RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 6 Mch. 1793.

The enclosed letter from John Rome to Washington of 6 Mch. 1793 sought legislative relief for the french settlers at gallipolis—who had immigrated to the Ohio territory in 1790 after purchasing land from the Scioto Company headed by William Duer—either in the form of confirmation of their land titles or compensation for damages they sustained after the Company’s collapse and Duer’s bankruptcy during the panic of 1792 left them holding invalid titles (Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1934–, 28 vols. description ends , ii, 442–3). Rome subsequently communicated with the Attorney General, to whom the matter was referred by the Senate, and TJ evidently did not return an answer to him. Congress provided some relief in March 1795 with a grant of 24,000 acres in southern Ohio to certain of the settlers (same, 450–1, 462–70; Shaw Livermore, Early American Land Companies: Their Influence on Corporate Development [New York, 1939], 138–46; Theodore T. Belote, The Scioto Speculation and the French Settlement at Gallipolis: A Study in Ohio Valley History, University of Cincinnati Studies, 2d ser., iii [Cincinnati, 1907], 57–9).