From Thomas Jefferson to James Cheetham, 17 June 1803
To James Cheetham
Washington June 17 1803
Sir
I have deferred answering your letter of May 30. until I could find the means of having paiment made in New York for the volume of the Watch tower therein mentioned. mr Barnes tells me he has an account with mr Charles Ludlow of New York, on which some little balance will perhaps be due, and authorises me to say he will pay for that as well as what I am now to add. I have understood there is to be had in New York an 8vo. edition of Mc.kenzie’s travels with the same maps which are in the 4to. edition. I will thank you to procure it for me. the American 8vo. edition is defective in it’s maps, and the English 4to. edition is too large & cumbersome. I think I have seen1 advertized in some paper that an edition of Arrowsmith’s map of the US. has been published at New York. I shall be glad to recieve either that or the English one if to be had there. the latter would be preferred because I know the engraving is superiorly well done. be so good as to deliver these articles to mr Ludlow who will pay for & forward them to me. accept my best wishes.
Th: Jefferson
PrC (DLC); at foot of text: “Mr. Cheetham”; endorsed by TJ in ink on verso. Enclosed in TJ to Charles Ludlow, 17 June.
8vo edition of mc.kenzie’s travels: Cheetham sent TJ the octavo edition of Alexander Mackenzie’s Voyages from Montreal, on the River St. Laurence, through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans; In the Years 1789 and 1793, published in London in 1802. The edition was advertised in Cheetham’s Republican Watch-Tower for $3.50 (Republican Watch-Tower, 22 Jan., 12 Mch. 1803; No. 4087; Cheetham’s account statement enclosed in Charles Ludlow to TJ, 24 June). For a description of McKenzie’s publication and the american edition that TJ considered defective, see Vol. 37:435n, 565–6.
TJ received the 1802 London edition of arrowsmith’s Map Exhibiting All the New Discoveries in the Interior Parts of North America engraved on four sheets. It was considered “the most accurate representation to date of the land west of the Mississippi” (Susan R. Stein, The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello [New York, 1993], 393; No. 3846; Vol. 32:69n). For Nicholas King’s use of the 1802 Arrowsmith engravings in the preparation of his map for Meriwether Lewis, see Gallatin to TJ, 14 Mch. 1803.
1. MS: “see.”