From Thomas Jefferson to John Churchman, 18 September 1789
To John Churchman
Paris Sep. 18. 1789.
Sir
I have duly received your favor of the 15th. of May. I had before received and answered the first letter you wrote me; but the 2d. which you mention to have written, never came to hand. I have sent to the Secretary of the Academy of sciences the printed paper inclosed in your last. I asked at the same time the authenticated copy which you desired of the entry on their journals relative to your former communications to them. This I now inclose to you as I received it from the Marquis de Condorcet their Secretary. Being about to leave this country on a visit to my own I shall be in hopes of perhaps meeting you somewhere in my tour, and of expressing to you in person my readiness on all occasions to be useful to you in the business now in hand and the sentiments of esteem with which I am Sir Your most obedt. humble servt,
Th: Jefferson
PrC (DLC). The enclosed authenticated copy of the entry from the journals of the Académie des Sciences has not been found, but Churchman printed it, along with TJ’s letters of 8 Aug. 1787 and 18 Sep. 1789, in the appendix to his An Explanation of the Magnetic Atlases, Philadelphia, 1790; it reads as follows: “La lettre de M. Churchman, de Philadelphie, sur la variation de l’aiman, a été lue à l’Academie des Sciences de Paris, le 16 Juin, 1787. Je certifié cet extrait conforme aux registres de l’Academié à Paris, le 25 Septembre, 1789.—Le Marquis de Condorcet.” See Condorcet to TJ, under 12 Sep. 1789.
The printed paper enclosed in Churchman’s letter of 15 May 1789 is identified in a note to Churchman’s printing of the present letter as “An address to the members of the different learned societies, shewing the deficiencies in professor Euler’s memoir on this subject. See American Museum for May 1789.” On the liberties that Churchman took with TJ in printing his letters, see Churchman to TJ, 23 Nov. 1790.