John (Jean) Girault (1755–1813), soldier and public official, was born into a Huguenot family in London, England, and lived in New York City by 1773. He purchased land in 1777 in the Illinois country at Cahokia, and the following year he employed his familiarity with English, French, and Spanish as interpreter for George Rogers Clark during the latter’s Illinois campaign. In 1778 Girault joined the Illinois Regiment as a lieutenant, and he served as the first commonwealth’s attorney of Illinois County, Virginia (later part of the Northwest Territory), 1779–81. He rose to captain in 1781, and Clark made him commissary. After leaving the army in 1783, Girault moved south and settled in Natchez, where he served as a recorder under the Spanish government. In 1799 he was appointed judge of probate, prothonotary, and register for Pickering (later Jefferson) County in the newly formed Mississippi Territory. Girault was elected to the territorial assembly in 1802 and appointed Jefferson County clerk the same year. When he died in Bayou Saint John, Louisiana, Girault was clerk of the county court and register of the orphans’ court in Adams County, Mississippi Territory (Dunbar Rowland, ed., Encyclopedia of Mississippi History [1907], 1:789–90, 967; H. W. Roberts, “A Voice from the Past: Letters of Jean Girault Relating to the Illinois Country,” Illinois State Historical Society, Journal 18 [1925]: 636–57; Collections of the Huguenot Society of America [1886], 1:lxix, 315; Heitman, Continental Army description begins Francis B. Heitman, comp., Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, April, 1775, to December, 1783, rev. ed., 1914, repr. 1967 description ends , 245; Terr. Papers description begins Clarence E. Carter and John Porter Bloom, eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 1934–75, 28 vols. description ends , 5:14, 254–5, 274; Adams Co. Will Book, 1:101–3; New-York Gazette & General Advertiser, 21 July 1813).

This undated memorandum was presumably composed after Girault became prothonotary of a court in 1799 and before Ellicott concluded his survey of the southern boundary between the United States and West Florida in 1800 (Rowland, ed., Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, 967; 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 , 31:592–3). The peace of 63 was the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years’ War in 1763 and gave Great Britain control of West Florida. Britain then ceded that territory back to Spain in the treaty of peace of 83, which was signed at Versailles on 20 Jan. 1783 (Frances Gardiner Davenport and Charles Oscar Paullin, eds., European Treaties bearing on the History of the United States and its Dependencies [1917–37], 4:150–1).

The proclamations marked no 2 and no 3 have not been identified. In a letter to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of 8 Apr. 1822, Christopher Rankin enclosed the above memorandum and wrote that “The proclamations referred to, in the paragraph preceeding the last I would most gladly receive,” adding that “When, by whom, or to whom this was written, I cannot ascertain” (RC in DNA: RG 59, MLR).