DENIZENS of Perth Amboy in the late summer of 1830 could have had a glimpse, at about 6 o’clock one evening, of a most peculiar passerby, but only if they looked skyward. There floated the young balloonist Charles F. Durant, drifting on a straight but swiftly descending course toward the far shore of the Raritan River.
Witnesses saw him wave a large Star-Spangled Banner as he passed, then disappear from view into the South Amboy woods. Most were probably mystified, some terrified at the sudden apparition, but a few with sufficient foreknowledge of the event had spyglasses at the ready, while others were poised to speed across the water to Durant’s landing place and render any needed assistance.1
The leaders of this last group found the voyager safely landed, and ferried him back to Perth Amboy, where Lewis Arnold provided free lodging to Durant, his balloon, his flag and his gondola. Arnold’s hotel was thronged into the night with the eager and the curious, “a large concourse of ladies and gentlemen” clamoring to see, up close, the relics of that evening’s marvelous passage. Early the next day, a carriage loaded with car, flag and balloon started out along High Street, and processed up and down the main thoroughfares of town to musical accompaniment. The parade ended at the steamboat dock, where Durant boarded the Thistle for a more prosaic return to the starting point of his journey.
Charles Ferson Durant had studied and practiced ballooning in France under the tutelage of Eugène Robertson. He had now made aeronautical history in his homeland, with his first “Grand Ærostatic Ascension” from the Battery at the south end of New York City. The audience in Castle Garden had watched intently as his balloon was inflated with hydrogen gas. He then stepped into its “richly decorated” car, which rose and floated briefly about the open-air amphitheater. As it did so, Durant brandished the flag with one hand, and with the other dropped leaflets imprinted with verses addressed “to the inhabitants of the lower world,” naming a few of the likely stops on his celestial itinerary. He proclaimed, in part:
I will measure those mystical things
That encircle the spherule of Saturn,
With Jupiter’s belts and his rings,
And draw out a chart for a pattern.
Then take my departure for Mars,
Perhaps I’ll look in upon Venus;
Then mount to the galaxy stars,
And leave all the planets between us.2
New York newspapers guessed wildly at the size of the inside crowd and the far greater numbers waiting outside to see Durant’s balloon soar above the Castle Garden parapet. One cynical editor ventured that some 20,000 had gathered “to see a man risk his neck for their amusement and for their money.”3 But his ascent went off as planned, and he would give six such exhibitions in all at Castle Garden over the next three years, plus a half dozen more in other cities. Europe’s balloon mania of the last century now took hold in the United States, with Durant’s flights spawning a score or more of imitators.
Three weeks before Durant sailed through the atmosphere above Perth Amboy, a 20-year-old William A. Whitehead came home from a summer of “peregrinations by land & water.” In two excursions westward and northward spanning a total of three weeks, he had visited parts of four states and, by his own reckoning, covered 1200 miles. A grueling round of popular attractions in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys had rendered him, in his jocular retelling, “competent to talk on all subjects relative to the ‘Fashionable tour,’ … and who will say that it is not cheaply attained at the price of two such minor considerations as rest and comfort?”4
It’s probable, then, that Whitehead was close to his Perth Amboy home during the events of 9-10 September, perhaps still recovering from his travels. But one detail causes me to wonder whether his interest in Durant’s daring feat could have exceeded that of a casual bystander. The balloonist, on his return home, tendered thanks in print to “the ladies and gentlemen of Perth and South Amboy, for their kind attentions to him on landing in their vicinity, after his late ærial excursion.”5 One of those gentlemen was thanked by name: the inventor Solomon Andrews, who had fostered young Whitehead’s “love for Nature and all natural phenomena,” and in the years of their companionship talked excitedly, if inconclusively, about the possibility of human aviation. Two decades later, his Inventors’ Institute in Perth Amboy would exhibit a “flying ship” that, although it never got off the ground, gave Whitehead a sense of Andrews’s “crude ideas” perhaps finally coming to fruition.6
The exploits of Durant the “Æronaut” may well have impressed Whitehead less than the science of flight or its scientific applications. But his friendship with Andrews suggests a connection may have existed that no known writings reveal. Had Whitehead followed Durant’s descent watching from a rooftop or through a telescope? Was he part of the “large concourse” filling Arnold’s hotel that night, or had he even joined the many thousands witnessing the ascent from Castle Garden? We’re not privileged to know. If Whitehead watched but elected not to write about the event, it may be that other exploits, adventures that lay in his own immediate future, weighed more heavily on his mind.
At this point in his life, William Whitehead was likely unsettled by uncertainty and anxious with expectation, and a touch perhaps of dread, waiting for the invisible machinery of government to deliver the position that he had sought, or more likely had been sought for him, as collector of customs for the Key West district. The southern extremity of Florida was an outpost as remote from Perth Amboy as any then existing in the United States. Although Whitehead had made extended sojourns there during the two previous winters–turning out, during the first of those stays, the first reliable land survey of Key West–it would be quite another thing to come back to the island an officer of the central government.
The custom house in a port city, where foreign goods were inspected and duties collected, was at once an instrument and a lightning rod of political influence. Faulty reporting and inadequate scrutiny meant that corruption often thrived there as well, to the great detriment of the national revenue. Andrew Jackson in his first term as president made a priority if not a personal campaign of holding collectors to strict account, but his war on custom house fraud couldn’t staunch the flow of the government’s life-blood without the implementation of significant reforms.
There had been a collector in place at Key West since 1822, the year the American flag was raised on the island. But regular procedures were hampered by a military occupation, a scarcity of contact with Washington, and the absence of instructions, law books, forms, and even of the collector and his subordinates.7 President Jackson replaced the head of the Key West operation with his own man, Algernon S. Thruston, a Kentucky judge and more recently editor of the Florida Intelligencer at Tallahassee. But Thruston fit a pattern the president’s enemies saw in many such appointments, of members of the press named to federal posts who had supported Jackson’s campaigns and could be counted on to sustain him in office. Even were Thruston subsequently easy to dislodge, his successor couldn’t expect an unreservedly friendly reception.
Whitehead had reasons, then, to be anxious about this appointment. At least he could boast that he knew the island of Key West from end to end. But what of his qualifications for its collectorship? Colonial Perth Amboy had been one of the country’s first ports of entry, despite considerable resistance from nearby New York, and Whitehead had some recent experience as a temporary inspector of tea shipments from China. But in admitting those cargoes the collector at the time, Robert Arnold–not apparently a relation of the innkeeper, at least not a close one–became entangled in one of the most notorious of custom house frauds: what Andrew Jackson despairingly referred to as the “case at Amboy.” The debacle even embroiled Whitehead’s own father, so that at this moment a stint in Perth Amboy’s custom house couldn’t have much enhanced his application to head another.8
It’s here that the written record falls largely silent: except for a brief and maddeningly vague comment from Whitehead himself, just how he landed the Key West position has to be teased out from scattered evidence and a generous amount of guesswork. His terse statement identifies half-brother John Whitehead “and his friend Col. Simonton,” two men having substantial mercantile interests in the Gulf of Mexico and Cuba, as the principals through whose “influence” William won the president’s nod.9 Neither is an unfamiliar name: John W. Simonton, who bought Key West from Juan Pablo Salas and his wife in 1821, stands at the threshold of its recorded history, followed in short order by John Whitehead, who as proxy for his and William’s father joined Simonton and two others to make up the island’s four original proprietors.
Simonton’s influence in the government seems to have been more consistent, but much less is known about him. He’s recorded as a New Jersey native, although his parentage and precise place of birth remain unknown. He divided his time between the South and Washington,10 before making a permanent home on Pennsylvania Avenue, between the White House and the Capitol. There, in the 1850s, he was listed among “Agents for Prosecuting Claims against Government.”11 The title of “Colonel” was probably honorary rather than military, as he appears to have assumed it later in life.12
The Key West custom house was not the first prize Simonton and John Whitehead sought on William’s behalf: in 1825 or 1826, John prevailed on Simonton to obtain an appointment for his brother to West Point, a position William would have accepted had his father agreed to let him go.13
Simonton had pressed the Treasury Department, immediately following his 1821 purchase of Key West, to consider making the island a port of entry.14 But for creating a vacancy there that nine years later William would fill, John Whitehead may deserve at least as much credit.
In 1829, John was himself in Washington, laying out an array of complaints against Henry Wilson, a marshal for Florida’s Southern Judicial District. The charges included interfering in mercantile matters, favoritism to his friends, conduct “indecorous, immoral, and obnoxious,” and accepting fees for services he never performed. Wilson seems to have known nothing of the charges until notified of his sudden replacement.15 If Algernon Thruston, the incumbent collector of the customs, could be tarred with the same brush, his removal would be just as easy.
Whatever the pretext, Thruston was dismissed and Whitehead named in his place on 18 November 1830.16 News of his appointment came in a letter to Whitehead from Simonton. Owing to “some miscarriage in the mail,” the official notice and requisite bonds hadn’t reached the new collector. The Treasury Department had also scheduled a revenue cutter to meet Whitehead in Charleston on his way south, but the lost mail had delayed his departure, and he was forced to arrange his own passage to Florida.17
With the arrival of newspapers from northern ports, notice of Whitehead’s appointment preceded him to Key West, reaching there six weeks before he did. The news was welcomed with celebratory gunfire and a nighttime parade of “Thruston enemies … huzzaing for Whitehead,” but not everyone was so euphoric. Attorney William Hackley privately condemned the manner of Thruston’s removal, believing he had been “a good officer,” and suspecting he was unfairly accused.18
Would Whitehead’s management of the Key West custom house eventually turn friends into foes? Would his tenure devolve into enmity and end in another unjust dismissal? As he made hasty preparations in Perth Amboy for the long southward journey, he might well doubt that his own landing could be as soft or the attentions as kind as those enjoyed by the intrepid balloonist.
Copyright © 2024-2025 Gregory J. Guderian
[1] New-York (N.Y.) evening post 11 September 1830 2:2. The rector of Perth Amboy’s St. Peter’s Church, watching the balloon pass from an east window, “by help of my telescope had a clear view of Mr. Durant in his car with his flag in his hands. … I have been informed that the people of South Amboy were astonished beyond measure at the strange arrival of Mr. Durant among them, and that it was a hard matter to convince some of them that he had actually come from N. York by means of the balloon. A boy who was near the spot where he reached the ground was greatly affrighted.” Rev. James Chapman, Perth Amboy 11 September 1830, to Thomas N. Stanford, Thomas Naylor Stanford Papers, MC 608, Special Collections and University Archives, Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. Durant found the citizens of South Amboy were more useful: “Mr. Peter Johnson who resides near the place where Mr. D. landed, went to his assistance immediately after his descent, and while both the gentlemen were engaged with the balloon five or six ladies came up to the spot who afforded much assistance which Mr. D. gratefully acknowledges.” “Balloon ascension of Charles F. Durant,” Bergen County gazette, and Jersey-City (N.J.) advertiser 11 September 1830 3:1.
[2] “Castle Garden. Grand ærostatic ascension of a splendid balloon!!” The New-York (N.Y.) morning herald 7 September 1830 3:2; “The ascension,” The New-York morning herald 10 September 1830 2:3; “Balloon ascension,” The national gazette and literary register (Philadelphia, Pa.) 11 September 1830 2:3-4.
[3] “Balloon ascension,” New-York evening post 10 September 1830 2:1-2.
[4] W. A. W[hitehead], Memorandums of peregrinations by land & water recorded for my own amusement, vol. 2nd, a manuscript held by the Key West (Fla.) Art & Historical Society, 16, 62-63. Parts of the first excursion, to northwestern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, were examined in previous posts 069–Road trip, 070–His father’s business, 071–Royal retreat, 072–Grandeur in the view and 073–The ride of a lifetime. On the later and longer of the two journeys, Whitehead and his party briefly crossed from New York into Massachusetts to visit the lookout on Prospect Hill, “from which parts of 4 states are to be seen.”
[5] Charles F. Durant, “A card,” Bergen County gazette, and Jersey-City advertiser 11 September 1830 3:3.
[6] Transcription, at the Florida Keys History Center, Monroe County Public Library, Key West, Florida, and the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, of an unpublished memoir, “Childhood and youth of W. A. Whitehead 1810-1830,” (hereafter “Childhood and youth”) 23. In a pamphlet designed “to inaugurate a new mode of transportation by AIR LINES, and to preserve the true history of its origin and development,” Solomon Andrews recalled that he suggested a test of his own flying machine “principle” on Durant’s next ascent, but Durant “had no faith in it, and declined the proposition.” Solomon Andrews, Aerial navigation and a proposal to form an aerial navigation company [cover title: The art of flying] (New York 1865) 5-6. For Whitehead’s 1849 encounter with Andrews’s flying ship, see my previous post 033–Fathers of invention.
[7] Revenue at Key West. Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting the information required by a resolution of the House of Representatives, of the 28th ult. in relation to the revenue which has accrued, and the amount collected at Key West, since it was made a port of entry, 19th Congress, 1st Session (H. Doc. 173. Serial set 140) passim.
[8] Robert Arnold was removed and, in March 1829, succeeded by James Parker, who discovered more than $80,000 outstanding in bonded debts. Arnold’s extensive real estate holdings in and near Perth Amboy were seized, to be auctioned off in February 1830 at Lewis Arnold’s hotel. “The reign of terror!” The Fredonian (New Brunswick, N.J.) 18 March 1829 3:2; “More proscription!!” New-York evening post 10 November 1829 2:1; “The late Collector at Amboy,” New-York evening post 11 November 1829 2:2, 12 November 1829 2:1; “Marshal’s sales,” Sentinel of freedom and New-Jersey advertiser (Newark, N.J.) 9 February 1830 3:2; “‘Black list’–continued,” The United States’ telegraph (Washington, D.C.) 22 September 1830 2:6-3:1. Whitehead alludes to the fiasco in “Childhood and youth” 27. See also my previous post 010–The entrepôt.
[9] “Childhood and youth” 27.
[10] An 1835 list of custom house employees gives New Jersey as Simonton’s birthplace: Register of all officers and agents, civil, military, and naval, in the service of the United States, on the thirtieth September, 1835 … (Washington 1835) 59. He claimed Key West retrospectively as his place of residence from April 1822 to September 1836: John W. Simonton, Washington 16 January 1839, to William A. Whitehead, printed in Memorial of William A. Whitehead, in answer to the petition of Thomas J. Smith, in favor of making Indian Key a port of entry, 25th Congress, 3d Session (S. Doc. 140. Serial set 339) 14. An I Street address in Washington is given for him in May 1836: W. A. Whitehead, Washington 11 May 1836, to Lewis Cass, copy in Letters received by the Office of Indian Affairs 1824-81, Microcopy No. 234, Roll 288, Florida Superintendency, 1824-1853. 1832-1837 (Washington 1956); printed in Asbury Dickins and John W. Forney, edd. American State Papers. Documents, legislative and executive, of the Congress of the United States, from the first and second sessions of the Twenty-fourth Congress, commencing January 12, 1836, and ending February 25, 1837. Volume VI. Military Affairs (Washington 1861), 442-443; Causes of hostilities of Seminole Indians. Message from the President of the United States, transmitting a report of the Secretary of War upon the subject of the causes of the hostilities of the Seminoles, &c. &c., 24th Congress, 1st Session (H. Doc. 267. Serial set 291) 19-20.
[11] Edward Waite, comp. The Washington directory, and Congressional, and executive register, for 1850 (Washington 1850) 80; Thomson’s mercantile and professional directory … for 1851-52 (Baltimore 1851) 99.
[12] Simonton was called “Colonel” as early as 1829: see Key West (Fla.) register, and commercial advertiser 26 February 1829 2:3. Qualifications other than military probably led to his 1831 appointment as sutler of Key West’s army post: see Peter Force, The national calendar, for MDCCCXXXI (Washington 18312) 168. Simonton died in 1854, aged 63. The family grave marker in Washington’s Congressional Cemetery identifies him as “Col. John W. Simonton, of Key West Florida.”
[13] “Childhood and youth” 21-22. According to Whitehead, Simonton made use of a personal acquaintance with John Eaton and Andrew Jackson. Eaton, then a U.S. senator from Tennessee, would join Jackson’s cabinet as his first Secretary of War in 1829.
[14] “Memorandum by John W. Simonton,” Havana 7 December 1821, in Charles Edwin Carter, ed. The territorial papers of the United States. Volume XXII. The territory of Florida 1821-1824 (Washington 1956) 412-413.
[15] John Whitehead, Washington 29 May 1829, to Martin Van Buren, in Charles Edwin Carter, ed. The territorial papers of the United States. Volume XXIV. The territory of Florida 1828-1834 (Washington 1959) 221-222 and cf. 229 note 26. Simonton and John Whitehead subscribed to a $20,000 bond as sureties for Wilson’s replacement, whose character and conduct as marshal would also come under scrutiny, and he would be removed the following year: see ibid. 311-312, 338-339; Pensacola (Fla.) gazette and Florida advertiser 1 May 1830 3:2-4.
[16] “Appointments by the President,” American and commercial daily advertiser (Baltimore, Md.) 22 November 1830 2:4; “Appointments by the president,” Niles’ weekly register (Baltimore, Md.) 27 November 1830 218. Peter Force, The national calendar, for MDCCCXXXI (Washington 1831) 81.
[17] “I am ignorant of my appointment to the office named except through my friend J. W. Simonton Esqr of Washington City, who informed me to that effect and also stated that I had been notified from the Department and the necessary Bonds to be executed, sent me. These I have not received … but immediately on the receipt of the Bonds and their execution, I shall make my arrangements to leave New York in some one of the vessels that go to Key West at this season–or to some port beyond, on board of which I can take passage.” W. A. Whitehead, Perth Amboy 24 November 1830, to Samuel D. Ingham, copy in Correspondence of the Secretary of the Treasury with Collectors of Customs, 1789-1833, Microcopy No. 178, Roll 38 (Washington 1956). Fragments of Whitehead’s commission papers–those portions bearing Andrew Jackson’s autograph–are preserved in the papers of his son Bishop Cortlandt Whitehead at the Archives of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
[18] The celebrations were such, Hackley wrote, as “none but the most contemptable class of the community could have been guilty of and yet I have heard that some men calling themselves gentlemen were in the crowd.” William R. Hackley, Diary, in Goulding Collection, Special Collections, Florida State University Libraries, Tallahassee, Fla., MSS 0-128, entries of 11 and 12 December 1830.
An attractive presence 