1870s

December 6, 1877 was a big day in local journalism as D.C.'s longest running local rag, The Washington Post, published its first issue. For three pennies readers got four pages of news. Sounds like a pretty good deal.

Understanding the history of local government in the District of Columbia is tricky business. The governance structure has changed several times since the city was founded in 1791 and, sometimes, these changes were quite dramatic... which brings us to the 1870s.

The territorial government prescribed by the Organic Act of 1871 gave D.C. a measure of home rule but the experiment would be short-lived. After Governor Alexander "Boss" Shepherd racked up big bills in an effort to modernize the city, President Grant felt compelled to make a change. What resulted was one of the more bizarre episodes in city history.

Here’s a fun piece of trivia. America’s most famous newspaper publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, than man who is often credited for rise of modern journalism, was married here in Washington 135 years ago on June 19, 1878.

His bride was Miss Kate Davis of Georgetown, a cousin of Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy. (I wonder if cousin Jefferson knew that Pulitzer had fought for the Union army during the Civil War. In fact, his immigration expenses from Hungary to the United States in 1864 were paid by Massachusetts military recruiters!)

March 4th, 1873 — Ulysses S. Grant's second inauguration — still stands as the coldest March day on record for Washington, and by all accounts it was an unmitigated wintry disaster.

We're happy to have a guest post from local historian and friend of the blog, Garrett Peck who is the author of  The Smithsonian Castle and the Seneca Quarry, released from The History Press.

Garrett's book tells the story of a (until recently!) largely-forgotten quarry in Seneca, Maryland, which provided the stone for the Smithsonian Castle and a host of other local landmarks. As he explains, the quarry also proved to be a source of scandal for President U.S. Grant in the 1870s.