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A rambling frame building dating back to 1710, the Robert Morris Inn stands three stories high at the foot of Morris street on the riverfront at the public ferry dock. Its size, location and bright yellow color make it the center of Oxford, Maryland, which has retained its small town atmosphere and low population, thanks to its isolated location.
Robert Morris himself, who lived in the house shortly after he came to Maryland in 1738 at the age of twenty-seven was termed "a jovial soul, a bon vivant who made friends easily." In 1747, after he had established himself as an important businessman in the community, he brought over his thirteen-year-old son, who he had left behind in Liverpool with relatives. The junior Robert Morris came to be one of the most important men in the American Colonies.
After living with his father for a few years, the youth was sent to Philadelphia for further study. He made good at once, and by the time he was twenty he was a full partner in the largest mercantile house there. In time he branched out into banking, and the job of financing the American Revolution ultimately fell to him. Without his efforts, George Washington’s army would have dwindled away in the early days before the young colonies had established a financial system of their own. His activities ranged from the bureaucratic role of Superintendent of Finance to the Congress, to the non-bureaucratic role of paying soldiers in the field out of his picket.
Before the Revolution, Morris was already the richest man in colonial America. He loved the challenge of money and sought to continue his successes after the war was over. He was far from a financial conservative, being inclined, rather, to the grand gesture. As a speculator he bought up millions of acres from land in the unsettled parts of the new nation and, at one time, held title to almost all the western half of the State of New York.
When Congress decided to locate the new capital city on the banks of the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia, he was on the scene early and brought 7,234 lots within the 100 square mile area. Of the two hundred in Washington in 1,800, he constructed fifty. His ideas for his own housing were grandiose in scale. Deciding upon a very unfrontier—like structure of marble, he hired Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the designer of the new City of Washington, to build the Morris Mansion for him. Before it was completed. Morris lost his fortune through overextension, was arrested for debt and imprisoned. The three years he spent in the Philadelphia jail has a certain style about them nevertheless. His visitors included George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the Governor of Pennsylvania. He was released in 1801 under terms of the new Federal bankruptcy laws. Thus the man who kept the whole country going financially was forced to say: "I now find myself without one cent that I can call my own." He lived on the charity of his wife’s friends and died in 1806 at the age of seventy-two.
What made the Robert Morris Inn the center of Oxford, Maryland