Thomas Jefferson Papers
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From Thomas Jefferson to John Barnes, 11 December 1795

To John Barnes

Monticello Dec. 11. 95

Dr Sir

I have this day drawn on you in favor of Messrs. Plumsted & McCaul for 50.D. 75 C. which please to honor. I have at the same time taken the liberty of telling them you would be kind enough to recieve, and forward to me, 2 Chinese gongs which they will deliver you. If they are not packed in a box I must trouble you to have that done. Send me also at the same time 6. ℔ of your best young Hyson and a small box of Spanish Segars. One of these articles will perhaps [. . . .] in the box [with] the gong, to le[ssen pac]kages.1 I wrote to Mr. Mussi to forward me another case of oil and call on you for paiment. If this be not sent off, I could wish it to come with the gongs, tea and segars, as Messrs. Gamble & Temple at Richmond, complain of the multitude of small and single parcels addressed to them for me.

I have to acknolege yours of Nov. 21. Since writing you on the subject of my tobacco I have seen my manager from the plantation where it is made; and he gives me so indifferent an account of the quality of his this year’s tobacco owing to the immense deluges of rain we had in the season, that I determine not to send it to Philadelphia, at which market I wish to preserve the credit of my crop, so as to be entitled to the very highest price whenever it is sent there. To this it’s quality will entitle it in common years: and the crop of the ensuing year I shall forward to you for that market. I am with much esteem Dr. Sir Your most obedt servt

Th: Jefferson

PrC (MHi); mutilated at fold; at foot of text: “Mr. John Barnes”; endorsed in ink by TJ on verso.

SJL records a letter of this date from TJ to Plumsted & Mccaul concerning “50.75 on Barnes for gongs,” as well as another to them of 5 Nov. 1795, and letters from Plumstead & McCaul to TJ of 9 Sep. 1793 and 15 Oct. and 17 Nov. 1795, none of which has been found.

Barnes’s letter of NOV. 21., recorded in SJL as received 1 Dec. 1795, and a letter from TJ to Barnes of 26 Nov. 1795 on “£66.67 to Gamble & Temple,” have not been found. The latter concerned TJ’s payment for “half a ton of nail rod” (MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 26 Nov. 1795). My manager: Bowling Clark, the overseer of Poplar Forest, where the bulk of TJ’s tobacco was grown (Betts, Farm Book description begins Edwin M. Betts, ed., Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book, Princeton, 1953 description ends , 150, 255–6).

On 7 Nov. 1795 TJ wrote an order on Barnes in favor of the Milton merchants Fleming & McClenahan for $ 125 payable at sight (PrC in MHi, at foot of text: “Mr. John Barnes Mercht. Philadelphia”). TJ notified Barnes of the draft in a letter of advice of the same date (PrC in same). The payment was to settle TJ’s account with Eli Alexander, his recently retired overseer at Shadwell (MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 1 Nov. 1794, 7 Nov. 1795).

1Sentence interlined.

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