To Alexander Hamilton from Marquis de La Tour du Pin, 21 February 1798
From Marquis de La Tour du Pin1
London, February 21, 1798. “… J’ai bien plus de pardons a vous demander pour un objet particulier. Je desire vendre ma ferme d’albany.…2 Les bontés a jamais pretieuses, qu’ont eues pour nous, la famille de Madame hamilton, me font esperer qu’à votre Sollicitation elle voudra bien encore nous rendre le Service de faire vendre ce petit objet.…”
ALS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. Frédéric-Séraphin, marquis de La Tour du Pin, was an aide-de-camp to Lafayette during the American Revolution. After the war he was named colonel of the Royal-Vaisseaux and served as an aide to his father, Jean-Frédéric de Paulin, comte de La Tour du Pin, the Minister of War. La Tour du Pin served as minister to Holland until his recall in 1792. In 1794 he emigrated to the United States, where he bought and operated a farm near Albany. Three or four years later he went to England.
2. On March 1, 1796, La Tour du Pin’s property was described as follows in an advertisement in the [Philadelphia] Courrier de la France et des Colonies: “A farm newly occupied by the undersigned, situated in Watervleit, five miles north of Albany, and two miles north of Troy; it contains 206 acres. There is a pleasant house with dependencies, all in very good order; a large orchard full of choice trees, and a good sized vegetable garden where there are also fruit trees and bushes. The farm utensils are also for sale, a complete assortment, with several milk cows and mares that will bear …” (quoted in Frances S. Childs, French Refugee Life in the United States, 1790–1800 [Baltimore, 1940], 94).