Thomas Jefferson Papers

George Taylor, Jr., to Bartholomew Dandridge, Jr., 5 September 1793

George Taylor, Jr., to Bartholomew Dandridge, Jr.

Thursday 5 Septr. 1793

G. Taylor Jr. presents his respectful Compliments to Mr. Dandridge—and informs him that Mr. Jefferson desired the Commissions to be filled up agreeably to the Presidents desire on the day the present ones should determine, which will be on the 26. of the present Month. This has accordingly been done having all been commissioned on that day in 1789.

Will Mr. Dandridge be so obliging as to send 100 Blank Sea letters? We want that number to make up the 500 per Month with which we furnish the Treasury.

RC (DNA: RG 59, MLR); addressed: “B. Dandridge Esqr.”; endorsed by Dandridge. Tr (Lb in same, SDC).

The commissions were for Federal marshals, who served four-year terms at the pleasure of the President (White, Federalists description begins Leonard White, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History, New York, 1948 description ends , 411–15).

On 4 Sep. 1793 TJ had written a brief circular letter to certain marshals announcing the President’s desire to continue their services and enclosing their commissions (RC to Allan McLane in NHi, in Benjamin Bankson’s hand, signed by TJ, addressed to “Allen McLean”; FC in Lb in DNA: RG 59, DL, with the following recipients listed at foot of text: Robert Forsyth of Georgia, Isaac Huger of South Carolina, Samuel McDowell, Jr., of Kentucky, Thomas Lowrey of New Jersey, Philip B. Bradley of Connecticut, Nathaniel Ramsay of Maryland, and Allan McLane of Delaware; not recorded in SJL). Bradley acknowledged his reappointment in a brief letter to TJ of 15 Sep. 1793 (RC in same, MLR; endorsed by TJ as received 24 Oct. 1793 and so recorded in SJL). See also Washington, Journal description begins Dorothy Twohig, ed., The Journal of the Proceedings of the President, 1793–1797, Charlottesville, 1981 description ends , 236; Memorandums to Bankson, [15 Sep. 1793].

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