 This was in part due to his signing a $20,000 note for a friend, who defaulted, so that about half of Boteler's plantation was sold in 1852.Furthermore, he financially backed the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, although traffic on the canal decreased as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad completed track first to Martinsburg, then reached Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1853.Boteler was also an artist and author.