1. Robert Stark (Starke) (1740–1806), a native of Virginia, later moved to South Carolina, where he became sheriff of Ninety-Six District in 1772. In the early part of the Revolutionary War, Stark served as colonel of a South Carolina militia regiment. Following the American surrender at Charleston, S.C., in May 1780, Stark was imprisoned in the city’s British Provost, located underneath the Exchange. He did not gain his release until March 1782. While detained, Stark reportedly was treated inhumanely. On 19 Dec. 1781, he complained to Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene of his confinement “in a Dungeon” and of the distress of his large family (Greene Papers description begins Richard K. Showman et al., eds. The Papers of General Nathanael Greene. 13 vols. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976–2005. description ends , 10:80). Stark’s exchange was delayed due to allegations that he had “put to death … some atrocious criminals contrary to the Enemy’s Proclamations” (Greene Papers description begins Richard K. Showman et al., eds. The Papers of General Nathanael Greene. 13 vols. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976–2005. description ends , 9:440; 10:466). Around the winter of 1790–91, Stark settled at Natchez in West Florida (later Mississippi Territory), where he served in the early 1800s as clerk to the Supreme Court and to other territorial courts. Stark died in Winchester, Virginia.

2. The period of Spanish rule of the Natchez district (1779–1798), then part of West Florida, was marked by the imposition of martial law and the abolishment of representative government and jury trials. Governors, or commandants appointed by the governors-general of Louisiana and West Florida, had civil and military authority in the Natchez region. They personally issued edicts and often decided civil and criminal cases (see Busbee, Mississippi description begins Westley F. Busbee, Jr. Mississippi: A History. 2d ed. Chichester, England, 2015. description ends , 47–48).

3. The U.S.-Spanish Treaty of San Lorenzo, signed on 27 Oct. 1795, and ratified by the United States on 7 March 1796, gave U.S. citizens free navigation of the Mississippi River and defined the southern and western boundaries between the United States and Spanish territories. Article II of the treaty stipulated that the southern boundary of the United States would be “designated by a line beginning on the River Mississipi at the Northermost part of the thirty first degree of latitude North of the Equator, which from thence shall be drawn due East …” (Miller, Treaties description begins Hunter Miller, ed. Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America. Vol. 2, 1776-1818. Washington, D.C., 1931. description ends , 318–45; see also GW to the U.S. Senate, 29 March 1796).

In 1793, two years before the Treaty of San Lorenzo was finalized, Stark had considered leaving Spanish-ruled Natchez to return to the United States. In a letter dated 6 Aug. 1793 at Natchez, Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, then-governor of the District of Natchez, informed Francisco Luis Hector, Baron de Carondelet, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, that Stark and his family “began to show great uneasiness” following Creek Indian raids in the region, and that he and his family wished to sell their land and return to the United States. Having prohibited Stark from selling his land because it had been granted for settlement purposes only, Gayoso recommended that Stark be given permission to leave the territory (D. C. and Roberta Corbitt, eds., “Papers From the Spanish Archives Relating to Tennessee and the Old Southwest,” The East Tennessee Historical Society’s Publications 34 [1962]: 99–100). Stark had no formal title to his land. In 1794, a financially ruined Stark was briefly imprisoned for disloyalty to Spanish authorities (see Terry Alford, Prince Among Slaves [New York and London, 1977], 53–54).

4. Congressional records for the last three months of GW’s presidency are silent concerning the admission of a new state into the Union southwest of Tennessee. Mississippi became a state in 1817, and Louisiana and Arkansas were admitted to the Union in 1812 and 1836, respectively.

5. No letters from Stark to members of Congress have been identified.

6. Meade most likely refers to the political statements expounded in GW’s Farewell Address of 19 September.

7. Georges-Henri-Victor Collot, along with Charles-Joseph Warin and Thomas Power, was charged by French minister Pierre-Auguste Adet in early 1796 with a secret scouting mission to the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Their mission sought to obtain information about American military outposts and to effect French repossession of Louisiana and extend its boundary to the Allegheny Mountains. They were also tasked with persuading inhabitants of the western and southern territories and states, such as Kentucky, to secede from the United States and to ultimately come under French rule. The French anticipated that control of Louisiana, and hence of the Mississippi River, would alienate western settlers from U.S. jurisdiction and influence. Collot embarked on the mission in March 1796, and after stopping in Pittsburgh, St. Louis, New Orleans, and other cities, he returned to Philadelphia in December 1796. Though Collot and his fellow emissaries were instructed to try to influence the presidential election in favor of Thomas Jefferson, the ultimate plot failed (see James McHenry to GW, 13 May; see also Statement of Oliver Wolcott, Jr., 19 May; Charles Lee to GW, 20 May; McHenry to GW, 2 July; and McHenry to GW, 10 July and 10 Oct. [second letter]; see also Durand Echeverria, trans., “General Collot’s Plan for a Reconnaissance of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, 1796,” WMQ description begins The William and Mary Quarterly: A Magazine of Early American History. Williamsburg, Va. description ends , 3d ser., 9 [1952], 512–20). For one instance of a report of Collot’s activities on the frontier, see Anthony Wayne to McHenry, 29 Aug. 1796, in Knopf, Wayne description begins Richard C. Knopf, ed. Anthony Wayne, a Name in Arms: Soldier, Diplomat, Defender of Expansion Westward of a Nation; The Wayne-Knox-Pickering-McHenry Correspondence. Pittsburgh, 1960. description ends , 517–18.

8. Meade’s wife was Mary Grymes Randolph Meade.

A widow of William Randolph, Mary Grymes (1753–1813) married Meade in December 1780. She was his second wife. The couple had eight children together.