Micajah Harrison to Thomas Jefferson, 21 December 1811
From Micajah Harrison
State of Kentucky Mount sterling Decr 21st 1811
Dear sir
I trust you will excuse the freedom I have taken in addressing you on a subject, by no means interesting to you, having however full assurance of your obliging disposition, and knowing the deference, deservedly given to your opinion in all cases; I have been encouraged to take the liberty of requesting your opinion on the following subject, upon which there is a difference of opinion between myself and some others in this little Village—“Is the cause of the Vapour & fogs, owing to a thick, Dense & heavy atmosphere or, a thin, light & unelastic atmosphere?”—
Your Condescending to gratify us with your opinion, will be gratefully acknowledged, by myself and a few friends of this place, to whose inspection alone it shall be submitted—
Micajah Harrison
RC (MHi); endorsed by TJ as received 5 Jan. 1812 and so recorded in SJL.
Micajah Harrison (1776–1842), a native of Virginia, moved to Kentucky in 1786 and participated eight years later in Gen. Anthony Wayne’s campaign against the Indians. He was appointed clerk of the newly formed Montgomery County (with Mount Sterling as the county seat) in December 1796 and served in that capacity for nearly three decades. Harrison also farmed and briefly operated a tavern (, 2d ser., 14 [1934]: 176; The Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky of the Dead and Living Men of the Nineteenth Century [1878], 140; Carl B. Boyd and Hazel M. Boyd, A History of Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, 1792–1918 [1984], 5, 19, 213).