Peter Stephen Chazotte to Thomas Jefferson, 6 October 1815
From Peter Stephen Chazotte
Philadelphia 6th octber 1815
Sir.
Author of, A New System of Banking To establish, either a Merchants’ or A Grand National Bank, a subject intimately connected with the wellfare of this republic, the honour, prosperity and liberties of which you have long been the exalted and faithful guardian and are deservedly considered as the most illustrious of its citizens; I make it a duty for me, to present you with a copy of it, and to accompany it with a request that you would so far extend your1 kindness to me as to give it a perusal.
Accept my sincere wishes for your health and happiness;
Pr Stephen Chazotte
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as a letter from “Charotte P. Stephen” received 11 Oct. 1815 and so recorded in SJL. RC (DLC); address cover only; with PoC of TJ to Robert Patterson, 22 Dec. 1815, on verso; addressed: “Thomas Jefferson Esquire, Virginia.” Enclosure: Chazotte, A New System of Banking, Developed and Exemplified, in a New Scheme to establish A Merchants Bank of General Deposits. and also, in a Scheme to Establish A Grand National Bank (Philadelphia, 1815; 12 [no. 710]).
Peter Stephen Chazotte (ca. 1775–1846), teacher and author, was a planter in Saint Domingue until slave rebellions there forced him to leave. He spent two years in Charleston, South Carolina, before returning to Saint Domingue in 1800. Chazotte fled again in 1804, this time arriving in Baltimore. By 1808 he was living in Philadelphia, where he intermittently ran schools and taught French between 1811 and 1822. In 1821–22 Chazotte served as the director of the East Florida Coffee Land Association, which unsuccessfully sought permission from the United States government to purchase land for agricultural purposes in East Florida. His books covered a variety of topics including languages, banking, and agriculture, and he sent several of them to TJ during the latter’s retirement. In 1830 Chazotte was living in Brooklyn. Ten years later he was in Jersey City, New Jersey, where he died (Canter Brown Jr., “The East Florida Coffee Land Expedition of 1821: Plantations or a Bonapartist Kingdom of the Indies?,” Tequesta: The Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida 51 [1991]: 7–28; Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 30 Sept. 1808, 21 Sept. 1811, 18 Apr. 1815, 30 May 1818; James Robinson, The Philadelphia Directory for 1811 [Philadelphia, 1811], 68; Richmond Enquirer, 31 Aug. 1821; Chazotte, Facts and Observations on the Culture of Vines, Olives, Capers, Almonds, &c. in the Southern States, and of Coffee, Cocoa, and Cochineal, in East Florida [Philadelphia, 1821]; , 15:155, 281–2, 393, 16:78 [17 Jan., 20 Feb., 26 Mar., 27 Dec. 1822]; ASP, Public Lands, 3:457–67; The Philadelphia Directory and Register, for 1822 [Philadelphia, 1822]; DNA: RG 29, CS, N.Y., Brooklyn, 1830, N.J., Hudson Co., 1840; Chazotte, Historical Sketches of the Revolutions, and the Foreign and Civil Wars in the Island of St. Domingo [1840]; Jersey City Advertiser and Hudson County Republican, 27 Jan. 1846).
Writing from Philadelphia on 26 Sept. 1815, Chazotte sent a similar letter and the same enclosure to President James Madison (DLC: Madison Papers).
1. Manuscript: “you.”
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- A New System of Banking (P. S. Chazotte) search
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- Chazotte, Peter Stephen; A New System of Banking search
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- Jefferson, Thomas; Books & Library; works sent to search
- Madison, James (1751–1836); works sent to search