To George Washington from John Samuel Sherburne, 30 August 1793
From John Samuel Sherburne
Portsmouth New Hampshire August 30, 1793
sir
As other avocations will not longer admit of my acting as attorney of the United States for this district, I must beg leave to request you to consider this, as my resignation of that office, and at the same time to assure you, that altho’, the exercise of it, has been attended with some professional inconveniences I esteem myself amply compensated by the honor of having held a commission signed by your hand.1 I think it my duty further to inform you that the situation of the public business in this district will require the appointment of a person to this office previous to the sitting of the next circuit Court, as an indictment for a capital offence is there pending, which must then fail without an appearance in behalf of the States.2 With the most perfect consideration I have the honor to be sir Your Most obedient, & obliged hume servt
John Saml Sherburne
ALS, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters.
1. John Samuel Sherburne (1757–1830) was a graduate of Dartmouth College (1776), a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and an attorney in Portsmouth. He married Submit Boyd (1774–1803) in 1791. Sherburne served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1793–97. Thomas Jefferson appointed him to a second term as district attorney, 1801–4, and in May 1804 to the U.S. District Court for New Hampshire, on which he served until his death. On his political affiliations in New Hampshire, see note 5 of Alexander Hamilton to GW, 2 Dec. 1790. For GW’s appointment of Sherburne as the first district attorney of New Hampshire, see GW to U.S. Senate, 24 Sept. 1789, in which Sherburne’s name appears as “Saml Sherburne junior.”
2. In February 1794, GW nominated Edward St. Loe Livermore to succeed Sherburne (GW to U.S. Senate, 14 Feb. 1794, LS, DNA: RG 46, Third Congress, 1793–1795, Senate Records of Executive Proceedings, President’s Messages—Executive Nominations; , 148).