To Alexander Hamilton from Woodbury Langdon, 18 April 1796
From Woodbury Langdon1
Portsmouth [New Hampshire] April 18, 1796. “I conceive it will be necessary for you to have the original note which I hold against Michael Wentworth deceased, in order to settle matters with Mr. Edward Goold.2 I intended to have left it with you on my return from Philadelphia, but forgot it when I was with you last.…”
ALS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. Langdon was a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, merchant, a former member of the Continental Congress, and an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Congress in 1796.
2. This refers to the New York Supreme Court case between John Langdon, Woodbury Langdon’s brother, and Edward Goold, as administrator of the estate of Michael Wentworth, deceased. Goold was a New York City merchant and land speculator. Wentworth, a native of England, had come to America in 1767, lived in Portsmouth, where he married the widow of Governor Benning Wentworth, and died in New York on September 25, 1795. The case, in which H acted as attorney for the plaintiff, was heard on May 7, 1796, in New York (MS Minutes of the New York Supreme Court, January 19–November 5, 1796 [Hall of Records, New York City]). On October 5, 1797, H made the following entry in his Cash Book, 1795–1804: “received of Woodbury Langdon in cause v. Gould 81.16” (AD, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress). See also H’s Law Register, 1795–1804, 98 (D, partially in H’s handwriting, New York Law Institute, New York City).