Alexandria, [District of Columbia], 25 February 1810. Thomas Cruse sat down, opened his desk, took out a clean sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the bottle of ink and wrote “Dear Sir.” He was writing to his brother-in-law, Judge James Hamilton of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Judge Hamilton received the letter, wrote in his “chicken scratch” handwriting the date that he answered it and then put Cruse’s letter in his desk. When every pigeon hole in the Judge’s desk was filled to overflowing, the older letters and papers were bundled up and put in a trunk to make room for new ones. The Judge died in 1819; his wife in 1843. The Judge’s son, James, Jr. inherited the house and all of its contents. James, Jr. was adamant that all of the family’s possessions should stay in the family. To that end, when he wrote his will in 1871, he bequeathed all family paintings, portraits, letters and papers to his cousin, Mrs. Eliza Creighton, Thomas Cruse’s daughter.
When James, Jr. died in 1873, Eliza Creighton arranged to have all of the Hamilton portraits, family letters and papers shipped to her home in Philadelphia. Eliza made her will in 1874. Her husband had died eleven years earlier, and four of her five sons were dead. Her remaining son Robert was mentally ill, and both of her daughters, Emilie Bradish and Julia Smith, were married and living in England. Eliza bequeathed “Uncle Hamilton’s portrait” to her daughter Julia. Although Eliza did not indicate which daughter was to get all of the Hamilton letters and papers, they were shipped to England after Eliza’s death in 1877. So, the letter that Thomas Cruse wrote to Judge Hamilton in February 1810 crossed the Atlantic and was stored in either Julia’s house in Liverpool or Emilie’s house in Sherborne, England.
Julia Smith never had children and died in 1909, so if she had the letters she must have left them to her sister Emilie Bradish. Emilie died in 1917 and the only children still living (all in England) who could have inherited Hamilton’s letters and papers were Henry, a solicitor who died unmarried in 1936, Margaret Julia who died unmarried in 1944, and last of all, Emmeline Hamilton Bradish who died unmarried in 1950. The probate of Emmeline Bradish’s estate was granted to Martin’s Bank Ltd. of Liverpool and they may have sent her effects (including all of the Hamilton letters and papers) to auction.
In 1952, Maggs Bros. Ltd. of London, a company selling rare books and manuscripts, prepared a catalog for their July sale. One of the listings in the catalogue caught the attention of the staff of the University of Virginia Special Collections Library. It was a cache of 23 letters written between 1810-1813 by Thomas Cruse of Alexandria to Judge James Hamilton of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. On July 18, 1952, the University of Virginia purchased the letters. The staff at Maggs Bros, wrapped the collection for mailing, and the letter crossed the Atlantic, probably in a plane like the one on the following page rather than on a ship.
Since the time the letter was written, it had traveled by horseback from Alexandria, Virginia to Carlisle, Pennsylvania and then to Philadelphia. The letter then went by sea from Philadelphia to England, and finally, 142 years after it was written, by air to Charlottesville, Virginia where it resides today.
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