To Thomas Jefferson from John C. Delacoste, 7 August 1804
From John C. Delacoste
New york 7th August 1804.
Sir.
Confident that all what relates to arts and Sciences, and tends to diffuse the knowledge thereof meets with Your Excellency’s approbation, and persuaded that his paternal sollicitude for the prosperity and happiness of the extensive empire, of which he is the illustrious head, extends to every part thereof, I make bold to present him with a plan which I have proposed to the citizens of Newyork for securing to them the institution which I have begun, under the denomination of Cabinet of Natural history, and to Sollicit his own powerful and commanding influence for its Success.
My infant institution, although supported by the approbation and patronage of number of gentlemen of the first respectability, and notwithstanding some of the most emminent characters of the scientific Line, have publickly acknowledged its merit and utility, and have highly commended and approved the methodical and Classical arrangement I have made of the collections, it is composed of, is so little supported by the Citizens at large, that unable to keep it any longer by my own means, I have taken the resolution to give it over, at a loss of one half of what it cost me, to any number of gentlemen, who may form a Society for that purpose.
This last subscription, although1 headed by emminent characters of this city, meets with the same fate, as the one opened for the annual support of the institution, so that I have no prospect of obtaining the number of subscribers required, soon enough to save it from destruction, unless the notice of the wealthy inhabitants of the city should be attracted by some extraordinary inducement, which would excite their emulation. None would prove more efficacious than to see the name of the August Chief Magistrate of the Union, at the head of a subscription opened for their private benefit.
This favour I make bold to sollicit for the preservation of the institution to the Lovers of arts and sciences, and to the community at large.
I have the honour to be with the most profound respect. Sir Your Excellencys. Most humble and most obedt Servant
Delacoste
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 14 Aug. and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: prospectus for a subscription for a natural history society in New York City, 5 July 1804; the plan is to raise $5,000 in capital by shares of $50 each and to use up to $1,500 of the money to buy for the city “the useful and interresting establishment begun by Delacoste & Curling”; with subjoined list of 31 “Gentlemen who have Subscribed” (MS in same; in Delacoste’s hand).
John C. Delacoste (ca. 1754-ca. 1808), originally from France, was in the Batavian Republic colony of Demerara in South America by 1793. His property was lost to confiscation after the British occupied the colony in 1796. He wrote a book critical of the Dutch governor and petitioned the Batavian Republic to introduce a gradual end to slavery. By 1804, Delacoste, with Robert B. Curling, had amassed a significant collection of animal, mineral, and vegetable specimens, which he put on display in New York City. After visiting Delacoste’s museum, Charles Willson Peale remarked that “it was a pleasing one on account of the neatness of all its arrangement” and mentioned that the collection contained several quadrupeds and birds that he had never seen before. Delacoste’s museum proved unprofitable and he sold it in 1805 to the college at Princeton, where his specimens formed the basis of the school’s natural history collection. Following Delacoste’s departure from New York, he attempted to form another natural history muesum at the College of William and Mary, but died before the plan could be completed (Gert Oostindie, “‘British Capital, Industry and Perseverance’ versus Dutch ‘Old School’? The Dutch Atlantic and the Takeover of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, 1750-1815,” Low Countries Historical Review, 127 [2012], 47-8; Angelie Sens, “La Révolution Batave et l’esclavage: les [im]possibilités de l’abolition de la traite des noirs et de l’esclavage [1780-1814],” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 326 [2001], 69-70; , v. 2, pt. 2:731; Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, “Curiosities and Cabinets: Natural History Museums and Education on the Antebellum Campus,” Isis, 79 [1988], 411; Spencer F. Baird, ed., Annual Record of Science and Industry for 1873 [New York, 1874], 264-5; New York Diary, 9 Mch. 1793; New York Daily Advertiser, 3 May 1804; New York American Citizen, 13 June 1805; account of sales of the estate of John C. Delacoste, 14 Mch. 1808 [MS in ViWC: Robert Anderson Papers]; Delacoste to TJ, 27 May 1805; Delacoste to TJ, 10 Apr. 1807).
The gentlemen of the first respectability who subscribed for shares of Delacoste’s “Cabinet of Natural history” included Morgan Lewis, Aaron Burr, Rufus King, and DeWitt Clinton.
1. MS: “althoug.”