To James Madison from Walter Jones, [ca. 14 February] 1810
From Walter Jones
Wednesday [ca. 14 February 1810] ½ after 1. o Clock
Congress Hall.
Mr. Roxas1 has this moment delivered the inclosed, and proposes waiting upon the president this Evening—he goes in the Carriage with Mrs. La Trobe, and as W. Jones2 may not be at hand to present him, he conceives he cannot better fulfill the Civility injoined upon him by the Letter of doctor Rush, than by forwarding with his Compliments, the Letter beforehand.
RC and enclosure (DLC). RC dated ca. 6 Feb. 1810 and mistakenly attributed to Joseph Roxas in Index to the James Madison Papers. Conjectural date here assigned since the second Wednesday of February 1810 was the fourteenth day of that month. The enclosure, Benjamin Rush to Jones, 6 Feb. 1810, Philadelphia (2 pp.), introduced Joseph Roxas as “a native of the city of Mexico … And an enemy to Superstition in Religion. In consequence of the latter, he is a voluntary exile from his native Country.”
1. Roxas attended Rush’s lectures in Philadelphia during November and December 1809, published an article in a New York medical journal, and in May 1811 established a school of mathematics in New Orleans (George W. Corner, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush … [Princeton, N.J., 1948], p. 287 and n. 27).
2. Walter Jones (1745–1815) studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh with Rush, 1766–69. He became acquainted with JM while serving as a Virginia state senator, 1785–87, and representing Northumberland County in the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788. He was a Republican congressman, 1797–99 and 1803–11 (Thomas A. Mason, “‘The Luminary of the Northern Neck’: Walter Jones, 1745–1815,” Northern Neck of Virginia Historical Magazine, 35 [1985]: 3978–83).