To James Madison from Richard Riker and Others, [ca. 16] June 1826
From Richard Riker and Others
New York June [ca. 16]th. 1826
Sir
The Corporation of this City intend to celebrate the ensuing Anniversary of American Independence; and it would be pleasing to them to draw around them those who by their devotion to their Country’s weal, have gained the affection and esteem of their Fellow Citizens. The distinguished station you have held in the Government of our Republic and the important Services you have rendered in its Councils have long made you the object of that affection and that esteem. It would therefore afford the Corporation of this City and our Fellow Citizens in general great pleasure to be favored with your presence at that Celebration and to this, in behalf of our Citizens we most cordially invite you. We are in behalf of the Corporation of New York Your Obet Serts.
RC (DLC). Day of month not indicated; conjectural day assigned based on this letter’s enclosure in Jacob Morton to JM, 16 June 1826. RC docketed by JM.
1. Stuart F. Randolph (d. 1867), a coal merchant, served on New York’s Common Council from 1826 to 1828 as alderman of the Eighth Ward. He also was the New York State prison inspector in 1821, 1824, and 1826 (“An Old New York House,” Coal Trade Journal 46 [1914]: 1426; David Maydole Matteson, comp., Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784–1831: Analytical Index [2 vols.; New York, 1930], 2:1050; Joseph Shannon, comp., Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York [New York, 1868], 671).
2. Jacob B. Taylor (d. 1853) started a successful business career as a cabinetmaker in New York in 1804. In later years he served as one of John Jacob Astor’s primary real estate agents. Taylor served for many years as a member of the New York Common Council as an assistant alderman and later alderman for the Eighth and Ninth Wards (Barrett, Old Merchants of New York City [1968 reprint], 2:369–70; Alexander Emmerich, John Jacob Astor and the First Great American Fortune [Jefferson, N.C., 2013], 132; Matteson, Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York: Analytical Index, 2:1251).
3. Henry Arcularius was assistant alderman for the Fifth Ward in 1826. In 1833, the New York Senate named Arcularius, a committed Jacksonian Democrat, commissary-general of the state. In this capacity, he played a controversial role in the 1834 New York election riot (Matteson, Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York: Analytical Index, 1:39; Journal of the Senate of the State of New-York, at Their Fifty-Sixth Session [Albany, 1833], 127, 130–31; John M. Werner, “New Light on the ‘Man in the Claret Colored Coat,’” Journal of the Early Republic 5 [1985]: 96–98).
4. John Yates Cebra (ca. 1785–1855), a New York merchant, served during the 1820s and 1830s as alderman of the First Ward on the Common Council of the City of New York and as a justice of the peace (Longworth’s American Almanac [ 41636], 44; Matteson, Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York: Analytical Index, 1:227; Documents of the Senate of the State of New-York, Fifty-Fifth Session, 1832 [2 vols.; Albany, 1832], 1:no. 35, p. 1; Richmond Whig, 18 Sept. 1855).