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Preferred Citation

Thomas Jefferson Letter to [Samuel Adams or John Lowell], 1786 August 17, Accession #10952, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This letter was purchased from Swann Galleries, Inc. of New York, New York, by the Library on May 24, 1990.

Scope and Content Information

In this one page holograph letter, August 17, 1786, Paris, France, Thomas Jefferson, while United States Minister to the French Court, writes a letter of introduction for Madame de Gregoire nee de Lamotte Cadillac to [Samuel Adams or John Lowell ?] of Massachusetts. The letter is printed in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson which indicates that the Library of Congress copy has written at the bottom of the text, "S. Adams J. Lowel esq."

Madame de Gregoire, a French national, was traveling to America to pursue her claim to certain lands in Maine originally granted to her family by the crown of France, when it held the colony of Acadia. This land subsequently became British territory and eventually was ceded to the United States by Great Britain. She wrote to Jefferson on August 13, 1786, requesting his support in presenting her claim to the government of Massachusetts. In her August 13th letter, she mentions that the Marquis de Lafayette had written her a letter of introduction to James Bowdoin, Governor of Massachusetts, and to General Henry Knox, and that she had shown papers supporting her claim to Benjamin Franklin who believed that her claims were just.

Jefferson urges his correspondent to help Madame de Gregoire as much as possible in her claim as its irregularity would be unlikely to establish a precedent and American helpfulness would serve to bind the French people more firmly to the United States.