Alexander Hamilton Papers
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From Alexander Hamilton to Nicholas Cruger, 4 November 1771

To Nicholas Cruger

⟨Mr.⟩ Nicholas Cruger
⟨Capts.⟩ Cunningham1
⟨and⟩ Lowndes

St Croix Nov. 4. 1771

Dear Sir

I wrote you a few days ago by Capt Codwise2 to which refer you & should send you Copys by this opportunity but I am so unwell that it is with difficulty I make out to write these few lines. Every thing remains as then advisd. I have sold about 30 bbls flour more & Collectd a little more money from different people.

The Major3 lies so ill that no one expects he’ll live till night.

I receiv’d a Letter from Mr. Thomas Ashburner mentioning that Mr. Thomas Thomas4 was gone to New York but that he had receivd the money from Mr. A. Heyliger5 before his departure. Accordingly I have orderd it down in joes6 which is the only thing that would answer just now. Not a word from Curraica yet, nor no appearance of your New Sloop.

I remain with the most permanent Esteem D. Sir

Your very H Serv

LC, in writing of H, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.

1This is presumably the same Captain Cunningham who is mentioned in the Cruger letter books as early as 1766. No first name, however, is given (John Cruger to Beekman and Cruger, August 2, 1766, “Letter Book of John and Henry Cruger, 1764–1768,” New-York Historical Society, New York City). On the other hand, the man in question may be Gustavus Conyngham, who is mentioned in The Pennsylvania Gazette, March 5, 1772, as clearing from Philadelphia for Antigua in early March, 1772.

3This may refer to the Mr. Van Vain, who, H later wrote, was on “the brink of eternity.” See H to Nicholas Cruger, November 27, 1771.

4Merchant of St. Eustatius. See letter to Robert Gibb, July 10, 1772, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress. There was also a Thomas Thomas, ship captain and merchant of Newburyport, who may have been the same man with stores or offices in the both places (Robert A. East, Business Enterprise in the American Revolutionary Era [New York, 1938], 228).

5Abraham Heyliger, a member of a prominent trading and planting family of St. Croix. For information on the Heyliger family, see Waldemar C. Westergaard, The Danish West Indies (New York, 1917), 235; and Waldemar C. Westergaard, “A St. Croix Map of 1766,” Journal of Negro History, XXIII (April, 1938), 224–28.

6An abbreviation of Johannes, a Portuguese coin worth at that time about £5.

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