William P. Rathbone (1784–1862), businessman, was a New York City merchant at the time of this letter. He was the United States Army paymaster in the New York District, 1814–15; an active member of New York’s Republican Party; a federal contractor supplying rations for American troops in Ohio and at various posts throughout the northern territories; a New York City alderman, 1825–26; and a member of its Board of Health in 1826. Rathbone later moved to New Jersey, representing that state at the Democratic Party’s national convention in 1835 and serving as a judge of the court of common pleas for Bergen County in 1838. By 1842 he had purchased land along Burning Springs Run, near Parkersburg, Virginia (later West Virginia), on which he successfully drilled an oil well in 1860 (Longworth’s New York Directory description begins Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory, New York, 1796–1842 (title varies; cited by year of publication) description ends [1814]: 261; [1816]: 358; Heitman, U.S. Army description begins Francis B. Heitman, comp., Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 1903, 2 vols. description ends , 1:817; New York Columbian, 21 Feb. 1814; New York National Advocate, 6 Apr. 1816; Letter from the Secretary of War, transmitting statements of contracts made in the year 1817 [Washington, 1818]; David T. Valentine, Manual of the Corporation of the City of New-York for 1852 [1852], 190; Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York 1784–1831 [1917], 15:612; Baltimore Niles’ Weekly Register, 30 May 1835; James M. Van Valen, History of Bergen County New Jersey [1900], 45; John T. Harris, ed., West Virginia Legislative Hand Book and Manual and Official Register [1917], 590–1; “An Act for the relief of the heirs of William P. Rathbone, deceased,” 3 Feb. 1863, in Acts of the General Assembly, of the State of Virginia [Wheeling, 1863], 44–7; gravestone inscription in Riverview Cemetery, Parkersburg, W.Va.).