congress,” The Daily Globe, Feb 15, 1851, p. 1; “This Is To Give Notice,” National Intelligencer, April 29, 1851, p. 3; Documents, Official and Unofficial, Relating to the Case of the Capture and Destruction of the Frigate Philadelphia at Tripoli, on the 16th February 1804(1850); A Memorial, to the Honorable President and Members of the Senate, 2 January, 1850, Legislative Division, National Archives.
The bill “for the relief of the captors of the frigate Philadelphia” was still being debated in 1854. “The subject has been frequently before this and the other branch, and has alternately received the sanction of one or the other, but has never been passed into law, in consequence of differences which arose between the representatives of one of the claimants.” By this time the question of the prize had been recast as a pension to benefit not only the widow, but also the nieces of Stephen Decatur. “On motion by Mr. Fish, the Senate proceeded … consideration of the bill … for the relief of the captors of the frigate Philadelphia. It directs that in consideration of the meritorious services rendered by Stephen Decatur … on the occasion of the recapture and destruction of the frigate Philadelphia, in the harbor of Tripoli, on February 16, 1804, $15,000 be paid … to his widow and his three nieces, Priscilla D. Twiggs, Anna. P. Stockton, and Mary H. McKnight, to be distributed––one-half to the widow, and the other half equally among the nieces.” The bill died.
“In Congress,” The Daily Union, January 26, 1854, p. 1.
The intractability of such cases may have been one reason Congress created the Court of Claims in 1855 to adjudicate monetary claims brought against the government; Decatur’s was one of the earliest cases to be heard. “The case of Susan Decatur vs. the United States was called up by the court. The plaintiff in this case is the widow of the late Commodore Decatur, and the claim is for prize money for the recapture of the United States frigate Philadelphia, in the harbor of Tripoli, in the year 1804.” The Court ruled against the plaintiff: since the Philadelphia had been destroyed, it had not been recaptured, and therefore no bounty was due.
“Court of Claims,” Evening Star, May 3, 1856, p. 4; Report of the Court of Claims, in case of Susan Decatur vs. United States, presenting four documents to Congress, Dec. 18, 1857 [35 cong., I sess. S. misc. doc., 99.]
In early 1860, Susan Decatur gave in. “I consent that whatever Congress may appropriate on account of any allowance for the recapture of the Frigate Philadelphia by the Ketch “Intrepid” under the command of my Husband Stephen Decatur, may be equally divided between myself, and his nieces, Mrs. P. D. Twiggs, Anna P. Stockton, and Mary H. McKnight; I receiving one half the amount, & those Ladies the other half.” It was not enough: six weeks later, the” bill for the relief of the captors of the frigate Philadelphia” was was postponed indefinitely. Susan Decatur died a few months later.
“In Senate,” National Intelligencer, December 31, 1859, p. 2; “Thirty-sixth Congress,” The Daily Globe, March 31, 1860, p. 2; Note of Susan Decatur, February 17, 1860, Legislative Division, National Archives, in Dennis G. Terez, “The Long and Involved Claim of Susan Decatur and the Men Who Burned the Philadelphia,” (1984), Joseph Kennedy, S.J. Papers, Georgetown University Special Collections.
The Unquiet Grave
Susan Decatur’s death was first announced in 1839. “At Georgetown, D. C. on Thursday night last suddenly, Mrs. Susan Decatur, relict of the late Commodore Stephen Decatur of the U. S. Navy. She was a native of Norfolk, a daughter of the late Luke Wheeler, Esq. and beautiful and accomplished as few of her sex are. She was married in 1806 to the chivalrous Decatur, who had just returned from the field of his glory in the Mediterranean, and when every tongue was eloquent in his praise. She was worthy of the hero; and if, in the course of late years, her life has been shadowed by difficulties which she could not have foreseen; if she wanted what a moderate share of wealth might bestow; it speaks badly for the liberality of a nation whose naval prowess was so splendidly enhanced by the gallantry of her partner.” Two days later, the National Intelligencer acknowledged its error: Decatur’s physician had prematurely given up hope. “We copied from the Norfolk Beacon, on Saturday, a brief paragraph announcing the decease of Mrs. Susan Decatur, widow of the late gallant Commodore. It gives us sincere pleasure to state that the annunciation was incorrect. Although very ill, Mrs. D still lives, and, we are happy to learn, is thought somewhat better than she was a week ago.”
“Died,” Alexandria Gazette, December 27, 1839, p. 4; “Deaths,” National Intelligencer, December 28, 1839, p. 3; “We copied,” National Intelligencer, December 30, 1839, p. 3.
When Decatur died in 1860, her death notice was as brief as the premature one had been effusive. “On the 21st of July, Mrs. Susan Decatur, in the 84th year of her age, relict of the late Commodore Stephen Decatur. Her funeral will take place from her late residence, Third and Lincoln streets, this (Monday) morning at half-past nine o’clock. Her friends and acquaintances are respectfully invited without further invitation.” The Georgetown correspondent of the Evening Starexplained how the widow had receded from public view. “The widow of Commodore Decatur, who died at her residence (corner of Third and Lingan streets) in our city on Sunday morning last, about eight o’clock, at the advanced age of 84 years, was buried yesterday. Her obsequies were performed at Trinity (Catholic) Church. This lady, whose gallant husband occupies such a prominent place in American history, has been living here in such a quiet and unostentatious manner that many of our citizens knew not of her residence in our midst until they heard of her demise.”
“Deaths,” National Intelligencer, July 23, 1860, p. 1; “Georgetown,” Evening Star, July 24, 1860, p. 3; Deaths, Holy Trinity Church – Beginning 8th of December 1818, Holy Trinity Church Archives, p. 106, July 21, 1860.
In the end, the nieces had the satisfaction of denying Stephen Decatur’s widow the honor of being buried beside her husband. (That their own connection to their uncle was an article of faith was emphasized in their obituaries. “Miss McKnight’s two sisters were also adopted daughters of … Commodore Decatur. They were Mrs. Twiggs, the widow of the gallant Major Twiggs, of the Marine Corps … and the late Mrs. Stockton, widow of Francis B. Stockton.” The obituary of Priscilla Twiggs was titled “Death of the Late Commodore Stephen Decatur’s Adopted Daughter.”) Susan Decatur’s local connection determined the outcome; a parishioner of Holy Trinity Church for three decades, she was buried in the old burial ground of Holy Trinity, on the campus of Georgetown College, in a lot that belonged to her executor, Mary Fenwick.
“This Is To Give Notice,” National Intelligencer, September 13, 1860, p. 3; Georgetown College Journal, vol. 5, No. 7, pp. 73-4, April 1877; vol. 6, no. 5, February 1878, Georgetown University Archives; “Died,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 12, 1884, p. 5; “Miss Mary H. McKnight,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 1889, p. 6; “A Fated Family,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 29, 1890, p. 4.
If anyone wondered why the widow hadn’t been buried beside her husband, it did not appear in print until 1904, when William Decatur Parsons, the family historian, came to Georgetown to supervise the restoration of her tomb. His explanation appears to have been the equivalent of “because.” “It is deemed more appropriate that the remains of Mrs. Decatur be permitted to remain undisturbed here than to have them transferred to Philadelphia, even though her husband lies there.” In 1931, during construction of White-Gravenor Hall, the question arose again. “Among the graves recently discovered while workmen were excavating for the new building at Georgetown University were those of Susan Decatur, widow of Commodore Stephen Decatur.” By then, no one could remember why her grave was in Georgetown. “[Stephen] Decatur was buried in the cemetery of St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia, but Mrs. Decatur, for some unknown reason, was interred in the local cemetery.” “It was too bad,” the author of a weekly local history column in the Evening Star lamented, “that the remains of Mrs. Decatur were not placed beside those of her illustrious husband in the Philadelphia cemetery.”
“Restoring The Tomb Of Susan Decatur––Descendant of the Admiral of National Fame in Georgetown for That Purpose,” Washington Times, November 3, 1904, p. 13; William Decatur Parsons, The Decatur Genealogy (New York, 1921), pp. 16-22; “Cemetery Yields Forgotten Graves At Georgetown U.,” Evening Star, January 24, 1931, p. 15; “Reburial Of Susan Decatur’s Body, Recently Found, Offered,” Evening Star, February 19, 1931, p. 18; John Clagett Proctor, “Old Georgetown in History of District,” Evening Star, March 27, 1932, p. 68.
In 1953, when Georgetown University removed the forgotten burial ground to make way for expansion, the remains of Susan Decatur were quietly transferred to Holy Rood Cemetery, which was also University property. Her tombstone with its white marble cross––“Sacred to the memory of Susan Decatur, wife of the late Commodore Stephen Decatur, U. S. N., who departed this life June 21, 1860” ––was not part of the transfer, and the new grave was unmarked. In 1988, when the University was contemplating commercial development of Holy Rood Cemetery, Susan Decatur was exhumed again, and buried for a third time, this time in Philadelphia, at the foot of 30-foot granite column that marks the grave of her husband. “And today, in the quiet yard of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, the reunion of the hero and his belle will be completed. At 11 a.m. in a private ceremony, members of the clergy, university officials, a Navy admiral, Decatur descendants and guardians of Philadelphia’s maritime history are scheduled to dedicate Susan’s ‘final’ resting place, beside that of her husband.” A representative of Georgetown was in attendance that day to express satisfaction at having brought about this reunion in death. (That the year of her death was off by a decade appears to have gone unnoticed.)
SUSAN WHEELER DECATUR
1776 –– 1850
DEVOTED WIFE OF
COMMODORE STEPHEN DECATUR
BENEFACTRESS OF
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
“GU to Transfer Ancient Graves“, Washington Post, April 17, 1953; Interments, Mount Olivet Cemetery; ”Reunited, A Naval Hero And His Belle”, Philadelphia Inquirer, May 30, 1988; Address of Charles Meng, Vice President for Administration and Facilities, Georgetown University, on the occasion of the internment [sic] of Susan Wheeler Decatur at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Memorial Day, May 30, 1988, Georgetown University Archives; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11293735/susan-decatur
Bibliography
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Documents Relative to the Claim of Mrs. Decatur, with the earnest request that the gentlemen of Congress do her the favor to read them (Georgetown, D.C., 1834)
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Carlton Fletcher
The citation and acknowledgement of my research is greatly appreciated.