1Thomas Jefferson to Robert Mayo, 5 April 1821 (Jefferson Papers)
Your favor of Mar. 28. has been recieved with the Primer and Spelling book for which I thank you. I have had so little to do with the instruction of children that I am a very incompetent judge of the best processes with them. however the applications to me to give my opinion of books and to recommend them have been so numerous as to oblige me to decline doing it in any case. with my regrets...
2From Thomas Jefferson to Robert Mayo, 3 February 1823 (Jefferson Papers)
I did not answer the note in the pamphlet you were so kind as to send me for 2. reasons. 1. because the use of my hand is so much impaired, and I write with so much pain that I am obliged to decline answering any lre which is not of the most indispensible urgency & oblign. 2. because I have never permitted myself to assume the office of recommend g to the public particular books or...
3From John Adams to Robert Mayo, 18 March 1823 (Adams Papers)
I have received and procured to be read to me your pamphlet—The very title of a Juvenile Company Liberary Company sounds delightfully in the ears of an old Man who wishes well to posterity—The vivacity intelligence ingenuity and elegance of the address has given me great pleasure, And the whole plan appears to me to be judicious and meritorious—To reccommed Books of merit to your adoption...
4From James Madison to Robert Mayo and William A. Bartow, 31 March 1823 (Madison Papers)
I have recd. the copy of an Address in behalf of the Juvenile Library Company of Richmond which you have been pleased to forward to me. Knowledge of the useful kinds, is so conducive to individual & social happiness: and so essential to the form of govt. most friendly to both, that all the means of diffusing it have their merit. Among these means, libraries adapted to the early period of life,...