To Thomas Jefferson from Augustine Eastin, 31 January 1803
From Augustine Eastin
Bourbon County, Kentucky. January 31st. 1803.
Sir,
I have son Zechariah Eastin,1 who offers for a certain office in the Indianna Territory; if his recommendations are sufficient to intitle him to your confidence, and the office he solicits, is not filled up; I offer a fathers wish, who has been at the expence of fitting a son for buisness in his favour: and ask only for that justice, to which an early adventurer to the Western country is intitled.
I am, with all due respect, Sir, Your mo obdt Sevt.
Augustine Eastin
RC (DNA: RG 59, LAR); endorsed by TJ as received 17 Feb. and “his son for office” and so recorded in SJL.
Baptist minister Augustine Eastin (1750–1833) emigrated from Goochland County, Virginia, to Kentucky in 1784, eventually settling in Bourbon County. A co-founder of the church at Cooper’s (Cowper’s) Run along with future governor James Garrard, Eastin’s standing and influence among state Baptists declined after he embraced Arianism. He published a pamphlet in defense of the doctrine in 1804, entitled Letters on the Divine Unity. His son Zachariah served with distinction as an officer at the Battle of Tippecanoe and during the War of 1812 (Phyllis Eastin Clendaniel, The Eastins of Virginia & Kentucky and Allied Families of Bohannon, Johnson, Knox [Louisa, Va., 1999], Section II; J. H. Spencer, A History of Kentucky Baptists. From 1769 to 1885, 2 vols. [Cincinnati, 1885], 1:131–2).
1. Name and comma interlined.