Although illness, mourning, and probable depression kept John Jay housebound through most of his retirement, he did not remain inactive. Interest in the history of the Revolutionary period was on the rise, particularly as the Semicentennial of the Declaration of Independence approached, with many commemorative publishing projects in the works. The Jays were concerned with John Jay’s legacy. Despite John Jay’s “regretting” the prospect of being the subject of a biography, he and his sons did take some time in gathering (and editing) the facts of his public life. He also spent a good deal of time corresponding with old friends and associates, such as John Adams and Richard Peters, who were concerned with setting the record straight on events of the revolution and early nation. These were not antiquarian concerns. The subsequent generation’s efforts to create an American history were often subject to partisan bias. And, even as Jay settled, at least for a time, certain longstanding controversies, he was also sought out by the descendants of revolutionary war–era actors as they forged sometimes self-serving histories of their families. Jay was one of the last men standing, as correspondents noted, with many strangers contacting him in hopes of acquiring inside information.

Besides his attention to his own history, John Jay was engaged with the growth of the historical profession. Along with his participation in philanthropic organizations, Jay was also involved in various historical societies, as well as being sought after for comment on historical, geographic, and reference works. Jay also continued to encourage the gathering of materials for a publication of the documentary history of the U.S. government, much as he had as Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

Jay expressed a certain resistance to having his life written, probably because of a public stance of modesty, and, in later years, the religious notion that secular life was merely probationary. However, his papers do contain private notes and timelines in his own hand about his family, and about his public career, notably a curriculum vitae dating to his retirement.1 These notes are for the most part limited to education, appointments, election to office and organizations, and significant public events. While Rufus King at one point took notes to write about Jay,2 and Jay himself, in his various offices had created letterbooks of official business, interest in a biography of Jay would wait until his seventy-first year.

Sometime after 1814, his sons William and Peter Augustus Jay began gathering materials for a Jay biography, this accelerating in 1817 with the selection of William Coleman as author.3 Jay had known Coleman when the latter was an ambitious young lawyer, and for many years the publisher of Hamilton’s New-York Evening Post. Coleman would not finish the project, and, in fact, predeceased Jay. Peter and William were actually quite cautious about what primary material would be let out of the family possession, which may have stifled that biography. At the same time, William began taking notes, which would result in his work, The life of John Jay: with selections from his correspondence and miscellaneous papers (New York, 1833). William told the story of Jay’s public life, leaving out private letters, and strictly redacting what letters he did choose to publish out of what papers were left to him. He and his brother Peter Augustus were executors to their father’s will, and had been left instructions of what papers to destroy, and so also edited their father’s life.4 Following JJ’s death, William’s sister Nancy prepared a memorandum of their father’s illness and death specifically for an “an abridged edition of the Memoirs of our dear father,” describing Jay’s last years from the perspective of the family caring for the aging patrician.5 This project became publicly known, and family friends such as John Quincy Adams volunteered their support.6

Jay also kept up with old friends, and his extensive correspondence with Benson, Peters, and Adams, demonstrates original witnesses attempting to recall the past and interpret the present, retired but still engaged with the world. Much of Jay’s correspondence regarding history had to do with correcting factual matters that may have been distorted by partisan writers or self-interested family members. The controversy over the authorship of the George Washington Farewell Address, in which Alexander Hamilton’s widow Eliza and sons promoted a story that Hamilton was the actual author of the famous text, dragged on for years, until some resolution came with Jay’s testimony.7 In 1811, Richard Peters, gossiping with Jay about the affair, inspired a letter in which Jay uses two forms of historical or legal argument, that of character and that of eyewitness account. Jay had been involved in edits of the Washington text that were “none of much Importance.” He and Peters discussed this letter extensively until Peters prevailed in having Jay permit him to share it. Jay’s testimony circulated privately in 1825. It debuted publicly in part two of the first volume of the Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania along with documentary evidence from Jay, Peters, Bushrod Washington, John Marshall, and printer David C. Claypoole. The committee of the society ruled in favor of George Washington’s authorship. Besides the original manuscript in the possession of Claypoole, Jay’s evidence proved the most compelling, prompting Marshall to remark, “It is extremely fortunate that Mr Jay was privy to the whole transaction and that he lived long enough to explain it.”8

In advising Jedidiah Morse in 1815 over facts of the Revolution, Jay declaimed, “You know my Sentiments respecting History—’festina lente’ —no good History has been, nor can be, produced in Haste,” having noted the difficulties of gathering documentary evidence, and, of course, the specter of mortality.9

In 1817, with an edition of the Federalist Papers being published with the names of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay appearing on the title page, controversy over authorship raged.10 Coleman contacted Jay on the subject. Jay claimed to not remember which numbers he wrote—54 or 64? He may have said this to avoid a potential controversy with Madison.11

Not long after this work appeared, William Temple Franklin and William Duane published a life of Benjamin Franklin which contained anti-Federalist statements about diplomatic work by John Adams and Jay, including claims about the possession of “journals” of the negotiations. Jay and Adams exchanged letters, and wrote to Duane, attempting to set the record straight. This cause reignited Jay and Adams’ friendship.12

Jay and Adams also discussed in detail the authorship of the 1774 “Address to the People of Great Britain,” Jay’s authorship being denied by William Wirt of Virginia in his work on Patrick Henry. The various addresses written in the period fell under scrutiny largely because they were produced in committee, not signed, and thus available to later claims.

Even in later life, such as when John Kirkland questioned the institution of two houses of legislature in New York, in 1826, Jay was forced to explain that some controversies were not, in fact, issues in dispute. The older John Jay, as witness, often tried to use his authority to quell historical arguments that he considered overzealous.13

Just as those who sought Jay’s evidence and recollections to settle major historical accounts were grateful for his longevity, several descendants of participants in the Revolution reached out to Jay, as the fiftieth anniversary of independence approached. Jay was one of the famous survivors of that generation and an acknowledged font of historical memory, and as such, many individuals sought to contact Jay in order to secure their grandfathers’ places in history in the form of biographies.

One of the first of these individuals who contacted Jay also expressed an interest in setting the historical record straight. While preparing a biography of his namesake in January 1823, Richard Henry Lee, grandson of Richard Henry Lee, sought information about the elder Lee’s roles in the 1774 Committees of Congressional Congress and possible share in authorship of several addresses. Jay confirmed this involvement, including Lee’s authorship of an address to George III.14 Charles Gerritt De Witt inquired about his grandfather, Charles De Witt, a fellow colonel during the war of independence. Claiming not to know the grandfather well, Jay passed on a charming anecdote of a borrowed horse. Another grandson, Samuel Adams Wells, wrote to Jay in 1827. Although Samuel Adams and Jay may have had a tense relationship, Jay (probably with the help of William Jay), cordially replied that there were old comrades in Massachusetts who would be better sources. John James Morris, sharing notes on his father Judge Richard Morris, was kindly rebuked for his opinion that the senior Morris was the first Chief Justice of New York, when in fact, Jay was.15

Descendants also favored Jay with copies of their published work, such as Gurdon S. Mumford, who sent a pamphlet in 1824. Others shared papers with Jay, a notable example being the return of papers by Ephraim Cunningham, who promised to return letters to Jay after Cunningham had caused a controversy by publishing correspondence between William Cunningham and John Adams.16

Authors of historical works also contacted Jay for his advice and opinion on events of the revolution and nation’s founding. In addition, Jay could be relied on for financial support of projects which caught his interest. Friend and frequent correspondent Jedidiah Morse found in him a thoughtful critic as well as subscriber for his various editions of his American Geography (first published 1789). Sometimes Jay’s assistance took the form of charitable contributions. For instance, he subscribed in 1820 to a history of the revolution by the impoverished writer Donald Fraser, despite Jay’s opinion that Fraser’s work would not be finished. Authors who were bereft of funds following the Panic of 1819 also found a friend in Jay. Aaron Clark sought, and received, Jay’s financial support and historical guidance on an edition of the papers of New York State.17

Jay became aware in 1820 of a significant historical project, George Alexander Otis’s translation of Carlo Botta’s Storia della guerra dell’independenza degli Stati Uniti d’America (Paris, 1809), an early European work on the American Revolution, and asked to become a subscriber. Otis and Jay then engaged in correspondence about factual errors in Botta’s work. Jay’s commentary, which found its way into the North American Review, was approved of by both Jefferson and Adams, who also corresponded with Otis.18

Jay’s relationship with Timothy Pickering led him to become involved with controversial topics in the 1820s. These episodes included Pickering’s review of Cunningham’s Adams publication and his introduction of Jay to John Lowell Jr., the son of John Lowell, a Federalist and pamphleteer. Lowell Jr. contacted Jay in 1822 about Alexander Everett’s reading of the Jay Treaty; Jay’s actions in 1794–95 remained a contentious issue decades later in American politics and foreign policy.19

Late in his life Jay continued to receive unsolicited works from historians writing on the war of independence. These publications included Francis Adrian Van Der Kemp’s (1752–1829) oration on the history of the Batavian Republic and Charles S. Daveis’s address on the fiftieth anniversary of Independence (in response to which, Jay tells him he referred to the wrong address to the people of Great Britain).20 Beyond the category of historical works, Jay also assisted authors working in other genres. He maintained a friendship with James Fenimore Cooper, inspiring The Spy, received a book on political economy from Daniel Raymond, and even volunteered to help Noah Webster Jr. with his dictionary.21

In addition to assisting authors and those involved in the book trade, Jay also maintained an active engagement with several historical associations. He served as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1790), and was elected to Massachusetts Historical Society in 1792. In this latter organization, he worked generously, but critically, with Jeremy Belknap on his American Biography, and John Eliot on his Biographical Dictionary, and corrected items published in the Collections of that society.22

Jay was asked to join the New-York Historical Society in 1806, encouraging Peter Augustus to join as well. When Gouverneur Morris succeeded Egbert Benson as President of New York Historical Society in 1816, Jay wrote a private critique of his address, which was his last known communication to Morris before the latter’s untimely death.23