From George Washington to the U.S. Senate, 2 February 1795
To the United States Senate
United States Feby 2d 1795.
Gentlemen of the Senate,
I nominate the following persons to fill the offices annexed to their respective names.
Matthew Clarkson, to be Commissioner of Loans for the State of New York; vice John Cochran, resigned.
John Burnham, to be Collector for the port of Gloucester in Massachusetts; vice Eppes Sargent, resigned.1
Enoch Sawyer, to be Collector of Camden in North Carolina; vice Isaac Gregory, resigned.2
Thomas Collier, to be Collector for the port of Hardwick in Georgia; vice William Thompson, deceased.3
John James, to be Collector for the port of Sunbury in Georgia; vice John Lawson, resigned.4
Laurence Mooney, to be Surveyor for the port of Winnton in North Carolina; vice William Winn, resigned.5
Frederick B. Sawyer, to be Surveyor for the port of New-biggen Creek, in North Carolina; vice Elias Albertson, removed from the District.6
Levy Blount, to be Surveyor for the port of Plymouth in North Carolina; vice John Armistead, resigned.7
Ebenezer Graham, to be Surveyor for the port of Bennett’s-Creek in North Carolina; vice John Baker, resigned.8
Richard Jordan, to be Surveyor for the port of Lewellensburgh in Maryland; vice Jeremiah Jordan, resigned.9
Robert Banning to be Collector for the port of Oxford in Maryland; and Inspector of the revenue for the same; vice Jeremiah Banning, resigned. and
William Nicholls, of Philadelphia, to be Inspector of the Revenue for Survey No. 1 in the District of Pennsylvania.
Go: Washington
LS, DNA: RG 46, Third Congress, 1793–95, Senate Records of Executive Proceedings, President’s Messages—Executive Nominations; LB, DLC:GW.
The Senate confirmed these nominations on 3 Feb. (, 171).
1. John Burnham (1749–1843) served as an officer in the Revolutionary War; his Personal Recollections of the Revolutionary War, written in 1841–42 and first published in 1881, was reprinted under a slightly variant title in the Magazine of History with Notes and Queries, Extra no. 54(1917):119–33. In 1791 GW appointed Burnham to be a major in the U.S. army, but he resigned that same year. He declined the appointment as collector.
2. Enoch Sawyer (1758–1827) was a son-in-law of his predecessor, Isaac Gregory. He represented Camden County in the N.C. legislature, 1784–90. In 1797 GW nominated him to be inspector for the same district, and he filled those posts until his death. Isaac Gregory (c.1737–1800), who had been appointed collector in 1790, served in the Revolutionary War as a brigadier general of militia and was wounded at the Battle of Camden. He represented Camden County in the N.C. House, 1780, and Senate, 1782–89 and 1795.
3. Thomas Collier held state appointments as surveyor and collector of tax for Bryan County, Ga. (Judy Swaim Kratovil, Georgia Governors’ Journals 1789–1798 County, State and Militia Officers [Fernandina Beach, Fla., 2000], 2–3). He accepted the Hardwick appointment but resigned before the year was out. William Thompson (c.1749–1794), an officer of the 9th Pennsylvania Regiment during the Revolutionary War, died the previous March (Augusta Chronicle and Gazette of the State, 22 March 1794).
4. GW subsequently corrected the name of this nominee to “James James” and noted that he had declined the post (GW to the U.S. Senate, 25 June, DNA: RG 46, entry 52). James James was a justice of the peace in Liberty County; for his declination of the appointment, see James to Henry Kuhl, 18 April (DLC:GW). John Lawson, Jr., whom GW appointed as collector at Sunbury in 1792, had earlier been appointed as collector under the state government in 1783 (, 2:436, 438).
5. Laurence Mooney (died c.1803) was recommended for this post in a letter from Edenton, N.C., collector Samuel Tredwell to Alexander Hamilton of 15 Jan., and Hamilton wrote on that letter that “there is now a concurrence in his favour” (DLC:GW). Mooney served until his death.
6. Newbegun Creek enters the Pasquotank River from the west, near Weeksville, North Carolina. Frederick B. Sawyer (1761–1825) remained as surveyor there until 1802, when he was replaced following reports that he lived some distance from the port and was not filing returns regularly (, 37:314, 343, 348). He represented Pasquotank County in the North Carolina House, 1802–6. Elias Albertson (b. 1763), a Quaker merchant originally from Perquimans County, returned there in 1794.
7. Levi Blount retained his position as surveyor and (after 1797) as inspector for the port of Plymouth until 1808, when Thomas Jefferson appointed him to be collector and inspector for the same port. He ceased to hold those positions by June 1809. Whether he is the same Levi Blount who served briefly as surveyor at Plymouth in 1790 or a relative has not been determined.
8. Bennetts Creek in Gates County flows southward through Gatesville and enters the Chowan River about twenty miles upriver from Edenton, between Harrellsville and Sign Pine, North Carolina. Ebenezer Graham also was appointed inspector there in December 1795. John Baker was nominated to be surveyor for Bennetts Creek in February 1790 and inspector there in March 1792. He resigned as inspector later in 1792, but when he resigned as surveyor has not been determined. He may have been the Revolutionary War officer of that name who represented Hertford County in the North Carolina legislature, 1780, 1782, and 1784–85, and Gates County, 1787–88, and who was a Gates County delegate to the 1789 convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution.
9. Llewellensburg, later known as Bushwood, was on the Wicomico River in Saint Mary’s County, Md. (Frederick Tilp, This Was Potomac River [3d ed., Alexandria, Va., 1987], 73, 75). Richard Jordan (c.1764–1804) was Jeremiah Jordan’s son. He remained surveyor at Llewellensburg until his death.