To Thomas Jefferson from Benjamin H. Latrobe, 15 January 1804
From Benjamin H. Latrobe
Washington Jany: 15th. 1804.—
Sir
The following passage is contained in a letter just received from Mr Wm Stewart, by far the most wealthy & respectable Stonecutter at Baltimore. Mr Robert Stewart,—his father is proprietor of an acre, containing the best Stone on the Island. I have not yet received his proposals for supplying stone.
“I have understood ⅌ Mr Conway who was in Baltimore some time ago, that Mr D. C. Brent expects you will have to pay an advanced price for stone next Season. Mr Brent says if the Quarriers or Sellers of Stone would let him make the price he would engage to get them 10 dollars for every ton of Billstone, and 6 Dollars for every ton of Shopstone (that is inferior stone) they could raise on Acquia Creek. So that I expect he means to make you pay for all you get, expecting no doubt that you cannot be supplied through any other channel than his own.”
I have thought it my duty to give you this information in corroboration of what I say this morning. Mr Conway is proprietor of one of the Quarries from I am in hopes to obtain a large quantity of stone at the price hitherto paid.—
I am with true respect Your faithful hble Servt
B H Latrobe
RC (DLC); closing quotation marks supplied; endorsed by TJ as received 16 Jan. and so recorded in SJL.
robert stewart, or Steuart, owned a small amount of land at Aquia Creek from which he quarried stone. Latrobe later wrote of opening a public quarry at Aquia as a means of interfering with the proposed price hike of Daniel Carroll brent, who operated the largest quarry there (, 1:426-7n; see enclosure to Latrobe to TJ, 18 Feb.).
this morning: a proposed meeting between Latrobe and the president may have been the subject of an apparently misdated letter of 12 Jan. from Latrobe, recorded in SJL as received from Aquia on 13 Jan. with the notation “Jan. 19. for 12,” but not found.