To Thomas Jefferson from Joseph Priestley, Jr., 20 December 1804
From Joseph Priestley, Jr.
Northumberland. December 20 1804
Sir—
I have desired Mr Patrick Byrne bookseller of Pa. to send you a copy of my father’s last work; entitled The Doctrines of Heathen Philosophy compared with Revelation of which I beg your acceptance The wish you expressed in your letter to Mr Cooper has been complied with, but in Philadelphia, two or three persons asked me whether my father had not left behind him a work undertaken at your suggestion, & they informed me that they understood that to be the case from a Mr Smith, I believe the Marshall at Pa., who had heard so at Washington.
I shall esteem it a favour if you will inform me whether Mr Livingston ever acknowledged the receipt of the letter my father wrote on the subject of his property in the French funds. The letter was I think sent by a Mr Harvey who was the bearer of dispatches to Mr Livingston
I am Sir with the greatest respect Your Obedt hble Servt
Joseph Priestley
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 26 Dec. and so recorded in SJL.
Joseph Priestley, Jr. (1768-1833), was the eldest son of Dr. Joseph Priestley and Mary Wilkinson Priestley. Born and raised in England, he emigrated to the United States in 1793, accompanied by his brothers and Thomas Cooper, and settled in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where they intended to establish a community of political refugees from England. Although that plan was never realized, his parents moved to Northumberland in 1794. Inclined more toward business than science, Priestley engaged in a number of commercial and speculative ventures throughout his life, but with mixed success. He oversaw the preparation of his father’s Memoirs, which were published in 1806. He traveled to England on business in 1811, but the outbreak of the War of 1812 interfered with his return to the United States, and Priestley wound up spending the remainder of his life in his native country (Jenny Graham, Revolutionary in Exile: The Emigration of Joseph Priestley to America, 1794-1804 [Philadelphia, 1995], 29-33, 80-2, 165; Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 [University Park, Pa., 2004], 317-18, 404-5; , s.v. “Priestley, Joseph”; Daily National Intelligencer, 19 Nov. 1833; Priestley, Jr., to TJ, 6 Jan. 1806).
letter to Mr Cooper: TJ to Thomas Cooper, 24 Feb. 1804, in which he asked Cooper to prevent his syllabus on the doctrines of Jesus, a copy of which he had sent to the senior Joseph Priestley, “from ever getting into other hands” (Vol. 40:251-5; Vol. 42:537-8).
The elder Priestley’s letter to Robert R. Livingston was likely enclosed in one to TJ of 12 Dec. 1803, to which TJ replied on 29 Jan. 1804. TJ intended to have it delivered by Lewis Harvie, but Harvie declined going to Paris. It is thereafter uncertain how, or even if, Livingston received Priestley’s letter (Vol. 42:101-2, 315-16, 368-70; TJ to Priestley, Jr., 27 Dec.). Priestley’s letter apparently related to his substantial investment in French funds, which was made in the 1790s and proved unremunerative. Priestley, and later his son, spent many years attempting to recover it (Schofield, Enlightened Joseph Priestley, 299, 349-50; Graham, Revolutionary in Exile, 22n, 55, 97, 151; Joseph Priestley, Jr., to TJ, 10 Feb. 1808).