Passes for Poellnitz and Others, [25 August 1779]
Passes for Poellnitz and Others
[25 August 1779]
Virginia to wit
The bearer hereof Capt. Pelnitz,1 one of the aids de camp to Majr. Gen. Riedesel of the German Convention troops now within this commonwealth, has permission to pass, attended by his servant, from the county of Albemarle along such direct roads as he shall chuse to the Medicinal springs in the county of Berkeley there to continue with Majr. Genl. Riedesel or his family and to accompany them on their return to the county of Albemarle, or otherwise, at his election, to remain there or within ten miles thereof, and to return to the county of Albemarle by the way he went at any time before the 1st. day of October next: he still considering himself as under all the obligations of his parole other than that which restrains him within certain limits, with which restraint this passport is meant to dispense so far only as is herein before expressed. Given under my hand this 25th. day of Aug.2 1779.
Th: J.
MS (DLC); actually a retained fair copy and so docketed at foot of text by TJ. Almost identical in text with rough draft written on verso of TJ’s draft letter to Riedesel, printed at end of July 1779, above.
Pelnitz: Julius Ludwig August Poellnitz, of the Regiment Riedesel in the Brunswick corps (Riedesel, Memoirs, Letters and Journals, Albany, 1868, ii, 270). The pass actually issued to Burchsdorff (or Burgdorff; see note 1, below), entirely in TJ’s hand, is in the Century Club, New York City.
1. TJ added above this name that of “Mr. Burchsdorff” (probably Lt. Ludwig Traugott Burgdorff, Regiment Riedesel), and below it that of “Capt. Cleve” (Friedrich Christian Cleve, Riedesel’s adjutant). See Riedesel, Memoirs, ii, 265, 270, and passim.
2. Inserted in square brackets by TJ: “Cleve 2d. September.”