To Thomas Jefferson from Caesar A. Rodney, 16 April 1802
From Caesar A. Rodney
Wilmington April 16th. 1802.
Honored & Dear Sir,
I take the liberty of introducing to your acquaintance Dr. Joseph1 McCreery, a young gentleman of very amiable character & manners, who has read or rather studied medicine under Dr. J. Tilton of this place a man proverbial for his rigid honesty & inflexible integrity. Dr. McCreery has lately passed his examination as a physician in the University of Penna. & wishes employment in the hospital about to be established at New Orleans. His medical talents I am assured by those who are judges, justly entitle him to solicit the first place in such an institution. He will carry with him, however, ample & satisfactory recommendations on this head.
I have only to mention further, that in addition to the very many good qualities he possesses he is a disinterested Republican. With great personal & political regard I am Dr. Sir Yours very Sincerely
C. A. Rodney
RC (DNA: RG 59, LAR); endorsed by TJ as received 21 Apr. and “Joseph Mc.Crery to hospital at N. Orleans” and so recorded in SJL with a brace connecting it with James Tilton’s letter also of this date (see below).
DR. JOSEPH MCCREERY (Macrery) graduated from the school of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1802. James tilton, a fellow Wilmington alumnus of the institution, who received his medical degree in 1771, became the first president of the Medical Society of Delaware (W. J. Maxwell, comp., General Alumni Catalogue of the University of Pennsylvania: 1917 [Philadelphia, 1917], 563, 566; Thomas C. Stellwagen, “Delaware Doctors,” Historical and Biographical Papers of the Historical Society of Delaware, 3 [1897], No. 19:7, 14; Vol. 34:488n).
1. “Joseph” interlined in place of “William.”