To George Washington from Jane Swanson, 4 November 1796
From Jane Swanson
London Novr 4th 1796.
May it please Your Excellency—
To forgive the Liberty a Young Woman has taken, as the Goodness of your heart is confessed by every one in this Country as well as in America, and has been ever ready to relieve the distressed, I therefore hope this may claim some Merit to your Ex-cellencys Attention.
My Father whose Name was John Swanson, and if by the Informati⟨on⟩ I have lately received from a Friend of his, and also by several others who were in the Country with him, and that he was a Colonel in your Service at the Time the English General Lord Cornwallis and his Army was Captured, Is. Right. and I am crediably informed it is. I am a Truely unfortunate Daughter of his. in not hearing from him.1
I have made every enquiry in my power for Information for many Years past. but all to no purpose I have therefore been advised to address this to your Excellency to Sollicit your Good Offices to make the necessary Enquiries. for every other of my relations are dead—and since I have came to the Years of Maturity, I shall feel most sensibly the Loss of so Tender a Father. (if he is also dead).
He came from Thurso in the County of Caithness and North of Scotland. He was a Carpenter by trade.
An Answer to this Letter will be received with the utmost Gratitud⟨e⟩ and Attention By Your Excellencys Very Obt Servant2
Jane Swanson
To be directed for her at Mr Mackenzie Brokers row Drury Lane London.3
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. John Swanson (born c.1736), a native of the parish of Reay, Caithness County, Scotland, later resided in Thurso, Scotland. By the latter 1760s, he was an outpensioner of London’s Chelsea Royal Hospital for disabled soldiers. This suggests that Swanson served in the British army as a young man. Following his military service, Swanson, who went by the name “Achgillan” or “Achyullan,” worked as a joiner but also engaged in criminal activity such as burglary, theft, and, allegedly, murder. In 1768, he was indicted for complicity in a plot of murder and robbery, and that October he was sentenced to be whipped. As further punishment, Swanson was banished with other criminals to the American colonies, where he was to serve at the estates of Scottish merchants. A family from Swanson’s native Reay circulated unsubstantiated reports years later that at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Swanson volunteered for service in the Continental army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel or colonel. Claims were also made that Swanson was hanged in America for murder (see The Highland Monthly 2 [1890–91]: 696–701, 750–56). This may be the John Swanson whose will, probated in April 1799, bequeathed nearly 400 acres of land in Amherst County, Va., to a daughter from Caithness County named Jane Swanson (see Walter Lee Hopkins, Hopkins of Virginia and Related Families [Richmond, 1931], 174). In 1807, title to those tracts was contested because of Jane’s status as “a subject of Great Britain … incapable of inheriting said land” (Virginia State Library, A Calendar of Legislative Petitions … [Richmond, 1908], 120).
Jane Swanson’s allusion to the capture of Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis and his army refers to the British surrender at Yorktown, Va., in October 1781.
2. No reply to Swanson from GW has been found.
3. Swanson may be referring to James Mackenzie, a London merchant whose business was located at 29 New Broad St., which extended to Broker’s-Row, Moorfields (see A London Directory or Alphabetical Arrangement Containing the Names and Residences of the Merchants … [London, 1796], 102).