From Thomas Jefferson to Henry Fry, 21 May 1804
To Henry Fry
Washington May 21. 04.
Dear Sir
When I had the pleasure of seeing you at your own house you expressed a wish to see Priestly’s corruptions of Christianity. finding them in a bookstore here on my return I was happy in the opportunity of gratifying your wish. I meant on my late journey here to have had the pleasure of asking personally your acceptance of them. but the morning I passed you was so rainy, and the necessity so urgent for my being here the next day, that meeting with mr Maury in the road I was glad to leave them with him to be presented to you in my behalf. the candor & learning of the author render every thing he writes estimable. at the time of his death he had just finished a work which I am anxious to see printed. it was a comparative view of the morality of Jesus & of the antient philosophers. but it is not yet committed to the press. Accept my affectionate salutations and assurances of great esteem.
Th: Jefferson
PoC (DLC); at foot of text: “Henry Fry esq.”; endorsed by TJ.
Henry Fry (1738-1823) lived about 35 miles northeast of Monticello. His father, Joshua Fry, was an Albemarle County surveyor and politician who in 1750 was commissioned with TJ’s father, Peter Jefferson, to produce what became known as the Fry-Jefferson map, considered “the most accurate record of Virginia in the eighteenth century” and the basis for TJ’s own map in Notes on the State of Virginia. As a young man, Henry Fry was deputy clerk of Albemarle, but when poor health created a growing dependency on “spirits,” he resigned the post and retreated to his estate south of Culpeper. Several years of fighting alcoholism led him to religion and a zealous commitment to Methodism. From the mid-1770s until his death, Fry worked to establish a Methodist following in the Culpeper area, first hosting and preaching at revivals and later serving as a guest minister to established congregations (Philip Slaughter, Memoir of Col. Joshua Fry, Sometime Professor in William and Mary College, Virginia, and Washington’s Senior in Command of Virginia Forces, 1754, Etc., Etc., with an Autobiography of His Son, Rev. Henry Fry, and a Census of Their Descendants [Richmond, 1880], 9, 20, 85-91, 111; Susan R. Stein, The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello [New York, 1993], 384).
wish to see: Joseph Priestley, An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, in Two Volumes (Birmingham, 1782).
TJ was anxious to see printed Priestley’s Doctrines of Heathen Philosophy, Compared with Those of Revelation (Thomas Cooper to TJ, [before 15] Mch.).