To Thomas Jefferson from Abiel Holmes, 18 October 1804
From Abiel Holmes
Cambridge (N. Eng.) Oct. 18, 1804.
Sir,
Knowing your taste for history, I take the liberty to offer you one or two historical tracts, composed for the Historical Society, and published in their Collections.
I have, for several years, been collecting and arranging materials for a Chronological History of America, and have, at length, ventured to offer Proposals for publishing a work, under the title of American Annals. It will be comprized in two octavo volumes, and is intended to embrace the primary articles of American history, from the first discovery of the country to the present time. On the subject of American Treaties I have not pleasing authorities. If you Sir, could either forward me any publication on this subject, or refer me to it, or if, through your influence, I may obtain a mere list of American Treaties from the time of the late Revolution; with their exact dates, through the medium of the Secretary of the United States, you would greatly honour and oblige,
Sir, Your obedt. humble Servant
Abiel Holmes.
RC (DLC); endorsed by TJ as received 5 Nov. and so recorded in SJL with notation “with pamphlets.” Enclosures: (1) Abiel Holmes, A Memoir of the Moheagan Indians (Boston, 1804); No. 527. (2) Holmes, The History of Cambridge (Boston, 1801); No. 528.
Abiel Holmes (1763-1837), a Connecticut native, graduated from Yale University in 1783 and became a Congregational minister, serving as pastor of the First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1792 to 1831. The grandfather of Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a longstanding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, for whom he served as corresponding secretary. In addition to writing many sermons and the two enclosed tracts, he published a biography of Ezra Stiles, his first father-in-law, in 1798 and American Annals in 1805 (Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, 6 vols. [New York, 1885-1912], 4:277-85; , s.v. “Oliver Wendell Holmes”; Greenfield, Mass., Greenfield Gazette, 3 June 1805).
published in their Collections: Holmes’s tract on the history of Cambridge was published in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 1800, 1st ser. (1801), 7:1-67. His tract on the Mohegans first appeared in the Collections, 1st ser. (1804), 9:75-99.
According to Holmes’s Proposals, the chronological historical work would begin with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and be offered by subscription for $1.75 per volume in boards or $2 for a bound volume (Newburyport Herald, 31 Aug.; Boston Democrat, 19 Sep.; Greenfield Gazette, 3 June 1805).