From George Washington to John Fitzgerald, 12 December 1774
To John Fitzgerald
Decr 12th 1774.
Sir
I will endeavour to attend the Committee, on Wednesday, agreeable to your notice.1 No conveyance is like to happen, that I know of, from hence to Colo. Mason previous to the meeting; otherwise I should not fail to give him notice & request his attendance—It now rests upon you to do it. I am Sir Yr Most Obedt Servt
Go: Washington
ALS, PHC. John Fitzgerald (d. 1799) had emigrated from Ireland a few years earlier and was at this time a partner in an Alexandria mercantile business with British emigrant Valentine Peers.
1. GW wrote in his diary on 14 Dec.: “I went up to Alexandria, to an intended meeting of the Committee but was disappointed” (, 3:296). The committee met instead on Monday, 19 December. At this meeting John Fitzgerald and Valentine Peers informed the Fairfax committee: “that the ship Hope, Thomas Ash, master, had arrived in this colony since the first instant, from Belfast, with sundry packages of Irish linen, amounting . . . to 1101[£] 4s. 8d. sterling, their property, and requesting that the same should be sold, agreeable to the 10th article in the continental association.” The goods were ordered to be sold to the highest bidder on 24 Dec., the money realized going first to “Fitzgerald and Peers, out of the sale thereof, the first cost and charges as aforesaid, and if any profit shall arise from such sale, that they retain the same in their hands, for relieving and employing such of the poor inhabitants of the town of Boston as are sufferers by the Boston post bill, subject to the direction of the committee for the said county of Fairfax.” The sale of the linens produced £1,106.14.8, only £5.10 more than the original cost to Fitzgerald and Peers (Virginia Gazette [Pinkney; Williamsburg], 29 Dec. 1774).