A Home and Business on M Street
Around 1870, William Beckett left Linnaean Hill and used the $3000 he inherited from Joshua Peirce to purchase a wood and coal yard near the corner of 16th and M Streets. Beckett also bought the house next door, 1628 M Street NW, where he lived with his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter, Mayme.
Beckett turned the fuel business on M Street into “a considerable grading, paving and sewerage contractor” in the era of city “boss” Alexander Robey Shepherd. An advertisement for the business appeared in the 1877 city directory, shown at left. But within a few years, Beckett lost the wood and coal yard during the financial crisis that followed Shepherd’s governorship and bankrupted the city.
By the early 1880s, Beckett had returned to his previous career as a carriage driver for prominent DC residents. He and his family continued to live next door to the wood and coal yard, in a clapboard house with a wide front porch.
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In 1877, William Beckett advertised the wood and coal business in Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia.
Three generations of the Beckett family lived at 1628 M Street NW–now the site of the National Geographic headquarters.