From Alexander Hamilton to John Kean, 1 January 1793
To John Kean
Treasury Department
January 1 1793
Sir
The Treasurer of the United States has this day been directed to draw on the Office of Discount and Deposit at Baltimore for Twenty thousand Dollars, and to deposit the bill, as usual, in the Bank of the United States. I have therefore to request that you will deliver it to Messrs Elliott and Williams,1 or to their Agent, Colo Smith,2 upon the payment of the Cash.
I am, Sir, very respectfully, Your Mo. Obedt Servant.
Alexander Hamilton
John Kean Esqr.
Cashier of the Bank of the US.
LS, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
1. Robert Elliot and Elie Williams were contractors for the supply of the Army on the western frontier.
2. Samuel Smith, who had served as a lieutenant colonel in the American Revolution and was a member of the Baltimore merchant firm of Samuel and John Smith, Jr., had been elected to Congress in 1792. See James McHenry to H, August 16, 1792. The Smith firm supplied Elliot and Williams with goods for the Indian trade and in 1791 was drawn into the latter firm’s conflict with the Treasury over the settlement of accounts. See, for example, Samuel Smith’s letters to Otho H. Williams, who was collector of customs at Baltimore and Elie Williams’s brother, abstracted in Calendar of the General Otho Holland Williams Papers in the Maryland Historical Society (Baltimore, 1940), 239, 241, 242.