The American Philosophical Society was established in Philadelphia in January 1769, and was formed by the union of the earlier American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, and another organization known as The American Society, Held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Benjamin Franklin, though not in America at the time, was appointed the President of the new Society. The first volume of the Society’s Transactions was published in 1771, at which time Jefferson was not a member and therefore received no copy.

The Pennsylvania Packet for January 27, 1780, contained a report of Jefferson’s election to membership in the Society:

At a Meeting of the AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, the 21st inst. the following Gentlemen were chosen Members, viz.

His Excellency George Washington, Esq; General and Commander in Chief of the Armies of the United States of North America.

His Excellency the Chevalier De La Luzerne, Minister Plenipotentiary of France.

Monsieur Marbois, Secretary to the Embassy of France.

His Excellency Thomas Jefferson, Esq; Governor of the State of Virginia.

The same list includes also John Jay, Henry Laurens, John Adams, Baron de Steuben and a number of others. On January 5 of the following year Jefferson was elected a Counsellor for two years, an honor acknowledged by him in a letter dated from Richmond April 18, 1781: “ I beg leave through you to return my most grateful thanks to the American Philosophical society for the honour they have been pleased to confer on me by appointing me one of the Counsellors for that learned corporation. The busy scene in which I have the misfortune to be engaged has kept me too long from acknoleging the receipt of your polite letter notifying this honour to me; and I shall be very happy if the leisure to which I mean shortly to retire, shall enable me to contribute any thing worthy the acceptance of the society. but too long detached from those objects which come more immediately within their plan, it will scarcely be within my power to recover even the little familiarity I have had with them, and which would be far short of rendering the society any service. I can only assure them that I shall not be wanting in every respect and office which I may have an opportunity of rendering, & yourself that I am with very great respect & esteem . . . ””

On January 3, 1783, he was again elected a Counsellor, this time for three years, so that he was still a Counsellor when he departed for France in the summer of 1784. On March 10, 1786, Francis Hopkinson, the Treasurer of the Society, in a letter to Jefferson mentioned that a second volume of the Transactions was to be published. This was in answer to Jefferson’s letter asking his views on the propriety of his sending a copy of the Notes on the State of Virginia to the Society [see no. 4167]: “. . . I think it would be very proper for you to send a Copy of your Notes on Virginia to the Philosophical Society, & not amiss if you would present another Copy to our City Library. I have at last brought our Ph. Society to consent to the Publication of a Second Volume of Transactions. It is now in the Press & I have this Day corrected the 164th Page. as I have been so zealous & constant in urging this matter, the chief weight of the Business has of course fallen ”