Scope and Content Note
The collection of Hugh Thomas Taggart (1844-1914) relates mainly to the survey, sale, and assessment of property in the District of Columbia, Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), and Maryland, and may have been collected during his work on the Potomac Flats case determining waterfront boundary lines. The papers span the years 1751-1889, with the bulk from 1791 to 1880.
The collection includes material on the Washington City Canal, surveys and notes by Lewis Canberry and Rt. King, minutes of the Georgetown commissioners and the Levy Court, assessments of personal property in Georgetown, surveys and sales of lots in the District of Columbia, papers relating to Daniel Carroll (1764-1849) of Duddington, and the daybooks of the Falls Bridge Turnpike Company and the Georgetown and Leesburg Turnpike Company. Included also in the collection is an account book of Charles Beatty filled with accounts, invoices, and mercantile correspondence and showing the addition to Georgetown laid out in 1796 for him and George F. Hawkins along with the courses of the lots and assessment values. The collection is rounded out with research material on Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a scrapbook containing a series of nineteenth-century newspaper articles and notes relating to the colonial history of Maryland, letterbook and daybook of Robert Cruikshank who was a book dealer in Georgetown, Robert Swan's sale catalog of books, an early nineteenth-century book of mathematical exercises in manuscript and decorated with colored drawings, legal briefs, and oversize items.