To Alexander Hamilton from Jedediah Huntington, 30 April 1790
From Jedediah Huntington
[New London, Connecticut] April 30, 1790. “I am favd. with your Letter of the 21st. respecting Light Houses &c and am much obliged to the president for the Appointment therein announced to me. I do not know of any Beacons Buoys or piers in this state that come within the Description of the Act of Congress1 but will make Enquiry. The Legislature of this state in May last ordered the buoys fixed at certain places in the Harbour of N. London of which I once made Mention to you2 but the order has never been executed. I shall endeavour to prevail with the Legislature to include those places in their Act of Cession in hopes that Buoys may be fixed.…”3
ADf, New London Customs House Records, Federal Records Center, Boston.
1. Section 1 of “An Act for the establishment and support of Lighthouses, Beacons, Buoys, and Public Piers” reads: “That all expenses which shall accrue from and after the fifteenth day of August, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, in the necessary support, maintenance and repairs of all lighthouses, beacons, buoys and public piers erected, placed, or sunk before the passing of this act, at the entrance of, or within any bay, inlet, harbor, or port of the United States, for rendering the navigation thereof easy and safe, shall be defrayed out of the treasury of the United States …” ( 53–54 [August 7, 1789]). Section 3 of the same act required the Secretary of the Treasury “to provide by contracts, which shall be approved by the President of the United States,… for rebuilding when necessary, and keeping in good repair, the lighthouses, beacons, buoys and public piers in the several States, and for furnishing the same with all necessary supplies …” ( 54).
2. Huntington to H, October 7, 1789 (printed in this volume).
3. For “An Act for ceding, and vesting in the United States the Buoys, and Light House at the Port of New London,” which was passed by the Connecticut General Assembly in May, 1789, see Leonard Woods Labaree, comp., The Public Records of the State of Connecticut from May 1789 through October 1792 (Hartford, 1948), 122.