The British and Hessian soldiers who surrendered on 17 Oct. 1777 at the Battle of Saratoga were known as convention troops, and under the terms of surrender they were to be returned to Britain after promising that they would not serve in America during the remainder of the Revolutionary War (Philander D. Chase, “‘Years of Hardships and Revelations’: The Convention Army at the Albemarle Barracks, 1779–1781,” MACH description begins Magazine of Albemarle County History, 1940–  (title varies: issued until 1951 as Papers of the Albemarle County Historical Society) description ends 41 [1983]: 9–53, esp. 12–5). In the concluding volume of Burk, Jones, and Girardin, History of Virginia, Girardin explains the decision of the Continental congress to detain these prisoners in the vicinity of Charlottesville; uses TJ’s own papers as source material; and quotes TJ’s correspondence with some of the imprisoned officers (4:245–6, 323–8, 421–2). TJ included a proposal for dividing the counties into wards or hundreds in his 1778 Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge (PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 37 vols. description ends , 2:527–8).

Missing letters from Girardin to TJ of 13 and 18 Mar. 1815 are recorded in SJL as having been received from Glenmore on the days on which they were written.