From George Washington to the U.S. Senate, 17 December 1794
To the United States Senate
United States, Decem: 17th 1794.
Gentlemen of the Senate,
I nominate Charles Cochran of South Carolina, to be Marshal of and for the District of South Carolina;1 vice Daniel L. Huger, resigned. and
Thomas Waters Griffith, of Maryland, to be Consul of the United States of America, for the port of Havre Marat, in France; and for such other places as shall be nearer to the said port than to the residence of any other Consul or Vice-Consul of the United States within the same allegiance.2
Go: Washington
LS, DNA: RG 46, entry 38; copy, DLC:GW.
1. Charles Burnham Cochran (1767–1833), who served in the South Carolina legislature, 1792–94 and 1804–5, remained U.S. marshal for South Carolina until 1803. He also served one term as intendant of Charleston, 1805–6.
2. Thomas Waters Griffith (1767–1838) had gone to France in 1791 on a mercantile venture. After witnessing the main events of the revolution in Paris in 1792, he had been imprisoned late in 1793, but he was at this time in London. According to Griffith’s reminiscences, he never received his commission as consul although he functioned as such after his return to France in the spring of 1795. He remained in France until July 1799 (Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, ed., My Scrap-Book of the French Revolution [Chicago, 1903], 9–57). In 1801 John Adams nominated Griffith to be commercial agent at Rouen, but he is now better known for his Sketches of the Early History of Maryland, published in 1821, and Annals of Baltimore, published in 1824. Havre Marat was the former Havre de Grâce, the name having been changed in 1793. The city took its modern name of Le Havre in January 1795.