Joseph Bringhurst (1767–1834), son of Philadelphia Quakers James and Anne Pole Bringhurst, attended the Friends Latin School, where he formed a friendship with Charles Brockden Brown. He went on to study medicine and establish a practice in Philadelphia. Bringhurst is credited with carrying on a poetical correspondence with Elihu Hubbard Smith and Brown for several months in 1791 in the Gazette of the United States under the nom de plume “Birtha.” In 1793, Bringhurst moved to Wilmington, Delaware. Six years later, he married Deborah Ferris, from a prominent Chester County, Pennsylvania Quaker family. Bringhurst carried on his medical practice, established a drugstore, and, after his appointment as postmaster in 1802, operated the post office from his residence on Market Street in Wilmington. He was active in Republican politics, the Delaware Abolition Society, and in the promotion of domestic manufactures, later becoming the owner of a cotton factory. He frequently corresponded with his friend John Dickinson, caring for him during his final illness and informing TJ of his death (Josiah Granville Leach, History of the Bringhurst Family with Notes on the Clarkson, De Peyster and Boude Families [Philadelphia, 1901], 30, 39–41; 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; Wilmington Mirror of the Times, & General Advertiser, 19 Feb. 1800; Wilmington Delaware Gazette, 9 Mch. 1815; John A. Munroe, Federalist Delaware, 1775–1815 [New Brunswick, N.J., 1954], 217n, 227n; Latrobe, Correspondence description begins John C. Van Horne and Lee W. Formwalt, eds., The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, New Haven, 1984–88, 3 vols. description ends , 2:7n; Bringhurst to TJ, 16 Feb. 1808).

For TJ’s note of 17 June (not found), the enclosure, and its delivery, see TJ to Caesar A. Rodney, 17 June, and Rodney to TJ, 7 July.