The salary of Mr. Osgood was $1,500 per annum. Timothy Pickering was appointed by Washington, August 12, 1791, at an increased salary of $2,000. Joseph Habersham was the last Postmaster-General appointed by Washington. He was commissioned April 22, 1795, at a salary of $2,400 per annum. The office was located in Philadelphia, in the year 1796, and was established at Washington when the Federal Government was removed there. In 1802, the United States ran their own stages between Philadelphia and New York, finding coaches, drivers, horses, etc., and cleared in three years over $11,000, by carrying passengers. That sultry morning of August 25, 1814, when Admiral Cockburn and his drunken crew, eager for fresh destruction, marched from Capitol Hill to the War Office, which they burned, and from it down F street to treat the Post-Office to the same fate, they found it on the site where its marble successor now stands, and under the same roof the Patent-Office. Says Charles J. Ingersoll, in his rambling history: “Dr. Thornton, then Chief of the Patent-Office, accompanied the detachment to the locked door of the repository, the key having been taken away by another clerk watching out of night. Axes and other implements of force were used to break in; Thornton entreating, remonstrating, and finally prevailing on Major Waters, superintending the destruction, to postpone it till Thornton could see Colonel Jones, then engaged with Admiral Cockburn in destroying the office of the _National Intelligencer_, not far off on Pennsylvania avenue. Colonel Jones had declared that it was not designed to destroy private property, which Dr. Thornton assured Major Waters most of that in the Patent-Office was. A curious musical instrument, of his own construction, which he particularly strove to snatch from ruin, with a providential gust soon after, saved the seat of government from removal, for want of any building in which Congress could assemble, when they met in Washington three weeks afterwards. Hundreds of models of the useful arts, preserved in the office, were of no avail to save it; but music softened the rugged breasts of the least musical of civilized people. Major Waters agreed, at last, to respite the patents and the musical instrument till his return from Greenleaf’s Point, where other objects were to be laid in ruins.” But with the explosion of the magazine at Greenleaf’s Point, and the tornado, both of which made unexpected havoc with the lives of the British vandals, and their withdrawal under cover of night, they never came back to the Patent and Post-Office, to destroy it. It was, I believe, the only public building in the capital which escaped their torch. It was, however, destroyed by fire, December 15, 1836.