From George Washington to Thomas Newton, Jr., 12 October 1789
To Thomas Newton, Jr.
New York Octr 12th 1789
Sir,
A variety of avocations has prevented my giving an earlier acknowledgment to your letter of the 17th of July. I will now thank you, Sir, to furnish me with an Acct of the quantity & cost of the materials which have been placed on Cape Henry by the Commissioners appointed by the Assembly of Virginia, for the purpose of building a Light-house—as you have been so obliging as to offer to do it.1
I am sorry that you have not yet recd any of my outstanding debts, but am not without hope that you will be able to collect at least some part of them shortly. this case is hard, and I believe singular. I am, Sir, Your most Obedt Sert
G. Washington
Df, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters; LB, DLC:GW.
1. Virginia was in the process of erecting a lighthouse on Cape Henry in the summer and fall of 1789. “An Act for the establishment and support of Lighthouses, Beacons, Buoys, and Public Piers,” enacted by Congress into law on 7 Aug. 1789, provided that the federal government would assume responsibility for such construction within the limits of the United States and that the Treasury Department would pay the expenses involved provided that all such installations would be ceded to the United States by the states (, 1:53–54). Virginia conveyed jurisdiction over the Cape Henry lighthouse to the United States in November 1789. See “An Act authorising the Governor of this Commonwealth, to convey certain land to the United States, for the purpose of building a light-house” (13 3–4; 5:144–45). The legislature spent considerable time in the fall of 1789 deciding what disposition to make of the large amount of building supplies that had been assembled for the lighthouse. See, for example, 1789, 127; 1790, 12.