1. The enclosed copy of GW’s letter to King has not been found. GW’s last known letter to King was dated 25 Aug. 1796.

2. The enclosures that GW transmitted to King include GW’s letters to John Sinclair of 10 and 11 Dec.; see also the source notes to those documents. GW also enclosed his letter to Robert Fulton of 14 Dec., found at Fulton to GW, 12 Sept. 1796, n.2, and his missive to Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, of 22 Dec. (see n.3 below; see also Fulton to GW, 5 Feb. 1797; and King to GW, 6 Feb. 1797).

3. GW’s letter to Count Rumford, written from Philadelphia on 22 Dec., reads: “In the month of November, I had the honor to receive your letter, and a few days since, that of the first Vol: of your Essays, Political Economical and Philosophical. For these marks of your polite attention to me, I pray you to accept my best thanks.

“Congress being in Session, & my time, consequently much occupied with the business of it, will allow me no leisure until the close thereof to give the work an attentive perusal; the doing of which will, I am persuaded, afford both pleasure & edification” (ALS [letterpress copy], DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW).

Rumford had written GW in an undated letter: “Though I have not the honor to be personally known to Your Excellency, yet I take the liberty to request you would be pleased to accept of the Book which accompany’s this letter, and consider it as a token of the profound Respect and Veneration” (ALS, PHi: Gratz Collection). GW docketed Rumford’s letter: “From Rumford no date received the 17th of Octr 1796.”

Rumford had sent GW the first volume of his Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical (London, 1796), which was in GW’s library at the time of his death (see Griffin, Catalogue of the Washington Collation description begins Appleton P. C. Griffin, comp. A Catalogue of the Washington Collection in the Boston Athenæum. Cambridge, Mass., 1897. description ends , 551). The Essays, published in four volumes between 1796 and 1812, comprised the first collected edition of Rumford’s works. The first volume contained a dedication to Karl Theodor, the elector of Bavaria and of the Palatinate (and Duke of Bavaria), and included essays on mendicity and poor relief in Bavaria, and on the nutritional value and affordability of Indian corn and other food items. In his dedication, dated at London on 1 July 1796, Thompson thanked Karl Theodor for employing him at his court, and recognized both his “munificence in promoting useful knowledge,” and “solicitude for the happiness and prosperity of his subjects.” The Oracle, and Public Advertiser (London) for 1 Aug. 1796 listed the first volume of the Essays along with a number of other “NEW PUBLICATIONS” printed “during the last Winter.” German and American editions of Rumford’s work also later appeared.

Born in Massachusetts, scientist and inventor Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753–1814), apprenticed with both a merchant and a physician in his youth before becoming a school teacher in Rumford (now Concord), New Hampshire. Thompson became interested in science, constructed an electrical machine, and conducted experiments on gunpowder. A Loyalist at the start of the Revolutionary War, Thompson sailed for England in 1776. Appointed undersecretary of state for the American Department in 1780, Thompson eventually became colonel of the King’s American Dragoons and fought in the American theater in the latter years of the war. Knighted by King George III in February 1784, Thompson secured a position at the court of Elector Karl Theodor in Munich, where he conducted scientific investigations designed to help feed and cloth the Bavarian army. Thompson later performed experiments on heat, worked to improve stoves and fireplaces, and traveled to Britain, where he made efforts to ameliorate hospitals and workhouses. Thompson donated money to the Royal Society of London (of which he was a fellow) and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he wrote numerous scientific pieces. He was back in Munich by August 1796 and briefly took command of the Bavarian army, saving the city from attack by French and Austrian forces and preserving Bavarian neutrality.

4. King’s wife was Mary Alsop King.