Thomas Jefferson Papers
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From Thomas Jefferson to John Barnes, 24 June 1800

To John Barnes

Monticello June 24. 1800.

[Dear] Sir

Your letters of May 24. & June 8. have been duly recieved, and but for an inadvertence as to the post day, should have been acknoleged by the last post. all the articles forwarded by you have come to hand except the half dozen square railed Windsor chairs bought in 4th. street. as these are not received, and mr Jefferson says nothing of them in his letters, I presume they never came to his hands, and consequently if put on board with the other things, must have been misdelivered by the captain. will you be so good as to enquire into this.—with respect to the loan the selling it above par is a new idea. however we must submit to this as to mr Short & Kosciusko rather than keep their money idle.

I shall be glad to recieve the young man recommended by mr Trump at the time you mention, as I had not employed another, in expectation of him, and in further dependance on him shall not employ another.1 my want of him in the mean while presses as to time. if he has tools, he had better bring them, as when he shall have got through my work they will enable him to enter on work for others. he could not get tools here to set himself up. the only remaining commission I have for Philadelphia would be to obtain a gross of bottled porter from there. but I am so doubtful whether it could be removed in the hot season, that I shall leave it altogether to the result of your enquiries as to this: whether to send it or not. I am with great esteem Dr. Sir Your friend & servt

Th: Jefferson

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

Barnes’s letter of 8 June, recorded in SJL as received on the 20th, has not been found. Also recorded in SJL, but missing, are a letter from TJ to Barnes of 30 May 1800 and one from Barnes of 15 June, received from Philadelphia on the 26th.

For the investment of William Short’s and Tadeusz Kosciuszko’s funds in the new government loan, see TJ to Short, 13 Apr. 1800, and Barnes to TJ, 24 May 1800.

The young man recommended by Daniel Trump to work as a carpenter at Monticello was named Forsyth. He did not go to Virginia, but Trump found a replacement in John Holmes (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 , 2:1028; Trump to TJ, 4 Aug. 1800).

1TJ interlined this word, and the sentence that follows it, in place of “him.”

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