Potomac Company

The Potomac Company (spelled variously as Patowmack, Potowmack, Potowmac, and Compony) was created in 1785 to make improvements to the Potomac River in order to improve its navigability. The Potomac Company built five skirting canals around the major falls. When completed it allowed boats and rafts to float downstream towards Georgetown, a major port of the time on the Potomac River, now in the District of Columbia. George Washington was its first president, as well as an investor in the company . Tobias Lear, Washington's personal secretary, was its chairman for a period. Other principals of the company included Thomas Johnson of Maryland. [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=4OYVIU2LUnEC&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187&dq=%22thomas+johnson%22+%22potomac+company%22&source=web&ots=OcZ2ylRL6f&sig=Rqtax1LCbPM3dytEJUPuuMXWsPk
title=Washington and the West: Being George Washington's Diary of September, 1784
author=George Washington
coauthors=Archer Butler Hulbert
publisher=The Century Co.
date=1905
pages=187]

While slim boats called bateaux could be poled up-river in even the shallowest of waters, they could not traverse the fall line, the area where an upland region (continental bedrock) and a coastal plain (coastal alluvia) meet, typically in waterfalls.

One of the major constructions of the Potomac Company was the Patowmack Canal. A major engineering feet of the time, the Potomack Canal permitted boats to navigate around Great Falls, where the Potomac River drops a treacherous 75 feet through the unnavigable Mather Gorge.

After 21 years, the Potomack Canal was later sold, along with the other assets of the Potomac Company to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, which built a canal on the opposite, Maryland side of the Potomac River.

Legacy

In his will, Washington left fifty shares toward the endowment of a university in the District of Columbia. The shares were lost, however. [cite web
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9502E2DF1030E333A25755C2A9649D94669ED7CF
title=WASHINGTON'S LOST GIFT; Fifty Shares of Stock Willed by the First President to Endow a National University. BUT IT PROVED WORTHLESS
date=December 26, 1897
publisher=The New York Times
accessdate=2008-02-28]

The Potomac Company, [cite web |url=http://www.potomaccompany.com |title=The Potomac Company, Potomac Business Brokers, and Bay Street Capital, LLC] an investment bank based in Philadelphia, is not related in any way to the original Potomac Company referenced above.

References

Further reading

*citation
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=olY_st345QkC&pg=PA208&lpg=PA208&dq=%22the+potomac+company%22&source=web&ots=961v3Kdqh0&sig=pc3npGQhVYsH-XEwRvp-cw3X8ys&hl=en
title=A Connected View of the Whole Internal Navigation of the United States
last=Armroyd
first=George
date=1830
pages=207-224
accessdate=2008-02-28
*citation
url=http://cedb.asce.org/cgi/WWWdisplay.cgi?0204376
contribution=George Washington, the Potomac Canal and the Beginning of American Civil Engineering: Engineering Problems and Solutions
title=American Civil Engineering History: The Pioneering Years
last=Kapsch
first=Robert J.
publisher=American Society of Civil Engineers
date=2003
pages=129-194
*citation
url=http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=aXMFAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22the+potomac+company%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=7oRhnsW35R&sig=J2lmzTMY4TBGKLgWAHQvIZZAMiI
title=A New Chapter in the Early Life of Washington: In Connection with the Narrative History of the Potomac Company
last=Pickell
first=John
publisher=D. Appleton & Co.
date=1856
accessdate=2008-02-28

ee also

*Alexandria Canal (Virginia)