From Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Brown, 18 January 1805
To Joseph Brown
Washington Jan. 18. 1805.
Sir
I was told last fall that the road to and from Lacey’s ford on Bull run was so destroyed by the rains of last summer that a carriage could not pass there, and that they had not been repaired. will you be so good as to write me word whether a carriage can pass them now, as I shall be going that way the first week in March, and shall be unwilling to attempt the Centreville road, which at that season is scarcely to be passed at all. your answer will oblige me. Accept my best wishes
Th: Jefferson
PoC (MHi); at foot of text: “Mr. Brown.”; endorsed by TJ with notation “at Gaines’s tavern” and so recorded in SJL.
Joseph Brown kept a tavern about five miles southwest of Bull Run. TJ had been lodging there since he first started traveling to and from Washington, but Brown had not always been the innkeeper. A Mr. Gaines ran the tavern until 1797, at which time TJ noted in his account book that he had lodged at “Darrington’s (formerly Gaines’s).” His 27 Nov. 1800 travel accounts were the first to refer to this Prince William County tavern as “Brown’s.” To his daughter, TJ wrote of the tavern under Brown’s care: “a poor house, but obliging people” (Ronald Ray Turner, Prince William County Virginia 1805-1955 Businesses [Manassas, Va., 1999], 24; , 2:975, 1031; Vol. 24:368; Vol. 35:568; Vol. 37:535).
write me word: a letter from Brown to TJ, received on 2 Mch., has not been found (Appendix IV).