To Thomas Jefferson from Louis H. Girardin, 28 December 1804
From Louis H. Girardin
To the man of letters,
The elegant and useful author,
The scientific and amiable philosopher,
The friend of the arts,
as well as
To the illustrious patriot, the enlightened politician,
and
The Chief-Magistrate of Federal America,
The enclosed Proposals
are respectfully offered
by the authors of
Amœnitatis Graphicæ
Williamsburg, Decr. 28th., 1804.
N:B. The view prefixed to the first number, will represent Jamestown, the Cradle of infant Virginia.
RC (MHi); endorsed by TJ as received from “Girardin H. L.” on 2 Jan. 1805 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure not found.
Louis Hue Girardin (1771-1825), writer and educator, was born Louis François Picot in Normandy. Pursued by French authorities for his Girondist activities, he fled to the United States, where he took the precaution of changing his name. In 1793, Girardin secured a teaching position at Georgetown College. Ten years later he joined the faculty at the College of William and Mary, where he taught modern languages, history, and geography. Nicolas Gouin Dufief obtained an endorsement by Girardin of the prospectus for Dufief’s book Nature Displayed. In 1807 Girardin opened a short-lived academy in Richmond, where TJ would send his grandson to be educated in mathematics and natural philosophy. With TJ’s encouragement, Girardin completed volume four of the History of Virginia, begun by John Daly Burk and Skelton Jones, which, in part, defended TJ’s actions as governor of Virginia. At the time of his death, Girardin was principal of Baltimore College (Edith Philips, Louis Hue Girardin and Nicholas Gouin Dufief and Their Relations with Thomas Jefferson: An Unknown Episode of the French Emigration in America [Baltimore, 1926], 2-9, 54; , 1:633-4; Vol. 36:657n; Vol. 39:434n; Vol. 41:371-3).
the authors: in 1805, Girardin published the first of two known issues of Amœnitatis Graphicæ, produced in both French and English, with colored plates by German artist Frederick Bossler. Included in the first issue was a brief history of Jamestown (Richmond Enquirer, 2 Apr. 1805; Carlisle, Pa., Cumberland Register, 19 Nov. 1805; Del Moore, Bibliography of Jamestown Sources [Jamestown, Va., 2004], 130).