William Beckett, Dealer in Wood and Coal
In 1877, William Beckett placed this advertisement for a wood and coal yard in Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia, the 19th century’s answer to the yellow pages–or an online search. Beckett’s business sat near the corner of 16th and M Streets NW, on a lot now occupied by the National Geographic Society. Beckett also owned the house next door, 1628 M Street NW, where he lived with his wife, Elizabeth, and their daughter, Mayme.
Beckett placed this advertisement in the 1877 edition of Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia
William, Elizabeth, and Mayme Beckett lived at 1628 M Street, shown in this circa 1910 photograph.
Photographed in 1875, Joshua Peirce’s Linnaean Hill is now known as Klingle Mansion. Today, the stone building serves as Rock Creek Park headquarters.
Beckett bought the wood and coal yard using money inherited from his father, Joshua Peirce–who was also Beckett’s enslaver. Before Emancipation, Beckett managed Peirce’s nursery business on Linnaean Hill, and was so effective in this role that Peirce deemed him “indispensable.” Beckett returned to manage the nursery after the Civil War, and cared for his aging father during his final illness. But when Joshua Peirce died in 1869, he left the estate on the hill to a nephew, Joshua Peirce Klingle. Beckett received $3000–money he used to purchase 1626 and 1628 M Street NW around 1870.
Beckett turned the fuel business on M Street into “a considerable grading, paving and sewerage contractor” under legendary city boss and DC governor Alexander Robey Shepherd. In 1873, Beckett’s buying trip to Philadelphia rated a mention in the New National Era, a weekly newspaper published in DC and edited by Frederick Douglass:
We had the pleasure of meeting, while in Philadelphia, our friend, Mr. William Becket. He was there getting in a supply of wood and coal for his yard, situated at 1626 M street, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets, opposite the Sumner school building. Mr. Beckett has been there some three years, and by strict attention to business has increased the trade of his yard until now he has some three vessels loaded with coal consigned to him. If you have not put in your winter’s wood and coal give him a call.
The Panic of 1873 began just a week after Beckett’s visit to Philadelphia. The wood and coal yard survived the economic depression that followed, but Beckett eventually lost the business during the financial scandals that ended Shepherd’s governorship and bankrupted the city. Beckett’s profile draws a direct connection between the scandals and the fate of 1626 M Street NW:
Through the extravagance of the “Boss” Washington City bonds depreciated so in settlement Beckett was forced to accept sixty cents on the dollar. This drove him out of the fuel business.
Beckett’s wood and coal yard thrived during the era of Alexander Robey Shepherd, but he ultimately lost the business in the aftermath of Shepherd’s fiscal mismanagement of the city.
By the early 1880s, Beckett had sold the wood and coal yard to a larger fuel business. The 1881 edition of Boyd’s Directory lists 1626 M Street NW as a branch office of “Stover & Co., Wholesale and Retail Dealers in Coal and Wood.” Beckett and his family continued to live next door, in the clapboard house with the wide front porch.
Financial misfortunes may have forced Beckett to sell the wood and coal yard, but he remained in the house at 1628 M Street until his death in 1911. And he soon found a new source of income, resuming a career as a coachman for some of Washington’s most powerful residents. By the 1890s, he was driving President Grover Cleveland.
Come to Rock Creek Park Picnic Grove #1 on Saturday, April 20 (rain date April 21) to learn more about William Beckett’s amazing story!
The William Beckett Project has been funded by a grant from HumanitiesDC.
