Roger C. Weightman

Roger Chew Weightman (1787 - 1876) was an American politician, civic leader, and printer. He was the mayor of Washington, D.C. from 1824 to 1827.

Weightman was born in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1787, moving into the new capital in 1800 and taking an apprenticeship with a local printer. Weightman bought the printing business in 1807http://www.geocities.com/heartland/plains/7347/rogchew2.html] , making him a congressional printer. He maintained a number of shops on Pennsylvania Avenue, about ten blocks from the White House, from about 1813 onward. In August of 1814, Weightman (by now a First Lieutenant in D.C.'s Light Horse Cavalry [ [http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/Education/Exhibits/DC_Schools/Weightman_Roger.html Historic Congressional Cemetery - D.C. Schools ] ] ) was apprehended by the British troops descending on the White House during the Siege of Washington, a battle in the war of 1812, and made to march with them to the Executive Mansion. Admiral George Cockburn taunted the upstanding Washingtonian, forcing him to choose a souvenir (albeit one of no monetary value) to remember the day the American capital was defeated [ [http://www.whitehousehistory.org/08/subs/08_b04.html The White House Historical Association > Research ] ] .

After serving seven one-year terms as an alderman on Washington's city council, the council elected Weightman in 1824 to serve out the remainder of the late mayor Samuel N. Smallwood's term. In 1826 he ran against former mayor Thomas Carbery for mayor; Weightman won by the use of blustery promises and insults against his opponent. One handbill from the era reads,

NOTICE EXTRAORDINARY.R.C. Weightman, a man of known liberal principles; all those who vote for this gentleman at tomorrow's election, will have general permission to sleep on the Benches in the Market House, this intense warm weather. May the curse of Dr. Slop light on all those who vote for Tom Carberry [ [http://prorev.com/dcfactshist.htm DC ALMANAC: Little known or suppressed facts about the colonial city of Washington DC A-M ] ] .

During his time as mayor, Weightman headed the 1825 committee for the inauguration of John Quincy Adams, then the following year chaired the national memorial committee for the president's deceased father and his successor Thomas Jefferson [ [http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/Education/Tours/WalkingTour_Mayors.pdf Belva Lockwood And The 'Way Of The World' ] ] .

In 1827, Weightman became cashier of the Washington Bank, and resigned his position as mayor. He would run again, unsuccessfully, against Walter Lenox in 1850. In the years following his mayoralty, Weightman would be curator of the Columbia Institute; a founding member and officer of the Washington National Monument Society; Grand Master of the Freemasons of the District of Columbia; chief clerk, and later librarian, of the United States Patent Office; and a General in the Union Army during the Civil War — not to mention the center of Washington's social activity.

In addition to his busy social and professional life, Weightman was a noted and generous philanthropist — generous enough that his sizable fortune had dwindled to very little by the 1870s, when Weightman was living on his pension as a soldier and employee of the Patent Office. However, upon his death in February, 1876, his funeral was one of the best attended and most remembered of the era.

Jefferson's Last Letter

The last letter that Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the writer of the Declaration of Independence, ever wrote was sent to Roger C. Weightman. It was a letter declining an invitation to join a celebration for the 50th anniversity of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The letter says:

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