To Alexander Hamilton from Thomas Jones, Brockholst Livingston, and John H. Livingston, 15 March 1791
From Thomas Jones, Brockholst Livingston,
and John H. Livingston1
New York, March 15, 1791. “Mr. Philip Henry Livingston of this City together with his Father in law Walter Livingston2 having assumed certain debts due from us as administrators on the estate of the late Philip Livingston deceased, we have agreed to execute to him an assignment of his Father’s bonds & mortgage to our Testator. To perfect this Assignment we are advised that it is essential that you should join in the execution of it. We therefore enclose one for that purpose.… As we have now a prospect of settling our testators Affairs we are afraid we shall often be under the disagreable necessity, of troubling you upon that subject & thereby diverting your attention from the more important & useful pursuits in which you are engaged. We know not any way of preventing this interruption but by an application to our Legislature which is now sitting: If an application of this kind be agreeable to you, & not otherwise, we will make it.…”3
LS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. Jones was a New York City physician who had married Margaret Livingston, the daughter of Philip Livingston. Brockholst Livingston was a well-known New York City attorney and the son of William Livingston, former governor of New Jersey. John H. Livingston was a New York City clergyman and the husband of Sarah Livingston, Margaret Livingston Jones’s sister. H had extensive correspondence in the seventeen-eighties concerning the estate of Philip Philip Livingston, who died in 1787. See Ezekiel Forman to H, August 23, 1788, December 1, 1788; H to Richard Morris, September 8, 1788; William Livingston to H, December 22, 1788.
2. Philip Henry Livingston, son of Philip Philip Livingston, married Walter Livingston’s daughter, Maria.
3. H endorsed this letter: “Answered 22d March 91.” Letter not found.