William Baxter to Thomas Jefferson, 4 March 1823
From William Baxter
Paradise, Lancaster county Pa March 4. 1823
Respected Sire,
With diffidence and awe, I beg leave to present to your worthy consideration, and your opinion would likewise conduce much to my own satisfaction—in knowing whether such an undertaking would be any benefit to our present rising republic.
Knowing that your Excellency has always been a friend and patron to every thing which may conduce to the welfare of that Republic, which your venerable Self was a principle1 cause in achieving—I therefore ask leave to present you with a copy—and cherish the hope that I may be allowed to dedicate my work to your Excellency.
Wm Baxter
RC (DLC: TJ Papers, 223:39935–6); written adjacent to enclosure; addressed: “His excellency Thomas Jefferson, Esq. Monticello. Va”; endorsed by TJ as received 12 Mar. 1823 and so recorded in SJL.
William Baxter, journalist, may have been a native of Ireland. He lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, by 1820, when he published a short-lived literary weekly, the Hive. In 1839 he became a justice of the peace there (Newton Bateman, Paul Selby, and David McCulloch, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and history of Peoria County [1902], 2:557; DNA: RG 29, CS, Pa., Lancaster Co., 1820, 1830; Lancaster Free Press, 1 June 1820; Lottie M. Bausman, A Bibliography of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1745–1912 [(1917?)], 64; Franklin Ellis and Samuel Evans, History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania [1883], 218).
1. Manuscript: “princple.”