From George Washington to George Geddes, 30 September 1779
To George Geddes
West-point Sepr 30th 79.
Sir
Your obliging favor of the 22d Instt accompanying the present of a pair of very elegant Pistols came to my hands yesterday.1 accept Sir my thanks for this testimony of your polite attention—and be assured that I am Yr Most Obedt & obliged Servt
Go: Washington
ADfS, DLC:GW; Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
George Geddes (Geddis), a privateer captain of Philadelphia, commanded the 16-gun brig Holker and recently had captured the ordnance cargo vessel Diana (see GW’s first letter to Stirling of 1 Sept., n.5). In 1777 and 1778, Geddes captained the 8-gun privateer sloop Hope, and in 1781 he commanded the 24-gun Philadelphia privateer ship Congress.
1. Geddes’s letter to GW, dated 22 Sept. at Philadelphia, reads: “accepting of these Pistols will very much oblige Sir Your most obedient very humble Sert” (ALS, DLC:GW). The pistols likely were taken from Diana and may have been the “finely wrought steel Pistols, taken from the enemy in the Revolutionary War,” that GW willed to Lafayette (see George Washington’s Last Will and Testament, 9 July 1799, and n.22 to that document, in 4:477–511).