Garrit Storm to Thomas Jefferson, 23 February 1816
From Garrit Storm
Newyork February. 23d 1816
Dear Sir
The enclosed Paragraph was Some time Since taken from the National Intelligencer and must be my apology for the great liberty I am taking in addressing this Letter to you Sir with the view of making enquiry respecting this Mr Quarrier—You will confer a very great obligation by informing me if the Gentleman alluded to in the advertisement is a Frenchman, and whether he was in this City about the year 1800.—If these questions are answered in the affirmative—You will most materially serve me by informing me of his Situation as to pecuniary matters.—Offering Dear Sir my very sincere apologies for all this trouble, and with a wish to have the pleasure to fulfil any commands you may have in this place. I am with the very highest respect
Garrit Storm
RC (MHi); between dateline and salutation: “Honble Thomas Jefferson Esqr”; endorsed by TJ as received 1 Mar. 1816 and so recorded in SJL. RC (DLC); address cover only; with PoC of TJ to Benjamin J. Campbell, 26 Mar. 1816, on verso; glued to backing sheet, with address illegible; postmarked New York, [23?] Feb.
Garrit Storm (1778–1851), merchant in New York City, went into partnership with his father in 1796 and assumed control of the latter’s grocery about 1808. He retired in 1824, turning the store over to his stepson. Storm was a founding director of the Globe Insurance Company in 1814 and continued to serve on its board until at least 1819. He was also a founding trustee of the New-York Life Insurance and Trust Company, and from 1820 until at least 1840 he was a director of the Phenix Bank. A member of the city’s chamber of commerce, Storm was a successful businessman who subscribed $10,000 to federal war loans during the War of 1812. He paid taxes on an estate valued at $50,000 in 1815 and $22,000 in 1820. Storm amassed large tracts of New York City real estate, including a Wall Street lot and a city block at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue (Eugene A. Hoffman, Genealogy of the Hoffman Family [1899], 514, 515; “Walter Barrett” [Joseph Alfred Scoville], The Old Merchants of New York City [1863–69; repr. 1968], 3:323–9; New-York Gazette & General Advertiser, 7 Feb. 1809, 4 May 1811, 8 July 1820; Laws of the State of New-York, passed at the Thirty-Seventh Session of the Legislature… January, 1814 [Albany, 1814], 54; Charter and By-Laws of the New-York Chamber of Commerce [New York, 1818], 28; New-York Daily Advertiser, 2 Feb. 1819; Rates and Proposals of the New-York Life Insurance and Trust Company [1830], 4, 18; Edwin Williams, The New-York Annual Register [1840], 265; David Thomas Valentine, Manual of the Corporation of the City of New-York [1864], 764; New York Times, 10 June 1917; Thomas E. V. Smith, The City of New York in the year of Washington’s Inauguration, 1789 [1889], 50; Geoffrey P. Miller, “Meinhard v. Salmon,” New York University Law and Economics Working Papers 105 [2007]: 1–2).
The enclosed paragraph, clipped from the Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 17 Dec. 1814, and still filed with the RC, states that “Information Is hereby given to the person advertising for and wishing to know whether a certain Alexander Quarrier be alive, &c. that the said Alexander Quarrier is alive and living in Kenhawa county, Virginia, and that he can be identified to the satisfaction of said advertiser, by applying to the Hon. Thomas Jefferson, the Hon. James Monroe, or to Wm. Burns, living in the city of Richmond, Virginia.” For TJ’s relationship with Quarrier, see Quarrier to TJ, 24 May 1812, and TJ’s 7 June 1812 certificate of acquaintance with Quarrier, enclosed in his letter of that date to William Burns.
1. Manuscript: “obeident.”