Thomas Jefferson Papers

From Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Winston, 19 August 1792

To Edmund Winston

Monticello Aug. 19. 1792.

Dear Sir

We learn that you are one of the Judges to attend our district Court the ensuing month. The object of the present is to express my hope that you will come and take your abode with us, during the session, the distance and season of the year favouring my wishes, to which the use of my law books may add something. I shall be happy in such an opportunity of renewing our ancient acquaintance and of repeating to you assurances of the sincerity of that esteem with which I am dear Sir Your friend & Servt.

Th. Jefferson

Tr (DLC); 19th-century copy; at foot of text: “Mr. Winston.” Enclosed in TJ to Sampson Mathews, 19 Aug. 1792.

Edmund Winston (1735?–1818), a prominent Virginia jurist who served on the General Court from 1788 to 1813, was the first cousin and close friend of Patrick Henry, whose widow he later married (Robert Douthat Meade, “Judge Edmund Winston’s Memoir of Patrick Henry,” VMHB description begins Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1893- description ends , lxix [1969], 28–33; see also same, v [1898], 206).

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