From Thomas Jefferson to Timothy Pickering, 8 January 1804
To Timothy Pickering
Jan. 8. 04.
Th: Jefferson presents his compliments to mr Pickering, and has searched without success in Hutchins’s Topographical Description of the Western country for the passage relative to the Northern boundary of which mr Pickering spoke to him yesterday. he imagines therefore he mistook the pamphlet to which he referred, and therefore asks the favor of the loan of it.
RC (MH); addressed: “The honble Mr. Pickering”; endorsed by Pickering. Not recorded in SJL.
TJ likely perused without success a pamphlet in his collection by Thomas Hutchins, A Topographical Description of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina, Comprehending the Rivers Ohio, Kenhawa, Sioto, Cherokee, Wabash, Illinois, Missisippi, &c. (London, 1778; No. 525). At some point during the next several days, Pickering loaned TJ a copy of Hutchins’s An Historical Narrative and Topographical Description of Louisiana, and West-Florida, Comprehending the River Mississippi with Its Principal Branches and Settlements, and the Rivers Pearl, Pascagoula, Mobille, Perdido, Escambia, Chacta-Hatcha, &c. (Philadelphia, 1784). See TJ to Pickering, 13 Jan.