Thomas E. Stone

Thomas E. Stone was born in Leonardtown, Maryland in 1869. He was a descendant of Thomas Stone, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.¹ Stone moved to Washington, D.C. in the late 1880’s and married a woman named Jennie McDonald in 1893.² He worked for the Pullman Company and was assigned as the conductor of the train car carrying President William McKinley.

According to a newspaper report, he began working at the White House in 1901 as an usher after President McKinley was “much impressed by Mr. Stone’s ability as displayed on various trips the President had made during the preceding three years.” Stone’s appointment to the position of doorkeeper, or chief usher, was announced by the president’s secretary George B. Cortelyou on March 20, 1902, replacing Captain William Dubois.³ Although his official title in the government register was “chief doorkeeper,” Stone signed correspondence and reports “T.E. Stone, Chief Usher.”⁴ He held the role until President William Howard Taft took office in 1909. Newspaper articles from the beginning of the Taft administration indicate that Stone went from chief usher to doorkeeper, replacing Major Charles D.A. Loeffler in this role; Irwin “Ike” Hoover became chief usher.⁵ 

Following his time in the White House, Stone went on to work as an Internal Revenue Service agent for the Department of Treasury. During Prohibition, Stone became involved in its enforcement. In 1921, newspapers reported on his role as supervising prohibition director of Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, and the District. In this role, he conducted an extensive whiskey raid in Washington, cracking down on hotel establishments in particular.⁶ By 1926 he was appointed as a supervisor of brewery control, enforcing raids on beer.⁷ At the end of prohibition in 1933, he appeared in the government register as a supervisor of permits for the Bureau of Industrial Alcohol.⁸ 

Stone died on June 26, 1959. He is buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Prince George’s County, Maryland.