To Benjamin Franklin from Le Maire de Gimel, [28 June 1784]
From Le Maire de Gimel5
ALS: American Philosophical Society
[June 28, 1784]
Vôtre Excellence.
Je sens combien je Vous fatigue par mes demandes réitérées, mais comme dans tous les tems Vous avez eu des bontés pour moi, j’espere que Vous Voudrez bien encore m’apostiller ce memoire, l’etourderie du copiste m’ayant rendu inutile celui que Vous eutes la bonté de m’apostiller le 30 Maÿ dernier.6 Le ministre nattend plus qu’après cela pour prononcer sur ce qui fait l’objet de mès desirs. Jattend de Vous cette grace Voulant repasser de suite En amérique.7 Jaurois eu L’honneur d’aller, moi même Vous rendre mes devoirs sans une incommodité qui m’en empéche.
Je suis avec un profond Respect. Votre Excellence Votre tres humble et tres obeissant Serviteur./.
Col. Le Maire
Notation: Le Maire
5. Under cover of this undated letter, Le Maire sent a revised version of the petition that BF had certified on March 30. (See BF’s certification, published under that date.) We date the letter based on the urgent note that Le Maire sent to WTF on June 28, 1784: the “instant” after his courier left for Passy to deliver the memoir, Le Maire received word that Castries had granted him an appointment for nine o’clock the next morning. Would WTF see that BF attested and signed the document by 8 A.M., when his servant would pick it up? APS.
The revised petition that Le Maire enclosed with the present letter, delivered to Castries on June 29, was still dated March 30, 1784, as was BF’s recertification. (That recertification, signed by BF, was translated into French and written by L’Air de Lamotte): Le Maire to Castries, March 30, 1784, Archives nationales d’outre-mer. Filed with this document are French copies of its enclosures, which BF also attested. One established the authenticity of Le Maire’s November, 1780, commission as colonel of artillery; the other was an article from the Boston Gaz., May 15, 1780, about Le Maire’s demonstration of a gun carriage he had designed.
6. I.e., March 30.
7. Le Maire left for Virginia in late 1784 to obtain clear title to lands the state had granted him for his services. He later settled in St.-Domingue, where he died c. 1793: Jefferson Papers, VII, 505; VIII, 120–32; W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series (18 vols. to date, Charlottesville and London, 1987– ), XIV, 529–30.