To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 20 November 1824
From Thomas Jefferson
Monticello Nov. 20. 24.
Gilmer is arrived in N. York sick of a fever which he has had thro’ the whole voyage of 35. days and likely to remain there some time in the hands of the Doctors. He has engaged 5. Professors to wit
George Long,1 Antient languages.
George Blaetterman, Modern do.
Thos. H. Key,2 Mathematics.
Charles Bonnycastle3 (son of the Mathematician) Nat. Philos.
Robley Dunglison4 Anatomy &c.
This last wishes to add Chemistry to his lectures, which we may well agree to as we are not well prepared for Anatomy. Gilmer expected them to arrive 10. days after him but does not say where. We shall advertise the Dormitories as soon as they arrive. The Hotels are all engaged. There were numerous applicns. for them. Affectionate salutations.
RC (DLC); draft (DLC: Jefferson Papers). Minor differences between the copies have not been noted.
1. George Long (1800–1879) was a classicist educated at Cambridge University who was first professor of ancient languages at the University of Virginia. He taught there from 1825 until 1828, when he returned to England to become professor of Greek at the University of London.
2. Thomas Hewitt Key (1799–1875), a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, was professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia, 1825–27. He left to take up the professorship of Latin at the University of London.
3. Charles Bonnycastle (1792–1840), an English mathematician who was educated and later taught at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, where his father, John Bonnycastle, was a professor, was first professor of natural philosophy at the University of Virginia, 1825–27. He became professor of mathematics in 1827 on the retirement of Thomas Hewitt Key and held this position until his death (Paul Brandon Barringer et al., eds., University of Virginia: Its History, Influence, Equipment and Characteristics … [2 vols.; New York, 1904], 1:346–47).
4. Robley Dunglison (1798–1869) was an English physician who received his medical education in London and Erlangen, Germany. He was practicing in London when he agreed to become the professor of medicine for the University of Virginia, a post he held until 1833, when he moved to the University of Maryland, and then in 1836 to Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Among Dunglison’s many publications, his most important was Human Physiology (1832), which was dedicated to JM. Dunglison was a frequent and welcome visitor at Montpelier, and for a time, JM’s personal physician (ibid., 347–48).