“ credible information as well as from the title page of his ‘history of Switzerland’ which was published at Edinburgh, that he was ‘Master of the Academy established at Edinburgh by the honorable the board of trustees for the improvement of arts in Scotland.’ He is a good Mathematician: an ellegant drawer and a complete master of the Greek, latin and french languages . . . He has been in America about eighteen months . . . He was originally introduced to Mr. Burr as a teacher of languages and the Mathematics. He taught his daughter the Greek and Latin languages and we believe something of drawing . . .”

James Cheetham, 1772-1810, was born in England and emigrated to the United States in 1798. He became the political enemy of Aaron Burr, and on the fact that Burr had ordered the suppression of Wood’s book based his contention, expressed in his A View of the political Conduct of Aaron Burr , that the latter had not dealt honorably in his efforts to obtain the Presidency in 1800. See chapter 24.

David Denniston was in partnership with Cheetham, and the publisher of the Republican Watch Tower , q.v.

Jefferson’s copy was sent to him by the author, who wrote from the Navy Yard--Doctr. Ewells, Feby. 1. 1809: “The Multitude adore the rising sun.--for me, I honor the steps of his departure . . . Self descending your Excellency sets in glory--and soon to rise in multiplied radiance on all the political stars that are to shine by your absence.

"I beg your Excellency’s acceptance of a copy of a new work--The Private Life of the man whom, you, of all others most rever’d, and whom with such peculiar felicity you styled “Columbia’s First & Greatest Son.

"This is the Seventh edition--10,000 copies have been sold--and some flattering things said--

"But if, on perusing this private Life of Washington your Excellency should be pleas’d to find that I have not, like some of his Eulogists, set him up as a Common Hero for military ambition to idolize & imitate--nor an Aristocrat, like others, to mislead & enslave the Nation, but a pure Republican whom all our youth shou’d know, that they may love & imitate his Virtues, and thereby immortalize “the last Republic now on earth”--I shall heartily thank you for a line or two in favor of it--as a school book . . .”

Mason Locke Weems, 1759-1825, clergyman, bookagent [ sic -- Ed. ] (for Mathew Carey) and author, was born in Maryland. The first edition of his life of George Washington was published anonymously, probably in 1800. The copy presented to Jefferson was the third of the three editions published in 1808.