John S. Foster to Thomas Jefferson, 23 June 1819
From John S. Foster
Boston 23d June 1819
Sir,
I am just favour’d with your letter# of 15th Inst & am happy to inform you that the order you sent to Messrs Smith & Riddle was duly forwarded by them, & the glass ship’d to their care pr Schr Eliza & Mary the 24th Ulto; if not now on the way, it is probably in the hands of Mr B. Payton, or Messrs Otis Dunlop & Co our new agents at Richmond; Through these gentlemen, or direct, by mail, it will afford us pleasure to recieve your orders for the University glass, which (if forwarded two or three months before it is wanted) shall be carefully selected, pack’d & transmitted to Richmond free of expence to the establishment.—To save disappointment we mention the necessity of seasonable notice, as orders are frequently delayed for months by comeing in toward fall when we are press’d with business.— I am Sir, respectfully your Obt Servt
| John S. Foster |
| Treasurer Bo Glass Many |
RC (MHi); between dateline and salutation: “Honr Thomas Jefferson”; endorsed by TJ as received 2 July 1819 and so recorded in SJL.
John S. Foster (d. 1834), glassmaker, was a native of Vermont. He made window glass in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, before becoming assistant clerk of the Boston Glass Manufactory in 1809 and eventually treasurer. Foster remained a manager when the company reorganized as the South Boston Crown Glass Company in 1824. Following its bankruptcy three years later, he worked successively at glassworks in Burlington, Vermont, and Redford, Clinton County, New York. In 1833 Foster purchased property in Jefferson County, New York, where he established a glass factory in the village of Jamesville. He renamed the town Redwood and died there (Joan E. Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston [2009], 10–1, 233–4; Franklin B. Hough, A History of Jefferson County in the State of New York [1854], 82; Boston Christian Register, 18 Jan. 1834).
Index Entries
- Boston Glass Manufactory search
- building materials; window glass search
- Foster, John S.; and Boston Glass Manufactory search
- Foster, John S.; identified search
- Foster, John S.; letter from search
- glass, window; for University of Virginia search
- glass, window; TJ orders search
- Kupfer, Charles F.; and Boston Glass Manufactory search
- Mary & Eliza (schooner) search
- Otis, Dunlop & Company (Richmond firm) search
- Peyton, Bernard; forwards goods for TJ search
- Smith & Riddle (Richmond firm); and glass for TJ search
- Virginia, University of; Construction and Grounds; building materials for search