Stephen Kingston (d. 1836), merchant, was born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States as a minor by 1783. He settled in Philadelphia shortly thereafter. President James Madison appointed Kingston United States consul at Havana in 1812, but the Spanish government there soon forced him to leave the island. He subsequently returned to his adopted hometown, and he retired from trade in the mid-1820s (Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer; or, the Chronicle of Freedom, 16 Apr. 1785; DNA: RG 29, CS, Pa., Philadelphia, 1790, 1830; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 39 vols. description ends , 25:626–8; Madison, Papers, Pres. Ser., 4:79; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 2:240, 241 [24, 25 Mar. 1812]; Kingston to James Monroe, 12 Sept. 1812 [DNA: RG 59, CD, Havana]; Kingston to John Rhea, 25 Jan. 1814 [DNA: RG 59, LAR, 1809–17]; Thomas Wilson, ed., The Philadelphia Directory and Stranger’s Guide, for 1825 [Philadelphia, 1825], 79; Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 9 Feb. 1836).

The enclosed papers, not found, accompanied a note from Kingston that reads “Mr Jefferson is respectfully requested to return the inclosed to S.K.” (MS in DLC: TJ Papers, 208:37062; undated; unsigned; endorsed by TJ as received 19 Sept. 1816 and so recorded in SJL). The documents apparently pertained to a controversy over a piece of land in Philadelphia that Kingston had purchased in 1807 “from William and John Oxley and others in the island of Barbadoes.” A question “whether the wills of said Oxley’s ancestors have been proved conformable to the laws of Pennsylvania” later cast doubt on Kingston’s title. The case dragged on in the courts until November 1823, when the state supreme court confirmed Kingston’s right to two-thirds of the property. Five years later the Pennsylvania legislature affirmed his title to the final third (Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania [1813–14 sess.], 95; Facts, and Observations on the Facts, originating the bill, entitled “An Act for the Relief of Stephen Kingston” [Philadelphia, 1815]; Thomas Sergeant and William Rawle Jr., Reports of Cases adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 3d ed. [1851–75], 10:382–91; Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, from the fourteenth day of October, one thousand seven hundred [1810–44], 10:143 [10 Apr. 1828]).

Kingston seems to be referring to the fifth article of the treaty of Paris of 1783, which dealt with “the Restitution of all Estates, Rights and Properties” owned by British citizens that had been seized during the Revolutionary War (Miller, Treaties description begins Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America, 1931–48, 8 vols. description ends , 2:154).