From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Claxton, 13 June 1802
To Thomas Claxton
Washington June 13. 1802.
Dear Sir
I omitted to place in my memorandum 2. wire-screens for the windows of the Setting room, intended to exclude the candle flies and bugs in the evening, which abound here in most uncommon quantities. they should be 4 f. 9. I. square, & the meshes 1/8 or 3/16 of an inch wide & ¼ Inch. high. a single one does for each window. there is a mr Sellers 231. market street who works well in wire. I will trouble you to deliver the inclosed on the subject of the Quadrant to mr Whitney. Accept my friendly respects & good wishes.
Th: Jefferson
PrC (MHi); at foot of text: “Mr Thomas Claxton”; endorsed by TJ in ink on verso. Enclosure: TJ to Thomas Whitney, 13 June.
Nathan SELLERS, inventor of a method of drawing and annealing wire, had a shop at 231 High Street in Philadelphia. TJ had purchased wire netting from him for screen doors at Monticello and the President’s House. Sellers’s younger brother David joined him in the business and his eldest son Coleman married a daughter of Charles Willson Peale (Joseph Jackson, Market Street Philadelphia: The Most Historic Highway in America, Its Merchants and Its Story [Philadelphia, 1918], 97–8; Robinson, Philadelphia Directory for 1802, 215; , 2:908).