To George Washington from Robert Bowyer, 19 October 1793
From Robert Bowyer
Historic Gallery Pallmall London
19 Octo. 1793.
May it please your Excellency
The utmost apology is due for my presuming to venture upon a repetition of taking the liberty to address your Excellency, who am so perfectly unknown to You, but the high & flattering gratification I reced, from being honor’d with a letter some time since from your Excellency, has embolden’d me to take liberties which otherwise I might not have presumed upon.1 The cause of my presumption in the present Instance is to beg permission to introduce to your Excellency’s Notice, Mr Dowlin, Surgeon, a Gentleman whose abilities in his profession & amiableness of Manners & Character are worthy of the highest Panegyrick.2 He goes out to settle in that happy Country where every blessing of Felicity & peace must ever be expected, while it has for its patron, the exalted Character I am presuming to address: I must now beg leave to assure Your Excellency that It is my most earnest prayer that every blessing & happiness which this World or that which is to come can bestow may ever be yours. I have the honor to be May it please Your Excellency Your Excellencys Most Obliged & Devoted hble Servt
Robt Bowyer
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. GW had written Bowyer on 8 Jan. 1792, thanking him for an engraving that he had sent.
2. By March 1794 Thomas Dowlin was advertising his services as a “Surgeon and Man-midwife” in Philadelphia. There he claimed to have “studied under the first medical characters in Europe” and to have “acted in a professional line for several years on board the largest vessels in the British navy” (Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser, 14 March 1794). Dowlin evidently was practicing at Baltimore in 1800 (The New Baltimore Directory, and Annual Register: For 1800 and 1801 . . . [Baltimore, 1800], 34).