From Thomas Jefferson to Lewis Deblois, 24 May 1804
To Lewis Deblois
Washington May 24. 1804
Sir
A vessel being about to sail immediately from this place for Richmond she will be desired to call on you for the syrop of punch, which therefore it is necessary for me to ask you to have got ready without delay.
A plaisterer of the name of Wanscher, a resident of Alexandria, tho now at work for me at Monticello, has desired me to send the inclosed letter to his wife who is at Alexandria, with ten dollars, and to pay twenty dollars for him to Alexander Perry, Queen’s street of the same place. fearing that from their not being known letters addressed to them directly thro’ the post office might not find them, I take the liberty of inclosing thirty dollars and of asking the favor of you, of putting them into their hands as you may occasionally pass them. accept my apologies for this trouble and my assurances of great esteem.
Th: Jefferson
RC (MHi: Amory Family Papers); addressed: “Mr. Lewis Deblois Mercht. Alexandria”; franked and postmarked. PoC (MHi); endorsed by TJ. Enclosure not found.
Boston-born Lewis Deblois (1760-1833) moved to Washington from Philadelphia in 1794 as an agent of speculator John Nicholson and eventually established a mercantile business in Alexandria. His wife was a daughter of Massachusetts politician Tristram Dalton, and the couple were on friendly terms with a number of prominent political families. By 1804, TJ was using Deblois as an intermediary for handling small Alexandria accounts. Burdened by debts after the War of 1812, the Deblois family left Alexandria for Massachusetts, where Tristram Dalton had been appointed surveyor of the port of Boston. When Dalton died in 1817, Deblois expected to succeed his father-in-law as surveyor, but was appointed instead to a lesser post as weigher and gauger at the Boston Custom House, a position he held until the Jackson administration, when he lost both his place at the custom house and a longstanding commission as navy purser (Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, “Old Boston Families: Number One, The De Blois Family,” New England Historic Genealogical Society, 67 [1913], 16; John Nicholson Papers in PHarH; , 1:100-1; , 1:121-2; National Intelligencer, 2 Feb. 1815; Boston Daily Advertiser, 28 May 1829; Ruth Hooper Dalton Deblois to Abigail Smith Adams, 16 June 1817, in MHi: Adams Papers; , 19:459).