From Thomas Jefferson to Craven Peyton, 27 November 1803
To Craven Peyton
Washington Nov. 27. 03.
Dear Sir
If my note for 558.14 D paiable the 15th. of Dec. is still in your own hands, I should be very glad if it could be either postponed awhile or paid by monthly portions, as I find I shall be very hard pushed, during the next month. if however it is gone out of your hands I shall endeavor to make provision for it if possible. accept my friendly salutations and best wishes.
Th: Jefferson
RC (ViU); addressed: “Mr. Craven Peyton Stumpisland near Milton”; franked; postmarked 28 Nov. PrC (same); endorsed by TJ in ink on verso.
my note: in his financial memoranda, TJ recorded under 11 Aug., “on settlement with Craven Peyton on account of Henderson’s land, there is due to him 558.14 for which sum I gave him my note payable Dec. 15 at Gibson & Jefferson’s counting house” (, 2:1106).
very hard pushed: see TJ to George Jefferson, 20 Dec. Also, during December, TJ made several sizable payments in addition to his customary expenses for household contingencies and provisions, books and bookbinding, and charity. These included roofing material, frieze ornaments, and carpentry and masonry work for Monticello, as well as a $100 donation to Greenville College in Tennessee (, 2:1113-14).
For a promotional campaign in the 1930s, a Virginia bank produced thousands of facsimile copies of the manuscript of this letter. Some of the reproductions have been mistaken for the original (Leonard Rapport, “Fakes and Facsimiles: Problems of Identification,” American Archivist, 42 [1979], 19, 21, 38-9; Bank of Virginia, Credits and Debits, October 1961, 7-8).