To Thomas Jefferson from ——, 26 September [1780]
From ——
Bladensburg, Sept. 26. [1780].
Meeting with an immediate conveyance to Richmond by the bearer, I do myself the pleasure to give you the following agreeable intelligence. This morning on my return from the northward, I was overtaken by a Gentleman who left Philadelphia so late as last Saturday (the 23d instant) and had Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Gazette, in which I read extract of a letter from Bevernwick of the 18th instant, assuring that “we have it from undoubted authority that a French fleet of 16 sail of the line with some frigates was arrived at Rhode Island”; the Gentleman farther informed me that the news was generally believed at Philadelphia late on Saturday afternoon.
MS not located. Printed from an extract in Virginia Gazette (Dixon & Nicolson), 4 Oct. 1780.
In his letter to Gates of 4 Oct. 1780, TJ stated that this extract was from a letter addressed to himself by “a particular acquaintance of mine whose credit cannot be doubted”; this acquaintance has not been identified, but it may possibly have been Joseph Jones, who left Congress on 7 Sep. 1780 and returned to Virginia (, v, p. lxiv).