Michael Megear (ca. 1766–1831), hatter, lived by 1794 at Head of Chester (later Millington), a town straddling Kent and Queen Anne’s counties in Maryland, and worked as a hatmaker by 1799. In 1807 he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and continued in the same trade. Megear was a director of the Wilmington Library Company in 1809 and served as its president in at least 1819. In the latter year he also joined a Republican vigilance committee in Christiana Hundred, New Castle County. At his death in the same county Megear’s personal property, which included one hundred books, was appraised at $4,974.35, in addition to material for hatting valued at $1,569.23 (Herbert Standing, comp., Delaware Quaker Records: Early Members of Wilmington Meeting [(1921?)], 213; Wilmington Delaware and Eastern-Shore Advertiser, 10 Dec. 1794; Easton Maryland Herald, and Eastern Shore Intelligencer, 29 Jan. 1799; Philadelphia Aurora for the Country, 7/8 May 1807; Wilmington American Watchman; and, Delaware Republican, 7 Oct. 1809; Wilmington Directory, for the year 1814 [(Wilmington, 1814)], 26; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Delaware [Dover, 1819], 30; Wilmington American Watchman, 2 Oct. 1819; Wilmington Delaware Advertiser and Farmer’s Journal, 6 Jan. 1831; Megear’s will and estate inventory in New Castle Co. Register of Wills).

The enclosed book, Letters of Paul and Amicus: originally published in The Christian Repository (Wilmington, 1823; Poor, Jefferson’s Library description begins Nathaniel P. Poor, Catalogue. President Jefferson’s Library, 1829 description ends , 9 [no. 524]), contained a series of anonymous letters between the Presbyterian clergyman Eliphalet Wheeler Gilbert writing as “Paul,” which were answered primarily by the Quaker Benjamin Ferris writing as “Amicus.”