Robert Mills to Thomas Jefferson, 20 March 1819
From Robert Mills
Baltimore March 20th1 1819
My dear Sir
Mr Richd Ware who hands you this letter is a respectable Master Carpenter from Philadelphia who is on his way to Charlottsville to offer proposals towards executing or undertaking part of the Carpentry of the University buildings proposed to be built at or near Charlottsville—permit me to recommend him to the attentions of the Proctor, Nelson Barksdale Esqr thro’ you—Mr Ware bears with him recommendations from Gentlemen well known to you in Philadelphia, with whose names I will cheerfully associate mine, as I have had business with Mr W— during my residence in Pha
Robt Mills
PS.—We have raised the Column of the Washington Monument the last season to upwards of 100 ft & hope this year to get on the Capital. the whole is built with white marble—
RC (ViU: TJP); endorsed by TJ as received 25 Mar. 1819 and so recorded (with bracketed indication that it was delivered “by Richd Ware”) in SJL; additional notation by TJ above endorsement: “Ware Richard carpenter.” RC (CSmH: JF-BA); address cover only; with PoC of TJ to George Williamson, 11 July 1819, on verso; addressed: “Thomas Jefferson Esqr Monticello Albemarle County Virginia” by the “politeness of Mr R. Ware.”
The washington monument in Baltimore was designed by Mills and constructed between 1815 and 1829. The Doric column rises almost 166 feet in height and is crowned with a 14-foot marble statue of George Washington resigning his commission as commander in chief of the Continental army at the end of the Revolutionary War (Baltimore Patriot & Evening Advertiser, 6 July 1815; John Morrill Bryan, ed., Robert Mills, Architect [1989], 146–54).
1. Reworked from “22.”
Index Entries
- Baltimore, Md.; Washington Monument in search
- Barksdale, Nelson; as University of Virginia proctor search
- building materials; marble search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Correspondence; letters of application and recommendation to search
- marble; white search
- Mills, Robert; and Washington Monument (Baltimore) search
- Mills, Robert; letters from search
- Mills, Robert; recommends R. Ware search
- patronage; letters of application and recommendation to TJ search
- Virginia, University of; Construction and Grounds; carpenters and joiners for search
- Ware, Richard; recommendations of search
- Washington, George; monuments commemorating search