Though at that point Gadsby still had eight years remaining on his lease with John Wise, he abruptly sold it and moved to Baltimore, possibly for economic opportunity.

Guest Samuel Breck wrote: We alighted at the Indian Queen in Market Street, John Gadsby in a style exceeding anything that I recollect to have seen in Europe or America.

But on February 12, 1812, Peggy passed away, and a short 11 months later, Gadsby married Providence "Provey" (Norris) Langworthy, twenty years his junior.

The patriarch of the family, Provey's father Benjamin Bradford Norris, was significant in town for being a signer of the Bush Declaration.

Gadsby looked toward Washington Hall Hotel in Philadelphia, the next stop on his stagecoach line to the north, for his next venture.

Not all visitors were impressed, however; Lukas Vischer, a Swiss traveler, chronicled the following: This inn passes for the foremost in the metropolis.

The lunch consisted of a poor soup and two main dishes, roast beef and ham, roast veal and fish, and so on; vegetables scarcely sufficient for 2 or 3 persons, almost every day fried chicken which in fact are parched cocks with really not the least to gnaw off ... Gadsby is a scoundrel who want to do it right by making empty compliments ...[11]Since the carriage ride from the Franklin to the Capitol took forty minutes,[1] the location was not ideal and Gadsby looked elsewhere.

The Franklin Hotel became a rental property, and Gadsby began to deal in the real estate business with other private dwellings.

The grand dining rooms, premier ballrooms, and private suites of the National Hotel, located on Pennsylvania Avenue at Sixth Street, hosted presidents, foreign ministers, congressmen, and prominent travelers.

[14] Two years after the grand opening – the February 22, 1827, George Washington Birthnight Ball at which President John Quincy Adams and most of his administration was present[15] – the hotel was still under construction.

His spirit of enterprise, liberal system, and moderate charges, and the various conveniences and attractions which are combined in his Hotel, form very strong claims upon the patronage of travelers, and deserve to be widely made known through the press.

[20] In addition, an enslaved African American named Rosa Marks lived there even through emancipation, and is now buried in the family vault.

Two sources describe Gadsby as a slave trader who had a private jail where he housed the enslaved prior to transport for resale in the lower South.