Thomas W. Maury to Thomas Jefferson, 18 February 1812
From Thomas W. Maury
Albemarle 18th February 1812
Dear Sir.
Excuse if you please, the liberty I take, in introducing to your acquaintance the Bearer Robert N. Smith, who is the nephew & ward of The Honble Hugh Nelson, and charged by that gentleman with some communication to you
I am very respectfully Sir.
Thos W. Maury
RC (MHi); at foot of text: “Thomas Jefferson Esqr Monticello”; endorsed by TJ as received 19 Feb. 1812 and so recorded in SJL.
Thomas Walker Maury (ca. 1780–1842), attorney and educator, was admitted to the bar in 1800. He was appointed a county magistrate in 1816 and represented Albemarle County in two sessions of the Virginia House of Delegates, 1815–17. TJ attended the school of his grandfather, Rev. James Maury, and some of TJ’s grandchildren attended the younger Maury’s school. He was secretary of the commission that met at Rockfish Gap in 1818 to choose a location for the new University of Virginia. Late in life Maury lost his estate to his creditors (Richmond Enquirer, 8 Mar. 1842).
, 269, 377, 381; 18 [1959/60]: 42; , 281, 285; , 2:1377, 1379; , 3:152;Robert Nelson Smith (1794–1877), a son of Augustine Smith and Alice Grymes Page Smith, was raised by Hugh Nelson in Albemarle County. In 1815 he married Mary Margaret Fry, also of Albemarle, and two years later the couple moved to Kentucky, where Smith headed a school near Louisville. In 1844 he moved to a farm in Lafayette County, Missouri (Memoir of Col. Joshua Fry, sometime Professor in William and Mary College, Virginia [1880], 49; 23 [1915]: 89).
SJL records receipt on 6 Aug. 1811 of an undated letter to TJ, not found, from Maury’s uncle Benjamin Maury.
Index Entries
- Jefferson, Thomas; Correspondence; letters of introduction to search
- Maury, Thomas Walker; identified search
- Maury, Thomas Walker; introduces R. N. Smith search
- Maury, Thomas Walker; letters from search
- Nelson, Hugh; and TJ’s statement on the batture case search
- Nelson, Hugh; family of search
- Smith, Robert Nelson; carries package to TJ search
- Smith, Robert Nelson; identified search
- Smith, Robert Nelson; letter of introduction for, from T. W. Maury search