Thomas Jefferson Papers
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To Thomas Jefferson from Thomas Claxton, 5 August 1801

From Thomas Claxton

City of Washington 5th Aug. 1801.

Honord Sir

I yesterday received from Philadelphia a Bill of Lading for your chairs, which I have this day forwarded to Messrs Gibson & Jefferson at Richmond—I have thought it proper to forward this information, in order that the first opportunity of getting them to Monticello may be embraced

I have the honor to be with the greatest esteem Sir Your Hble Svt

Thos Claxton

RC (MHi); endorsed by TJ as received 13 Aug. and so recorded in SJL.

Your chairs: according to an invoice dated 31 July, Claxton owed Adam Snyder $204 for four dozen “Armd Chairs Blak & Gould” and their packaging for shipment (MS in MHi; in an unidentified hand, with note by TJ: “Oct. 13. 1801 Mr. Barnes will be pleased to pay the above,” followed by his signature; endorsed by Barnes, who wrote the acknowledgment of payment on 19 Oct., signed by Claxton). TJ recorded the order on Barnes in his financial memoranda on 13 Oct. Barnes entered the payment to Claxton in TJ’s private account at 19 Oct. (MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1055; statement of private account from John Barnes, 4 Nov. 1801, in ViU). Snyder was a Philadelphia windsor chair maker located at the corner of Second and Green Streets. At the end of TJ’s life, the entrance hall at Monticello had twenty-eight black painted chairs, some portion of which, it is believed, were from this order (Stafford, Philadelphia Directory, for 1801, 142; Stein, Worlds description begins Susan R. Stein, The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, New York, 1993 description ends , 262–3).

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