Alden Partridge (1785–1854), soldier and educator, was a native of Norwich, Vermont. He studied at Dartmouth College before being appointed a cadet at the United States Military Academy in 1805. The following year Partridge was commissioned a first lieutenant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and he remained at West Point as a faculty member, teaching mathematics and engineering. Early in 1815 he became acting superintendent, but he proved unpopular and, after an unsuccessful power struggle with his replacement, he resigned his commission in 1818. After working briefly surveying the northeastern boundary of the United States, Partridge founded the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy (later Norwich University) in 1819 and spent the next twenty-four years as the institution’s president. He started mostly short-lived military schools in a number of states and advocated a model of citizen-soldiery intended to avoid the evils of a standing army and address the lack of training he observed during the War of 1812. In 1834–35 Partridge taught a subscription course on military science at the University of Virginia. In addition to his educational endeavors, he served as surveyor general of Vermont in 1822–23, lost three congressional elections, and was a Vermont state legislator in 1833, 1834, 1837, and 1839 (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; VtNN: Partridge Papers; General Catalogue of Dartmouth College and the Associated Schools, 1769–1925 [1925], 114; Heitman, U.S. Army description begins Francis B. Heitman, comp., Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 1903, 2 vols. description ends , 1:773; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 2:52, 53, 169, 173 [25, 27 Feb. 1807, 27 Feb., 1 Mar. 1811]; Lester A. Webb, Captain Alden Partridge and the United States Military Academy, 1806–1833 [1965]; Montpelier Vermont Patriot & State Gazette, 21 Jan. 1854; New York Independent, 26 Jan. 1854).

Jonathan williams published his own observations, along with TJ’s comments, as “Barometrical Measurement of the Blue-Ridge, Warm-Spring, and Alleghany Mountains, in Virginia, taken in the Summer of the year 1791,” APS description begins American Philosophical Society description ends , Transactions 4 (1799): 216–23 (see also PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 38 vols. description ends , 29:139–41).