To James Madison from Robert C. Jones, James M. Jeffries, and James P. Henderson, 17 December 1827
From Robert C. Jones, James M. Jeffries, and James P. Henderson
Wm. & Mary College Dec: 17. 1827.
Dr Sir,
In pursuance of the duty which has devolved on us, By the concurring voice of the Society which has been recently established at this College,1 and which has honoured itself so much as to take Your name, we in the name of the Society do acquaint You of Your having been elected an Honorary member of its Body, provided You will confer upon it such a mark of Your esteem as to accept of this pigmy title, and likewise wishing it to be doubly distinguished, we would request Your excellency to send us a motto suitable to the same with Your Birth day annexed.
We would feel some delicacy in troubling You so much, but Confident of Yr, regard for all literary insti[tu]tions, and knowing that You have been so much famed throughout the union for the patronage which You were allways ready and willing to extend, to the dissemination of knowledge that delicacy vanishes, and we with due respect ask of You to transmit us these emblems of Yr: regard. Yr.’s Respectfully
RC (DLC: Rives Collection, Madison Papers). Docketed by JM: “Jones Ro: C. Jones.”
1. The correspondents were a committee of the Madison Society at the College of William and Mary.
2. Robert C. Jones (1808–38), an 1828 graduate of the College of William and Mary, initially read law, but an 1833 conversion experience led him to become a Methodist preacher two years later (Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, for the Years 1773–1839 [2 vols.; New York, 1840], 2:667).
3. James M. Jeffries (1809–90) of King and Queen County, Virginia, attended the College of William and Mary from 1826 to 1828. In 1840 he was appointed commonwealth’s attorney, a position he held until 1870, when he was elected judge of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court. Jeffries served in this capacity until his death (Thomas Tabb Jeffries III, “Judge James Madison Jeffries of King and Queen County (1809–1890),” Bulletin of the King and Queen County Historical Society of Virginia 104 [2008]: 1–3).
4. James P. Henderson (b. ca. 1810) was a student at the College of William and Mary from 1826 to 1829. While in Williamsburg, he lived with William Brown, a judge of the Virginia Superior Court of Chancery, who was listed as his (probably adoptive) parent (History of the College of William and Mary, 119; Joseph E. Worcester, ed., The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, for the Year 1831 [Boston, 1830], 220; “Register of Students in William and Mary College, 1827–1881,” , 2nd ser., 3 [1923]: 159, 161, [165]).