ALS, in private hands. The ALS was offered for sale by Seth Kaller in 2018.

GW’s accounts show that on Friday, 10 Aug. 1787, he recorded a payment of £9.1.10 to “Thos Billington Taylors Acct” (Pocket Book of Daily Expenses, Constitutional Convention, 1787, DLC:GW, Ser. 5; see also Philadelphia Cash Accounts, 9 May-22 Sept. 1787). GW’s use of Philadelphia tailor Thomas Billington’s services in the summer of 1787 suggests that GW likely penned this letter on a Sunday between 13 May and 18 Sept. 1787, the period of his attendance at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. It is even more likely that GW composed the letter on or before 5 Aug., which fell on the Sunday that immediately preceded the 10 Aug. payment to Billington. On 5 Aug., GW had been visiting acquaintances in Trenton, N.J., but he returned to Philadelphia that evening (see Diaries description begins Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds. The Diaries of George Washington. 6 vols. Charlottesville, Va., 1976–79. description ends , 5:180). While attending the Convention, GW made other clothing requests for coats and other items. In a letter of 10 June 1787, GW asked his nephew and farm manager George Augustine Washington to send him his “Blew Coat with the Crimson collar and one of those made of the Cloth sent me by the Spanish Minister [Diego Maria de Gardoqui].” GW made this request since he saw “no end” to his stay in Philadelphia.

By early 1786, Thomas Billington (d. 1803) imported and sold an “assortment of clothes,” including “Ladies Mecklenburgh coats,” silk jackets, and “boys and girls great coats of all sizes.” He regularly advertised that he made “ladies habits and gentlemen’s clothes” on “the shortest notice” (Pennsylvania Evening Herald and the American Monitor [Philadelphia], 4 Feb. 1786). The 16 Sept. 1790 issue of The Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia) announced that Billington’s business relocated “from Walnut, to the south west corner of Chesnut and Third-streets.” Two years later, Billington moved his tailor shop to “No. 87 South Second-street, nearly opposite the city-tavern” (Mail; or, Claypoole’s Daily Advertiser [Philadelphia], 11 April 1792). A clothing contractor for the U.S. army by the early 1790s, Billington in 1795 partnered with Richard Burland in the firm of Billington & Burland, which was located at 87 South Second Street. The partnership was brief. The Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia) for 26 Oct. 1803 printed a death notice announcing Billington’s decease “after a short but severe illness.” The obituary further noted that “during a long course of active and extensive business,” Billington had “uniformly sustained the char[a]cter of an upright man.”