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1. Title:   WALF Submission -- Jeanne Anderson Stodder

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a. Note:   Note from Jeanne M (Anderson) Stodder, 5 Jan 2004 to JVL of WALF: I have a copy of a handwritten record of our Stodder line . It was made by Charles Lane- another cousin. David Stodder, the shipbuilder, is shown as having been married in New York and having "no issue". I also have copies of his will as well as that of his wife, Marcia Dodge. In his will he names his wife and also his sister Lydia of Hingham. In Marcia's will she mentions their nephew and niece, David and Marcia Stodder , who were my husband's great grand father and great grand aunt. In my quest to prove that this David was, indeed, the builder of the Constellation, I found that a David Stodder of Harris Creek (Baltimore) died on Sept 30th 1806 at age 58. No mention was made of his connection to the Constellation. However, I learned elsewhere that the ship was built at Harris Creek. His obit was reported in the Baltimore Federal Gazette, Oct 1, 1806. From the Lincoln History of Hingham I had learned that our David was born in 1748 and died in Baltimore leaving a will that mentioned his sister, Lydia. The dates all match up, but I wanted further proof that this was one and the same David Stodder. I wrote to the Baltimore Historical Society for advice and they replied that a copy of a David Stodder's will was among the holdings of the Maryland State Archives as well as a will for a Marcia Stodder. I obtained copies of these documents. David's will mentioned Hingham and his sister Lydia and his wife Marcia was named executor. (Until this time we had only the name Lucy as David's wife with no other information. Neither David's or Marcia's wills mention any children. Marcia's will states that she is the widow of David Stodder. She also makes bequests to Marcia and David Stodder, the children of Seth and Susan Stodder. David's will talks about his real estate but does not describe it other than saying the Hingham property should go to his mother . No specific mention is made of other real estate but the implication is there that he had other holdings. Thus, that the David who died in Baltimore is our David is pretty clear; that he is the builder of the Constellation is a logical assumption. It is very unlikey that two David Stodders died in Baltimore in 1806 at the age of 58. A copy of David's will and excerpts from Marcia's are included in my book, Cousins by the Dozens. The 1790 Baltimore census shows a David Stoddard whose household includes 21 white males over 16 years of age; 1 white male under 16, 5 free white females and 25 slaves. If this is our David Stodder I expect that his household includes the workers at his shipyard. Some comments from Terry McCormack (see also 2001 Yearbook more about David Stodder) 12/9/2001 I did a survey of my data base and learned that there are 20 living kin to David besides our cousins who are descended from Simon Jr. There are 2 Marshes who are descendants of Sarah Stodder, sister of David the shipbuilder and Hosea our 4th great grandfather. Donald and Jeffrey. I have been in contqct with Jeffrey. H e knew little or nothing about David. 3 Cheneys descended from Eliza Stowell Stodder. Eliza was a daughter of Ebed, brother of David and Hosea. Raymond. Jacqueline and David. Fred Stodddard is another descendant of Ebed, brother of Hosea and David. There are 12 descendants of Joseph Elbridge Stodder who is also descended from Ebed. Also Paul Pfairneny and his mother Descended from Ebed. he hasn't mentioned any siblings or children. 2//9/02 Lincoln listed David's wife as Elizabth Ganster which we know is wrong. Today I found an Elizabeth Ganster married a David Stodder in Boston on 29 Jun 1803. Can't figure out who this David might have been. Possibly son of Matthew born in 1786 but only 17 years old! :Cutter Actvie built by David Stodder One of the first ten revenue cutters, Active may have been the second of the ten cutters to enter service. The Columbian Centinel on 30 April 1791 noted: "A Revenue Cutter, was launched at Baltimore the 9th inst. at Captain Stodder's Ship Yard, and is considered by good judges, a beautiful vessel. She is to be commanded, we hear, by Capt. Gross, formerly First-Lieutenant of the Continental Frigate CONFEDERACY." (1) She almost never made it into the water. Apparently no shipbuilder in the Baltimore area was willing to build a cutter for the price offered by the government. Eventually, after an exasperated Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton offered to increase the payment by no more than 10 percent and then threatened to have the Maryland cutter built in Virginia, David Stodder, of Baltimore, agreed to build the revenue cutter for the government's asking price. She was laid down in January 1791 and her keel entered the water on 9 April of that same year. When she was sold out of government service in 1798, she was described as having a "square stern, a square tuck, no galleries and no figurehead." She was a two-masted topsail schooner with a single deck. We also know how she was initially outfitted and equipped thanks to the survival of a letter from her first master, Simon Gross, to Alexander Hamilton. (2) From City of Baltimore web site: Major David Stodder's shipyard on Harris Creek was another major feature of the Canton area. This "Navy Yard" as it was called, was located near the present junction of Luzerne and Fait Streets. (Harris Creek gradually filled and was paved over by the late 19th century). The most famous product of Stodder's yard was the U.S.S. Constellation built between 1794 and 1797 Found 10/25/02 A Maritime Point of View . . . by Christopher T. George UNRAVELLING THE HISTORY OF A STORIED SHIP Current View Says 1797 Constellation Was Scrapped in 1853--But Was She? B ack in 1972, I wrote an article for Baltimore magazine about the U.S.S. Constellation in celebration of the 175th Anniversary of the U.S. Navy frigate's launch at Harris Creek, Canton, in 1797. For that article, I interviewed the late Baltimore naval architect Leon D. Polland. Polland had served as chief of construction and repair for the Constellation Foundation since 1958, shortly after the ship was towed to Baltimore in 1955. Polland told me, "The ship, when we got her, was what everyone calls a hulk." Taking me on a tour of the old ship, he explained, "Nothing you see here--the spar deck, the bulwarks, the masts, existed as you see it when we received the ship." He said that in addition to recent decay, naval modifications in 1853 in Norfolk, Virginia, "had modernized her" into a 22-gun sloop of war. He added that the Constellation Foundation was "in the process of rebuilding her into a frigate." In 1972, Polland and the then Constellation Foundation claimed that the ship contained timbers, materials, and equipment from the original 36-gun frigate that entered Norfolk Navy Yard in 1845. It thus came as a shock to me realize in the past several years that today's Constellation Foundation, under recently departed director Louis F. Linden, was saying that the original Constellation was completely scrapped in Norfolk in 1853 and a new ship of the same name built in her place. But did this really happen? The Secretary of the Navy of the day was a Baltimorean, John Pendleton Kennedy, a man of letters and Renaissance man, a patron of Edgar Allan Poe. Would Kennedy have allowed Baltimore's Constellation to be scrapped and a new ship built? One of the "facts" given to support the ship being completely new is that the 1853-4 rebuild resulted in a round stern instead of the square stern of the 1797 frigate. However, research by the Historic Fells Point Foundation indicates that repair records show that the ship received a new stern in a rebuild of 1829-30. In 1833, Constellation was almost lost in a hurricane force storm in the Mediterranean. To celebrate her survival, an Italian artist, Michael Funno, was commissioned to paint a portrait of the ship in the storm. The portrait clearly shows a ship with a rounded stern. Moreover, the testimony of a midshipman of 1830 states that the captain's reception stateroom at the stern of the ship was circular. The hull of a wooden ship has to be rebuilt on average every 16 years in order for the ship to remain seaworthy. The present-day renovation of the hull of the ship at Locust Point at a cost of $9 million is yet another example of this necessity. The earliest repairs to Constellation, in fact, occurred in 1801, only three years after she was commissioned in 1798. She had just finished her first extensive rebuild when war broke out in 1812. Unfortunately, she failed to clear the Chesapeake capes in early 1813 before the British blockaded the Bay. Thus, she did not take part in any of the ship-to-ship encounters with the Royal Navy for which her more renowned and larger (44-gun) sister frigate Constitution was famed during the War of 1812. Presumably the claim that Constitution in Boston harbor is an original ship of 1797 is true. You may recall that "Old Ironsides" has just celebrated her Bicentennial. By contrast, because Constellation is now viewed as the "last surviving ship of the Civil War," the Bicentennial of the frigate built in Baltimore went unrecognized. However, a little acknowledged fact is that Constitution was also rebuilt more than once. The Irish actor Tyrone Power saw Constitution being repaired in Boston in the early 1830's. The ship was being rebuilt right down to her keel or "keelson." Power recalled, "She was stripped down to her kelson [sic] outside and in, for the purpose of undergoing a repair that will make her, to all intents, a new ship." He also added that "on a straight keel, she will prove the fastest ship afloat." In 1858, Constitution was converted into a school ship and she received a new armament of 16 guns. Her official classification was changed to "2nd rate ship," effectively making her a sloop of war, the same classification given to Constellation, which became a 22-gun ship after her rebuild of 1853-4. Warships are essentially floating gun platforms. In fact, in 1798, Secretary of War James McHenry ordered the commander of Fort Whetstone, soon to be renamed "Fort McHenry," to deliver ten 12-pounders to Constellation. During the defense of Baltimore in 1814, a number of guns from USS Erie and USS Ontario in Baltimore harbor were transferred to Hampstead Hill to strengthen the eastern defenses of the city. The principal difference between a floating gun platform or warship and a land gun platform was its short life. Without frequent major repairs to her hull, a wooden warship became unseaworthy. The Historic Fells Point Foundation has data which show that the estimated cost of a small frigate of 32 guns in 1797 was $110,000, of which just over $30,000 was the cost of building the hull with the masts and labor and coppering the bottom to prevent marine pests boring into the hull. The majority of the cost was for rigging, sails, joiner work, anchor, chain, cable, cordage, copper sheets, guns, and ammunition. The Historic Fells Point Foundation maintains that the 1853-4 rebuild did not make Constellation a new ship, because much of the material outlined above was retained from the original ship and used to equip the rebuilt ship. The Constellation that exists today, the Foundation says, is in a continuous historic provenance from the original ship launched in the shipyard of David Stodder at Harris Creek, Canton, in 1797. The Historic Fells Point Foundation urges the Constellation Foundation to restore Constellation to her Baltimore heritage and stop maintaining the myth that the ship in their possession was built in Norfolk in 1854. That way the sign on the Constellation Visitor's Center in the Inner Harbor to "bring Constellation home" will have true meaning. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ Christopher T. George is a local free-lance writer and poet and the author of the recent picture book on our city, Baltimore Close Up, from Arcadia Publishers, on sale at local bookstores.
b. Note:   NF6449
Note:   This marriage location was in the data supplied by Tom Casey, but the wife was supposed to be Lucy. However, Marcia's will mentions property in New York so it is possible that the marriage took place there.


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