Thomas Jefferson Papers

From Thomas Jefferson to S. & S. Myers

To S. & S. Myers

Washington Dec. 7. 1802

By desire of mr Samuel Dyer of Albemarle I inclose you an order on Messrs. Gibson & Jefferson for one hundred & fifty dollars for the credit of mr Dyer with you. Accept my respects and good wishes.

Th: Jefferson

RC (DeHi); addressed: “Messrs. Samuel & S. Myers Richmond”; franked and postmarked; endorsed as received 10 Dec. and answered on the 11th. Recorded in SJL with the notation “150.”

S. & S. Myers was the partnership headed by Samuel Myers (1755–1836), a half-brother and former business partner of Moses Myers of Norfolk. Samuel Myers transferred a successful mercantile business from Petersburg to Richmond during the 1790s and emerged as a leading member of the city’s small but potent Jewish community. By November 1800, his business advertised under the name S. & S. Myers, but three years later it was advertising solely under his name (Richmond Virginia Argus, 4 Nov. 1800, 1 Dec. 1802, 5 Oct. 1803; Myron Berman, Richmond’s Jewry, 1769–1976: Shabbat in Shockoe [Charlottesville, 1979], 64–70).

TJ was likely reimbursing samuel dyer on behalf of his carpenter John Perry (MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1088). A letter of 7 Oct. from Dyer to TJ, recorded in SJL as received 13 Oct., has not been found. TJ’s response of 15 Oct. has also not been found.

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