beginning in 1807 when Lambert was a member of Congress
ending in 1815 when Lambert was in his last year as a U. S. Senator
The original letters can be found in the Emma Finney Welch Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I have transcribed the letters as Lambert wrote them, which is why there is an absence of commas and periods. My only change is the addition of paragraph breaks to make the letters easier to follow.
beginning in 1807 when Lambert was a member of Congress
ending in 1815 when Lambert was in his last year as a U. S. Senator
It has been nine months since Lambert’s last letter to his granddaughter. The last one was shortly before the Ninth Congress adjourned on March 4, 1807. A very unsatisfactory treaty with Great Britain had arrived the day before, but President Jefferson declined to order the Congress to remain in Washington to consider it, for he was too dissatisfied with it to present it to them. So Congress adjourned, and Lambert spent his time back at home tending to his farm and his library, as well as his extensive family, which was increased on July 28, 1807 when his grandson, James Larison, was born.
beginning in 1807 when Lambert was a member of Congress
ending in 1815 when Lambert was in his last year as a U. S. Senator
The original letters can be found in the Emma Finney Welch Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I have transcribed the letters as Lambert wrote them, which is why there is an absence of commas and periods. My only change is the addition of paragraph breaks to make the letters easier to follow. Check my running glossary of names mentioned by Lambert to see who he’s referring to.
beginning in 1807 when Lambert was a member of Congress
ending in 1815 when Lambert was in his last year as a U. S. Senator
The original letters can be found in the Emma Finney Welch Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I have transcribed the letters as Lambert wrote them, which is why there is an absence of commas and periods, and many misspelled words. My only change is the addition of paragraph breaks to make the letters easier to follow and letters in brackets where they are needed. For cumulative information on the people mentioned in Lambert’s letters, see the Lambert Glossary.
beginning in 1807 when Lambert was a member of Congress
ending in 1815 when Lambert was in his last year as a U. S. Senator
I have transcribed the letters as Lambert wrote them, which is why there is an absence of commas and periods. I have added paragraph breaks to make reading the letters easier.
beginning in 1807 when Lambert was a member of Congress
ending in 1815 when Lambert was in his last year as a U. S. Senator
I have transcribed the letters as Lambert wrote them, which is why there is an absence of commas and periods. If there is a blank space underlined, it means I could not read his writing.
In January 1807, John Lambert was a member of the House of Representatives. He and all the representatives from New Jersey were members of Thomas Jefferson’s party, the Democratic Republicans or Jeffersonian Republicans, as they were later known. And they were all elected at large. These were the final days of the Ninth Congress, which had come into session on March 4, 1805, and would end on March 4, 1807.
John Lambert Esq. to Thomas Dennis1
I am going to backtrack a couple years from the first letter that Lambert wrote to his granddaughter Susan Hoppock in 1807.
In 1807, John Lambert, member of Congress from what is today Delaware Township, Hunterdon County, began a correspondence with his granddaughter, Susan M. Hoppock. She was 9 years old, and John Lambert was 61. He loved her very much, but if he saved her letters, they have not survived. However, Susan Hoppock also loved her grandfather, and the letters she received from him were preserved by her descendants and are now kept at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I visited there and took pictures of every single letter, because someday I hope to write something about John Lambert’s very interesting career. But these letters are so charming in themselves, I’ve decided to publish them from time to time.
For three years John P. Rittenhouse owned my small farm in Delaware Township, although he never lived there. As I started to research his life I discovered that, among other things, he was a Hunterdon Co. Sheriff, managed a restaurant at the Union Hotel, and then ran the hotel in Ringoes. He had an interesting life.
In 1859 he sold my farm to Edmund Perry, a successful politician, but a failure as an investor. I published the beginning of Rittenhouse’s story in the previous post, ending with a situation in which Rittenhouse, acting as deputy sheriff, had to take possession of the very farm he had previously sold to his political ally, Edmund Perry, and sell it to the highest bidder. Awkward.
