Thomas Wistar was an elder in the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting for the Western District and a clerk of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee. He supported a memorial signed by clerk Thomas Morris and presented in Congress on behalf of the Quaker Yearly Meeting held in Philadelphia in December 1804. On 21 Jan., this memorial “to plead the cause of their oppressed and degraded fellow-men of the African race” was presented as a petition in the Senate and the House, where it was referred to the committee working on “an amelioration of the form of government of the Territory of Louisiana” (JS description begins Journal of the Senate of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1820-21, 5 vols. description ends , 3:437; Annals description begins Annals of the Congress of the United States: The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States … Compiled from Authentic Materials, Washington, D.C., Gales & Seaton, 1834-56, 42 vols. All editions are undependable and pagination varies from one printing to another. The first two volumes of the set cited here have “Compiled … by Joseph Gales, Senior” on the title page and bear the caption “Gales & Seatons History” on verso and “of Debates in Congress” on recto pages. The remaining volumes bear the caption “History of Congress” on both recto and verso pages. Those using the first two volumes with the latter caption will need to employ the date of the debate or the indexes of debates and speakers. description ends , 14:996).