Cornelius Camden Blatchly (1773–1831), physician and author, was in Bergen County, New Jersey, when he wrote TJ in 1804 about his “scheme for an american alphabet.” Blatchly studied at the College of Physicians and Surgeons (later part of Columbia University), 1813–14, was practicing medicine in New York City by 1815, and kept an apothecary’s shop there in 1824. He was affiliated with the Society of Friends in Pennsylvania in 1806 and in New Jersey in 1812, but the Quakers disowned him in 1829 and again in 1831. Blatchly (who altered his name from “Blachly” around 1815) supported social reform, communal ownership of property, and female education. He was the president of the New-York Society for Promoting Communities and active late in the 1820s in the antimasonic and New York City workingmen’s movements. Blatchly’s publications included Some Causes of Popular Poverty, Arising from the Enriching Nature of Interest, Rents, Duties, Inheritances, and Church Establishments, published as the appendix to Thomas Branagan’s Pleasures of Contemplation (Philadelphia, 1817), and An Essay on Fasting, and on Abstinence (New York, 1818). He died in New York City (Hinshaw, Quaker Genealogy description begins William Wade Hinshaw and others, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, 1936–50, repr. 1969–77, 6 vols. description ends , 3:37; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 45 vols. description ends , 44:628–9; Thomas, Columbia University Officers and Alumni description begins Milton Halsey Thomas, Columbia University Officers and Alumni, 1754–1857, 1936 description ends , 230; Longworth’s New York Directory description begins Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory, New York, 1796–1842 (title varies; cited by year of publication) description ends [1815]: 130; Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, John C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, 1962– , 43 vols.: Congress. Ser., 17 vols.: Pres. Ser., 11 vols.: Retirement Ser., 3 vols.: Sec. of State Ser., 12 vols. description ends , Pres. Ser., 9:255; The Diaries of Donald Macdonald, 1824–1826 [1942; repr. 1973], 176, 183; Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 [1984; repr. 2004], 158–62, 167, 193–200; New-York American, 16 Jan. 1829; Philip S. Foner, “A Pioneer Proposal for a Women’s Library,” Journal of Library History 13 [1978]: 157–9; New-York Spectator, 13 Dec. 1831).

The goal of the New-York Society for Promoting Communities was “to meliorate the condition of their fellow men, by aiding or encouraging industrious mechanics and laborers, who wish to leave the city and form a settlement in the interior” (New-York Evening Post, 22 Feb. 1823).