From George Washington to Timothy Pickering, 6 November 1797
To Timothy Pickering
Mount Vernon 6th Novr 1797.
Dear Sir,
Since writing to you a few days ago, I have been favoured with your letters of the 26th and 30th Ulto.1
If you should have occasion to write to Mr Parish of Hamburg, you would oblige me, by thanking him in my behalf, for his very polite & friendly offer of sending me any thing I might have occasion for from that place.2
It would be more formal than necessary, to introduce Mr Bucknall’s Orchardist to the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia otherwise than through you. If then you will be so good as to relate the manner in which it came, & present it with my best respects to that body, I will thank you.3 With very great esteem & regard I am—Dear Sir Your Obedt Hble Servant
Go: Washington
I ask your care of the enclosed Letters.4
ALS, MHi: Pickering Papers; ALS (letterpress copy), NN: Washington Papers; LB, DLC:GW; copy, MHi: Pickering Papers.
2. In his letter of 26 Oct. Pickering quoted a letter from John Parish offering his services to GW.
3. The pamphlet which Pickering forwarded with his letter of 30 Oct. was Thomas Skip Dyot Bucknall’s The Orchardist: or, A System of Close Pruning and Medication . . . (London, 1797). The author’s transcript reads: “The Rt Honble General Washington with the Author’s Compts” (, 36).
4. One of the enclosed letters was that to James Ross and the other, perhaps, to Sir John Sinclair, both this date.