Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Bacon, 11 August 1819
To Edmund Bacon
Pop. For. Aug. [1]1. 19.
Dear Sir
Your letter of the 4th could not leave Charlottesville till the 8th and was recieved here1 on the 9th. our mail starts for Charlottesville tomorrow & will arrive there on Saturday at 6. P.M. I am glad you have given the assistance of a hand to each cooper’s shop, and wish it to be continued, and even more help to be given if necessary, for I look to the offal of the mill as our only resource for bread. I think it very certain that bread will not be made in the upper country generally. if we can keep the mill going it will be a resource for the present. after these two objects are secured, the next in importance is the river canal to the sawmill. I have engaged here the best mill wrigh[t] [. . .] have ever known to go and rebuild the sawmill an[d] [. . .] the gristmill as soon as the canal is done. I salu[te you] with friendship and esteem.
Th: Jefferson
PoC (MHi); on verso of reused address cover of [John Brazer] to TJ, 15 July 1819; dateline faint; torn at seal; at foot of text: “mr Bacon”; endorsed by TJ as a letter of 11 Aug. 1819 and so recorded in SJL.
TJ engaged Alexander Hepburn to rebuild his mills.
1. Word interlined.
Index Entries
- Bacon, Edmund; letters to search
- Bacon, Edmund; Monticello overseer search
- bread; scarcity of search
- canals; on Rivanna River search
- Charlottesville, Va.; mail service to search
- fodder; for Monticello search
- food; bread search
- Hepburn, Alexander; as millwright search
- Lynchburg, Va.; mail service to search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); coopers at search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); gristmill at search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); sawmill at search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); slaves at search
- Post Office, U.S.; and mail service search
- Rivanna River; canals on search
- Shadwell mills; flour mill at search