ALS, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters.

John Nicholson (1757–1800) was the principal financial officer of Pennsylvania and a prominent speculator in public securities. After serving as clerk to the Continental Board of Treasury from 1778 to 1781, he was appointed state comptroller general in 1782 and given responsibility for settling all the accounts to which the state was a party. In 1785 he was also appointed receiver general and in 1787, escheator general, responsible for liquidating the estates of those attainted of treason. In politics Nicholson was a defender of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 and a prominent Antifederalist. In the late 1780s his political leanings combined with his extensive powers to make him the object of criticism from Federalists in the state legislature. In 1790 he was charged with abuse of his authority, and an attempt was made to remove him from public office. The enclosure has not been found but may have been a copy of Nicholson’s defense, Address to the People of Pennsylvania Containing a Narrative of the Proceedings against John Nicholson (Philadelphia, 1790). In 1793 he was impeached by the Pennsylvania house of representatives for redeeming his own state certificates instead of funding them in new federal certificates. He was acquitted in the Pennsylvania senate in 1794 but resigned all of his offices. Nicholson was later involved with Robert Morris and James Greenleaf in investing in lots in the new federal city, which along with other speculations led to the collapse of his finances in 1797 and subsequent imprisonment for debt.