Thomas Jefferson Papers
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From Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 20 July 1802

To Albert Gallatin

Washington July 20. 1802.

Dear Sir

I recieved last night your’s of the 17th. and tomorrow I set out for Monticello, so must be brief. Commissions were yesterday directed to be made out with blank dates as follows.

Lee Collector Salem
Lyman do. Newbury port
Warren do. Marblehead.
Muhlenberg do. Philadelphia.
Page do. Petersburg.
Coxe Supervisor Pensva

on desiring mr Madison this morning to have them dated Aug. 1. and kept here till your arrival Aug. 2. he expressed his apprehension they were already gone off under cover to you.—I inclose you the authority you asked for Coxe to act as Collector of Internal duties also. I likewise inclose the resignations of William Goforth as a Commissioner in Symes’s case, and Foster’s resignation of the place of Register of the land office Marietta. Capt Lewis recommends for the former place a Doctor John Selman of Cincinnati whom he represents as a very sensible man, of a correct character, & a good republican. he is not a lawyer. I mention him to you only in case you can get none of better pretensions. for the other place you must be so good as to look out.—those three towns in Massachusets very possibly might have wished for a townsman. but that degree of restriction is impracticable and inadmissible. there are difficulties enough already in the way of getting good men.—blanks are left, so that you can use them for Oswego, & Slade’s creek. I hope your health will be improved by the journey; and that on your return here you will retire into the hills, & by no means pass the months of August & September here. Accept assurances of my highest esteem & confidence.

Th: Jefferson

RC (NHi: Gallatin Papers); at foot of text: “Mr. Gallatin”; endorsed by Gallatin. PrC (DLC). Enclosures: Authorization for Tench Coxe, printed below. Other enclosures not found.

William GOFORTH had served as a commissioner for settling claims on the Miami Purchase lands of John Cleves Symmes since the fall of 1801. FOSTER’S RESIGNATION: appointed to office in May 1800, Peregrine Foster, brother of Senators Theodore and Dwight Foster, was the first register of lands at the newly established land office at Marietta. John Sellman (SELMAN) joined James Findlay, receiver of public monies at Cincinnati, and John Reily on the Symmes commission. Sellman had served as a surgeon’s mate in the army on the frontier with Meriwether Lewis (Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 3:97; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States . . . to the Termination of the Nineteenth Congress, Washington, D.C., 1828, 3 vols. description ends , 1:433, 437; ASP description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1832–61, 38 vols. description ends , Public Lands, 1:112–13; Bruce H. Mann, Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence [Cambridge, Mass., 2002], 129–30; Sellman to Gabriel Duvall, 4 Oct. 1807, in DNA: RG 59, LAR; Vol. 35:392n; Vol. 36:301–2n, 405n, 486n).

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