Robert Hutchinson Rose (1776–1842), land developer, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and spent the winters of his youth in Philadelphia. He received a medical education, though he apparently did not practice in that field. Rose served as agent of the Susquehannah Company, 1803–04. Around that time he reportedly also visited Italy. Rose wrote several poems that appeared in the Port Folio between 1802 and 1805, and he later published a volume of poetry, Sketches in Verse (Philadelphia, 1810). In 1809 he bought a large tract of about one hundred thousand acres in Pennsylvania in a section of Luzerne County that became Susquehanna County the next year. Rose’s property included the township of Silver Lake. He encouraged the settlement and development of the area thereafter and served as the town’s postmaster from 1810 until his death at his home in Silver Lake. In 1817 Rose was elected president of the newly established Silver Lake Bank, and in 1820 he became the president of the Agricultural Society of Susquehanna (Emily C. Blackman, History of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania [1873], 445–51, 457–9, 544–5; Rhamanthus M. Stocker, Centennial History of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania [1887], esp. 28, 196, 500–1, 505; NBiSU: Rose Family Papers; Julian P. Boyd and Robert J. Taylor, eds., The Susquehannah Company Papers [1930–71], vol. 11; Randolph C. Randall, “Authors of the Port Folio Revealed by the Hall Files,” American Literature 11 [1940]: 406–7; Lancaster Journal, 27 Jan. 1817; Philadelphia North American and Daily Advertiser, 25 Mar. 1842).

On this day Rose also sent a copy of the enclosure to James Madison (Madison, Papers, Retirement Ser., 2:250).