Irish-American architect and master builder in Maryland: Thirteen volumes of bound manuscript

OVER 1000 PAGES OF MANUSCRIPT CONSTRUCTION RECORDS AND ACCOUNTS IN THIRTEEN FOLIO VOLUMES OF AN IMPORTANT FREDERICK, MARYLAND, 18TH / 19TH CENTURY IRISH IMMIGRANT ARCHITECT AND MASTER BUILDER, INCLUDING THOSE OF HIS SONS, WHO WERE HIS PARTNERS AND SUCCESSORS, KEPT OVER A PERIOD OF FIFTY YEARS, 1790-1840

McCLEERY, Henry (1749-1819), Irish-American architect and master builder in Frederick, Maryland, who built most of Frederick's significant structures in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Tall folio ledger book, original flexible boards (worn & soiled), signed on front cover: "Henry McCleery/his Book/1790 January 1st," then again, "Henry McCleery His Book," with dates "1791/1792/1793," and "Alegheny Lotts in this Book 1790 page 20," over 320 pages of manuscript in 4 sections, crudely side-sewn and bound as one, ca. pp. [76] + [76] + [80] + [90], each section with alphabetical list of clients/customers + 12 simple original sketch plans of buildings with dimensions, written on laid paper, with ProPatria watermark. Frederick, Maryland, this volume 1790, 1791, 1792, 1793, [1796, 1814-1815, 1821]: Additional volumes described below covering the years 1794, 1800, 1810, 1811, 1821-30, 1830, 1831, 1834-40, 1836, 1840. Thirteen volumes of bound manuscript, tall folios, approximately 1100 pp. Condition generally used as would be expected, but very good, as described for each volume.

A full ten-page description of the collection is available upon request. We include a partial list of McCleery's Frederick County elite customers below. We offer an extraordinary collection of manuscript account books delineating an early American architectural and construction business conducted by Henry McCleery, an Irish immigrant architect and master carpenter, who settled in Frederick, Maryland, about 1776, with the business carried on after his death in 1819 by his three sons, Robert, Andrew and William, then by only two of them after William went to Brookville, Indiana, in 1825. Henry McCleery's will was proved in 1820, leaving everything to his three sons equally. American manuscript architectural and building records such as these can be described by the old saying, "Rare as hen's teeth!" After searching the holdings of many American institutions, and the Library of Congress list of architectural manuscript sources, we have found no comparable American records, nor anything remotely as early, or detailed. To give an idea of the rarity of such manuscripts, the online Winterthur catalaogue records but one (1), a 122 page account book of Peter Ranck (1770-1851), joiner, cabinet-maker and innkeeper, but, not an architect/builder, from Jonestown, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, 1794-1817.

Frederick, the second largest town in Maryland, was a prominent and prosperous inland market town, with a large German population. The town was surrounded by rich agricultural lands and large amount of iron ore to feed numerous furnaces and forges. We quote from Thematic Context History--Architecture, at www.cityoffrederickmd.gov: "Frederick thus became attractive to investors, planters, farmers, entrepreneurs and gentlemen. As a result it was also attractive to craftsmen and laborers. This combined population built houses, shops, churches, taverns, industrial buildings, banks and offices. Shortly after its establishment, Frederick became the county seat for the newly formed Frederick County in 1748. Thus the town also sprouted a courthouse, jail and law offices. Of course it had a market house as well...There are a number of avenues for further research into Frederick's architectural heritage. The list begun in this context statement of architects and master builders [beginning with Andrew McCleery in the 1810-1860 time frame] who practised in Frederick can be expanded with biographical information about these individuals and a complete list of properties they built..." The manuscripts on offer here have enormous research value, containing, as they do, a copious amount of first hand information about the architectural and building history of Frederick spanning fifty years, 1790-1840.

"Henry McCleery worked as a master carpenter and architect, and he built most of the significant structures in Frederick from the time of his arrival to his death in 1819, assisted by his sons Andrew and Robert McCleery...Buildings attributed to McCleery include Frederick County's second courthouse (1785) [designed reportedly using the Court of Assizes in Dublin as a model, it burned down in 1861], the second All Saint's Episcopal Church (1813), for the Frederick Presbyterian Church (1825), and numerous taverns and houses."-Maryland Historical Trust: Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (note to the Perry Beall McCleery House, Inventory No. FHD-4650). There are four pages in our records here detailing work accomplished in 1821 for the Committee of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Designed by Henry McCleery, this second All Saint's Episcopal Church was consecrated in 1814, on land purchased on North Court Street, near Court House Square. This historic church is the seat of All Saint's Parish, Diocese of Maryland, which covers most of Frederick County, Maryland, and once covered most of Western Maryland. Those pages are pale, but are eminently legible.

Henry McCleery's manuscripts, with voluminous additions by his sons after his death, provide a wealth of previously unknown information about the flourishing business conducted by these architect/master builders, all regarding properties and businesses they served in Frederick County, as well as some in Georgetown. The initial account books/records are carried over from a previous "folio," whereabouts, if extant, unknown to us. These thirteen volumes containing more than 1100 pages offer an extraordinary amount of descriptive accounting information about the business activities of McCleery and his sons, with names of their many customers, with all jobs priced and described as completed for some of the most distinguished personages of late 18th and early 19th century Frederick, the county seat for western Maryland, an important market town, and the seat of justice. Maryland being a slave state, there is much here mentioning named Negro labor, whether slave or free, we don't know, although we do know that the slave population in Frederick was substantial.

Building, contracting, carpentry work of all types with different wood such as poplar, ash, chestnut, etc., building houses, making doors, paneled doors, windows, sashes, chimneys, bricks, flooring, joists, shutters, nails, stock locks, boards, scantling, rafters, gutters, etc., etc., also custom furniture making, copious numbers of coffins made to order for children and adults, with some of the more expensive versions described with details of wood, polish, fittings; some for the poor, McCleery apparently having an ongoing contract to provide coffins for those who died in the Poor House, including Negroes. Included are many renovations, building of complete structures, the buying and selling of various types of lumber and wooden building materials. Accomplished jobs are given full treatment, with names, dates, work accomplished, giving exact accounting of materials used for each task, with prices charged.

All four sections begin with a hand-lettered alphabetical index of clients names, be they personal, commercial, or county or state entities. The personal names are sometimes identified with a trade, i.e.: printer, locksmith, "comedian", blacksmith, baker, schoolmaster, butcher, mason, tailor, turner, etc., and some with military titles. Businesses or institutions include the Market House, or Frederick Town Market, of which McCleery seems to have had an official position, mentioning he collected "one Years rent of Room over Market", and "rent of stalls & shambles", signed "Henry McCleery Clerk"; "Christian Dwellings"; the State of Maryland, "federal"; the County of Frederick; the Magazine; Court House [built in March 1787; those who would speak there would include John Hanson, Thomas Johnson, Francis Scott Key and Roger Brooke Taney, who appears in these records] the Poor House [built in 1820, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places]; Lutheran Church, etc.

The initial 52 pages of the first section (1790) have been re-purposed with a child's pen-trials, school writings, notes, scribbles, math sums and writing-over the previous ledger information, most of which is still legible; thankfully the young scholar used blank areas of this section for his or her efforts [probably a young McCleery]. There are about a dozen pinned-in, laid-in, or loose pages of business and personal writings, including materials lists, costs; drawings, plans of buildings and calculation notes. Work for Frederick County included building steps for the Record Room, making doors, benches and tables, a "Pilory (sic) of Locust with Band," and ladder; hanging and leading windows. McCleery also notes his service as a Juror for 5 days, as well as valuing and "laying off", i.e. surveying properties. Work for Frederick County in 1791 included such things as "new timbers & covering for the South Bridge in Frederick Town..." as well as construction details for the Poor House, ongoing through the years with intermediary David Leavy (or Levy) who appears often in the records as a customer, and whose house (or tavern) McCleery designed and built. Another notable project was work done on the Market House for butchers, and for various other identified business stalls and their amenities.

"The Frederick County decisional elite in the second party era,...numbered seventy-two men...Frederick County's decisional leaders represented the diversity of the community in contrast to the relative uniformity found in the other rural areas..."-Whitman H. Ridgway, Community Leadership in Maryland, 1790-1840: A Comparative Analysis of Power in Society (2018). Ridgway goes on to mention men who appear in these McCleery records; Roderick Dorsey, Colonel John McPherson, who married into the family of former Governor Thomas Johnson, Dr. Thomas W. Johnson, Richard Potts, Jr., William M. Beall, Jr., etc. McCleery's accounts cover his work for just over 100 different named clients in the first volume, and many more in the later volumes, many of whom have multiple entries during the years covered. There are a great many prominent names listed, including a number of patriots who participated n the Revolutionary War, and, or, were important politicians, lawyers, judges, prominent members of the Frederick County community, or trades people. They include: John Adlum, one of several Frederick patriots of the same family with the same name; Col. Baker Johnson (1747-1811), lawyer and Revolutionary War battalion commander who fought at the 1777 Battle of Paoli in the brigade of his brother, Col. James Johnson. He eventually ran Catoctin Furnace in the early 1800's from his manor house named Auburn, which still stands: several long entries, one for August 12th to September, a full-page for work on 4 floors, fully described; the entry for January 6, 1791 is a full-page accounting of work for Baker Johnson, and another August 12th 1791, and more, including a "coffin for your child hing'd and polished shambles"; [Charles] McGragh [i.e. McGrath], "Comedian." McGrath, "the American Tate Wilkinson of that epoch" pirated the comedy The Contrast, the first play by an American to be professionally staged, and played it at Elizabeth-Town (Hagerstown) as early as April 13, 1791, after it had played Frederick, Georgetown, Alexandria, etc. The entry for August 10, 1791 shows McGrath was in Frederick, and not having work done on a dwelling; Col. William Deakins, Revolutionary War officer, surveyor of the Maryland-West Virginia "Deakins boundary line; John Graham (d. 1833), president of the Frederick County Savings Bank; Catherine Kimball (1745-1831), many entries for this tavern owner of "the highest-caliber establishment of its kind in Frederick County...In 1791 George Washington visited a dance at Kimball's Inn...According to Frederick legend...Barbara Hauer (Fritchie) served Washington at Kimball's that night..."; Rev. Stephen B[loomer] Balch (1747-1833), Presbyterian minister and educator in Georgetown who graduated from Princeton and served in the Revolutionary War. He founded the second church in Georgetown, the Georgetown Presbyterian Church, often traveled the 40 miles to preach in Frederick where he founded the English Presbyterian Church; Richard Potts (1753-1808), whose house is now part of an architectural walking tour of Frederick, was a politician, U. S. Attorney for Maryland appointed by George Washington, jurist, military aide to the governor of Maryland, Thomas Johnson, with the Maryland line at Valley Forge in 1777, U. S. Representative, U. S. Senator, "one of the most distinguished citizens of Maryland during the Revolutionary period."-Williams & McKinsey, History of Frederick County, Maryland (1910); Frederick County (bridge work & more); John Winter, printer in Frederick 1791-1800, has three entries, the last for "a Walnut coffin rais'd lid for a Child"; John McPherson (abt. 1760-1829), extensive amount of work for McPherson, a large land owner and colonel in the Revolutionary War; Joshua Dorsey (1752-1814), lawyer, sat at one time in the Maryland Hosue of Delegates: 4 1/2 pp. of specs giving a complete description of his new 33 x 35 foot house, three floors and a roof; a number of lengthy entries for David Levy (also spelled Leavy by McCleery) (1741-1804), Revolutionary soldier, tavern owner on Patrick Street. With extensive construction account & rough sketches of plans for him, October, 1792 (with Scott, see below); George Murdock, trustee of Frederick College; Thomas Johnson (1732-1819), prominent Frederick judge, politician, first non-colonial governor of Maryland, delegate to Continental Congress, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court; a number of entries for Isaac Mantz (1759-1826), commissioner of roads; William M[urdock] Beall (1742-1823), Frederick judge, landowner, slave holder; John Ross Key (1754-1821), general officer in the Continental Army, lawyer, judge, father of Francis Scott Key; Abner Ritchie, land speculator; William Ritchie, Clerk of the Frederick County Court, 1779 until 1815; [Henry McCleery married Martha Ritchie, and there are several other Ritchie men named here); George Scott (before 1742-after 1793), Sheriff of Frederick County (1766-1768), "George Scott Esqr. April 20th 1793, with rough sketch plan and itemization for large structure "to Joyn to Mr. Leavys house/to Jas. Beatty"; Col. William Beatty, Revolutionary War officer; Benjamin Ogle (1749-1809), "George Washington's friend, governor or Maryland (1798-1801). It was he who issued a proclamation after Washington's death setting aside February 11th as a day of mourning, beginning what would become a national precedent; Henry Brothers, tavern owner, with a sketch plan for his house; Col. Thomas Price (1722-1795), pronounced against the Stamp Act, Revolutionary War officer and later one of the justices of the Frederick County Court; Mountjoy Bayly (1754-1836), Revolutionary War general, large land owner (see Burkeley Hermann's long online biography, "An Officer of the Revolution" The Story of Mountjoy Bayly; John Parks (1732-1812), tea merchant; extensive work from May, 1792 to November of that year; and others who served in various Maryland and Pennsylvania military companies, according to Archives of Maryland Records of Maryland Troops Serving in the Continental Service During the War of American Revolution, 1775-1783. The full description, spanning another five pages, describes each volume individually, and is available upon request.