To James Madison from John Norvell, 14 June 1826
From John Norvell
Philadelphia, June 14, 1826.
Honoured Sir:
The enclosed is your account for the Franklin Gazette. Mr. Todd paid up to May 1823. You will perceive that one year, up to next May, is charged in advance, in order to make the sum easy of transmission by mail, and because the charge is one dollar less than if it were paid at the end of the year. With earnest prayers for a continued life of happiness and tranquillity for years yet to come, I have the honour to be, With profound respect & veneration, Your most obt. servant,
John Norvell1
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM. Enclosure not found.
1. John Norvell (1789–1850) was born in Kentucky but as a young man moved to Baltimore and entered the newspaper business. After years working there for the American and the Baltimore Patriot, he returned to Kentucky to edit the Kentucky Gazette in Lexington. All of these papers reflected his intensely partisan republican politics. Norvell became the editor of Philadelphia’s Franklin Gazette in 1820 and subsequently of the Pennsylvania Inquirer. Financial difficulties forced him to seek public employment, and he served as postmaster of Detroit, 1831–36, and as secretary of the Michigan Territorial Council beginning in 1834. He represented Michigan in the U.S. Senate, 1837–41, and was U.S. district attorney for the state, 1846–49 (Jeffrey L. Pasley, “Have Pen, Will Travel: The Times and Life of John Norvell, Political Journalist,” in An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790–1840, ed. Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley [Chapel Hill, 2010], 191–97).