Carlile Pollock Patterson - A Bill For Patterson's Widow

A Bill For Patterson's Widow

On June 6, 1884, three years after Patterson's death, Congress enacted a private bill, House bill No. 4689, entitled "An act for the relief of Eliza W. Patterson", Patterson's widow, excusing accumulated District of Columbia property taxes on the Patterson land, in light of the fact that Patterson had served as Superintendent without taking a salary and had, through inattention, placed the family finances in jeopardy. President Chester A. Arthur neither signed nor vetoed the bill, but held it ten days and allowed it to become law without his signature. In a message dated June 21, 1884, the President explained "I do not question the constitutional right of Congress to pass a law relieving the family of an officer, in view of the services he had rendered his country, from the burdens of taxation, but I submit to Congress that this just gift of the nation to the family of such faithful officer should come from the National Treasury rather than from that of this District, and I therefore recommend that an appropriation be made to reimburse the District for the amount of taxes which would have been due to it had this act not become a law." A portion of this property later became the subject of a lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court, Winslow v. Baltimore & O R Co, 188 U.S. 646 (1903), which includes excerpts of the will by which Mrs. Patterson came into the property on the death of her mother, Catherine Worthington Pearson, in 1868. The suit, which the Patterson family won, involved renewal of a lease of some of the land to a railroad.