1788, following successful demonstrations, a group of investors that included Benjamin Franklin, established the Rumseian Society to promote and support Rumsey's work. In 1791, Rumsey traveled to England to obtain additional support and funding for his projects, and to register patents for his inventions. While in England, Rumsey became ill and died the day before a scheduled steamboat demonstration in London. His body was buried at St Margaret's, Westminster. Monument establishment Interest in building a monument to Rumsey at Shepherdstown, and to the first successful public demonstration of his steamboat, began in the 19th-century. Henry Bedinger, a witness of Rumsey's demonstration and an early proponent of a monument to Rumsey, wrote a letter to the United States Congress in 1836, in which Bedinger said he "would willingly contribute to the erection of a snug little monument." Congressman Alexander Boteler, another early proponent of building a monument to Rumsey, had a great interest in Rumsey and his invention, and possessed Rumsey's 1785 boiler. In October 1888, Boteler began an effort in Washington, D.C. to raise $1,000 for the construction of a Rumsey monument. In January 1903, West Virginia senator William Campbell introduced a bill to appropriate funds for a Rumsey monument. Prominent Jefferson County resident George Beltzhoover Jr. also took an interest in the movement to build a monument, and enlisted the support of the West Virginia Historical and Antiquarian Society under the leadership of W. S. Laidley. In January 1905, Governor Albert B. White endorsed the monument in a message to the West Virginia Legislature. The following March, an extra session of legislature passed a general appropriations bill, which included a provision of $1,750 for the Rumsey monument (). The state senate had inserted $1,750 into the bill, which passed the House of Delegates unchallenged. Supporters of the Rumsey monument were disappointed with the small appropriation, which was a fraction of the $5,000 originally requested from the state legislature. By January 1907, Shepherdstown's town council passed an order to pay the society's treasurer $250 toward the monument (). In March that year, the West Virginia Legislature appropriated $2,000 for the proposed monument in the general appropriation bill for the 1907 and 1908 fiscal years (); Governor William M. O. Dawson, however, cut this appropriation along with several others before approving the bill. The 1905 act appropriating $1,750 for the monument stipulated its construction should be facilitated by a chartered corporation