Receipt from Morgan Lewis, [18 March 1796]
Receipt from Morgan Lewis1
[New York, March 18, 1796]
Received New York March 18th 1796 of Alexander Hamilton [Four thousand two hundred & fifty]2 Dollars in full for the consideration money of a lot and part of a lot of Ground adjoining thereto situate on the Broadway and Marketfield Street in the City of New York3 as particularly described in a certain indenture bearing date the first day of May MDCCXCIII made between Carlisle Pollock William Rogers and Samuel Corp of the one part and myself of the other part4 and according to a deed of Partition for ascertaining the said Part of a lot bearing date the twenty second of November MDCCXCIII made between Isaac Bronson and myself5—and I promise forthwith to make and deliver to the said Alexander Hamilton a good and sufficient deed in the Law for conveying and assuring to him his heirs and assigns the lot and part of a lot aforesaid with a Covenant of General Warranty for the same according to the metes and bounds in the said deed specified.
Morn: Lewis.
DS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. Lewis, who had been deputy quartermaster general in the Northern Department during the American Revolution, was the brother-in-law of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston. He was a member of the New York Assembly from 1789 to 1790, attorney general of New York from 1791 to 1792, justice of the New York Supreme Court from 1792 to 1801, and chief justice of the New York Supreme Court from 1801 to 1804.
2. The words within brackets are in H’s handwriting.
3. The lot and half-lot described in this transaction were part of four lots on the east side of Broadway to the north of Marketfield Street, which H secured for John B. and Angelica Church before their arrival from England in 1797. Lewis sold the middle lot of three lots facing Broadway, approximately 27 by 103 feet in size, and an L-shaped portion of another lot at the rear, the southerly part of which adjoined Marketfield Street. H presumably did not draw up a deed with Lewis for this property, for on August 28, 1797, Morgan and Gertrude Lewis conveyed the lots directly to John B. Church for seventeen hundred pounds, the equivalent of which H had already paid (copy, Conveyances in the Office of the Register, City of New York, Liber 60, 173–76, Hall of Records, New York City). H, however, bought the adjacent lots in trust for the Churches. The history of these lots is told in a conveyance dated May 24, 1798, from H and his wife and Isaac and Ann Bronson to John B. Church. On March 1, 1796, H had bought from Isaac Bronson, a New York City merchant, for two thousand pounds the lot to the south of Lewis’s main lot on Broadway and Marketfield Street, together with the remainder of the lot at the rear which Lewis had previously divided with Bronson. In the indenture H and Bronson guaranteed possession of this lot and a half to the Churches, and, in addition, H conveyed to them the lot to the north of Lewis’s main lot, which he had bought on May 20, 1796, from John Lasher, inspector of the port of New York, for fifteen hundred pounds (copy, Conveyances in the Office of the Register, City of New York, Liber 60, 176–79, Hall of Records, New York City). An entry in H’s Cash Book, 1795–1804, for May 27, 1796, states that H paid Lasher $2,500 and gave him a note for $1,250 for “a lot purchased of him for the said JBC.” An entry for September 12, 1796, states that H paid Lasher $1,274.79 for the “principal & Interest of my Note to John Lasher dated May 27, 1796” (AD, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress).
4. Copy, Conveyances in the Office of the Register, City of New York, Liber 50, 1–3, Hall of Records, New York City.
5. Copy, Conveyances in the Office of the Register, City of New York, Liber 50, 3–4, Hall of Records, New York City.