James Madison Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/02-10-02-0519

From James Madison to Dolley Madison, 15 November 1805

To Dolley Madison

Washington Novr. 15. 1805

I was not disappointed my dearest, in my expectation of a letter by the last mail,1 which continues to give me favorable reports of your returning health & strength. I hope by this time Mrs. Cutts will have joined you and that the event will accelerate that of your setting out. Proceed nevertheless with all the caution the Dr. may recommend. The inclosed letter came by yesterdays mail. I have no news for you; unless you wish to know that Col. Hawkins with his Indians is about leaving us,2 that Mr. Skipwith is just arrived from France, and that the Tunisian Ambassador is expected soon from Norfolk.3 I have but just seen Mr. S. and had no time to enquire of your friend Mrs. Pichon &c. Mr. Livingston went off yesterday. I can give you no city news. The wedding at Mr Simmon’s4 has produced a round of parties; but I have not attended one of them. I send a letter by the mail which came inclosed to me for Mr⟨s?⟩; Barlow. It is addressed to Philada. which you may mention to Mr Baldwin if you have an oppy. Give Miss P⟨:⟩; a kiss for me & accept a thousand for yourself. Yr. affte. husband

James Madison

Why don’t you send on the other vols. of Dallas.

RC (owned by Charles M. Storey, Boston, Mass., 1961). Cover addressed and franked by JM to Dolley Madison “[…] at Mrs. Woods.” Torn.

1JM probably referred to Dolley’s letter to him of 12 Nov. 1805 (first letter).

2For the visit of Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek chiefs to Washington, see James Taylor to JM, 12 Nov. 1805, n. 1.

3Tunisian ambassador Soliman Melimeni arrived at Washington in the Congress on 29 Nov. 1805, left the ship on 30 Nov., and went with his “two Turkish secretaries and two black domestics to the house provided for him on the Capitol Hill,” after which he proceeded to the State Department for an audience with JM (National Intelligencer, 2 Dec. 1805).

4William Simmons was an accountant in the War Department. On 7 Nov. 1805 Catherine C. Simmons, who may have been Simmons’s sister, married George G. Macdaniel (Mattern and Shulman, Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison, 412; National Intelligencer, 11 Nov. 1805; Ford, “Diary of Mrs. William Thornton,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 10 [1907]: 191).

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