Joseph Bringhurst (1767–1834), apothecary and public official, was a native of Philadelphia and a member of the Society of Friends. In 1793 he settled in Wilmington, Delaware, where he resided until his death. Bringhurst operated a drugstore on Market Street, and by 1822 he owned a cotton factory. He served as clerk of the borough, 1799–1800, and he was chairman of the Library Company of Wilmington in 1828. Bringhurst became postmaster of Wilmington during TJ’s presidency in 1802 and held this position until his removal from office in 1820. His scientific publications included “Facts concerning the Efficacy of Alkalies in Diseases of the Alimentary Canal,” Medical Repository 5 (1802): 413–5, and “On Officinal Tinctures,” Journal of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy 5 (1833): 19–20. Bringhurst was the author of a series of poems published under the pen name of “Birtha” in the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States between 23 Mar. and 6 July 1791, and he reputedly wrote a 1796 letter later published as a Copy of a Letter from a Young Man, a Quaker, in Pennsylvania, to the late William Cowper, the Poet (Chester, Eng., 1800) (Josiah Granville Leach, History of the Bringhurst Family [1901], 39–41; J. Thomas Scharf, History of Delaware. 1609–1888 [1888], 2:637, 650, 652, 660, 886; Charles E. Bennett, “A Poetical Correspondence Among Elihu Hubbard Smith, Joseph Bringhurst, Jr., and Charles Brockden Brown in The Gazette of the United States,” Early American Literature 12 [1977/78]: 277–85; Philadelphia Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, 29 Aug. 1800; Robert J. Stets, Postmasters & Postoffices of the United States, 1782–1811 [1994], 106; Bringhurst to TJ, 8 July 1803 [DLC]; A Directory, and Register for the Year 1814 … of the Borough of Wilmington, and Brandywine [Wilmington, 1813?], 12; Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 19 June 1820; Wilmington Delaware Patriot and American Watchman, 4 Apr. 1828; gravestone inscription in cemetery of Wilmington Friends Meeting House).