Aaron Cress likely came from Philadelphia to work at the University of Virginia. He was employed for at least seven months, ending in February 1820 (Philadelphia Franklin Gazette, 1 Aug. 1818; ViU: PP, Proctor’s Ledgers).

Laurence Meade (b. ca. 1798), carpenter, was a native of Pennsylvania. He worked as a builder at the University of Virginia between about July 1819 and February 1820. Meade returned thereafter to Philadelphia, where he was working as a carpenter as late as 1850 (ViU: PP, Proctor’s Ledgers; DNA: RG 29, CS, Pa., Philadelphia, 1830–50; Isaac Costa, comp., Gopsill’s Philadelphia City and Business Directory for 1867–8 [1867], 901).

William Pitt may have been the son of the carpenter Joseph Pitt, to whom payments were made for work at the University of Virginia between November 1819 and November 1822. Joseph Pitt’s payments were occasionally made jointly to him and an unnamed son or sons. One individual payment was made to William Pitt in July 1820. According to that year’s census, Joseph Pitt’s Albemarle County household included six white males between the ages of sixteen and forty-four, with a total of six people engaged in manufactures (DNA: RG 29, CS, Albemarle Co., 1820; Joseph Pitt to Arthur S. Brockenbrough, 30 Mar. 1821 [ViU: PP]).

Thomas Pickering may have been the carpenter of that name who was active in Philadelphia between 1813 and about 1818. He worked as a carpenter at the University of Virginia from around 1819 until 1822, and he also constructed two pumps for Monticello (John Adems Paxton, The Philadelphia Directory and Register, for 1813 [Philadelphia, 1813]; Paxton, The Philadelphia Directory and Register, for 1818 [Philadelphia, 1818]; Philadelphia Franklin Gazette, 1 Sept. 1819; ViU: PP, Proctor’s Ledgers; MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1384–5; Pickering to Brockenbrough, 25 Mar. 1821 [ViU: PP]).

Some signers of this letter may have been among the bricklayers, carpenters, and stonemasons recruited from Philadelphia by Richard Ware to work on the construction of the University of Virginia. Ware’s contingent arrived in Albemarle County in the middle of July 1819, about seven months prior to this letter. Two days after it was written, payments for work at the University were made on Ware’s account to Aaron Cress for $95, to Laurence Meade for $75.90, to John C. White for $69, to Thomas Leeson for $94.65, to James Megaw for $75.08, and to Joseph Taylor for $77.36. A payment of $96.43 to Abia B. Thorn was also recorded, marked with an additional parenthetical note: “Robinson.” On this date Ware also paid Joseph Pitt $192.47.

The entry for Ware’s Albemarle County household in the 1820 census lists seventeen white occupants, of whom seven were males between the ages of ten and forty-four. Of the signers of this letter, only Pitt and Pickering appear to have continued working at the University after February 1820 (DNA: RG 29, CS, Albemarle Co., 1820; ViU: PP, Proctor’s Ledgers; Ware to Brockenbrough, 22 June 1819 [ViU: PP]; TJ to John Vaughan, 29 June 1819; Brockenbrough to TJ, 14 July 1819).

On the day after this letter was written, University of Virginia brickmasons Curtis Carter and William B. Phillips wrote a letter to TJ, not found, but recorded in SJL as received 13 Feb. 1820 from Richmond. University of Virginia proctor Arthur S. Brockenbrough also wrote a letter to TJ on 10 Feb. 1820, not found, but recorded in SJL as received 12 Feb. 1820 from the University.