Thomas Jefferson Papers

To Thomas Jefferson from Robert Smith, 29 January 1803

From Robert Smith

Navy Dep. Jan. 29. 1803

Sir

I some time since wrote to the Navy Agent at New York respecting Danl Baldwin. The result shall be Communicated to you when received.

I did not understand from Mr Gallatin that I was to send to him an additional Estimate of Navy appropriations. I will however see him this morning.

Respectfully H S

Rt. Smith

RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received from the Navy Department on 31 Jan. and “navy approprns” and so recorded in SJL.

Disabled veteran Daniel baldwin and his wife, Phebe, sent letters to TJ in 1802 and early 1803 seeking employment, none of which have been found. Daniel wrote TJ from New York on 12 Apr. 1802, which SJL records as received 14 Apr. and forwarded to the War Department (Vol. 37:716). Phebe Baldwin’s letters to TJ of 27 Dec. 1802 and 25 Jan. 1803 from Paterson, New Jersey, are recorded in SJL as received 18 and 29 Jan., respectively, the latter of which was forwarded to the Navy Department. On 27 Jan. 1803, Smith wrote Daniel Ludlow, the navy agent at New York City, enclosing a letter from Mrs. Baldwin soliciting employment for her husband, “who is represented as having lost his Leg in the Battle of Germantown,” and requested that Baldwin be given “any employment for which he may be able and fit” (DNA: RG 45, MLS; see also Kline, Burr description begins Mary-Jo Kline, ed., Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr, Princeton, 1983, 2 vols. description ends , 2:705).

For Albert Gallatin’s revised estimate of navy appropriations, see Gallatin to TJ, 18, 22, and 29 Jan. 1803.

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