1785 Check Between Thomas Ludwell Lee, Jr. and Colonel John Fitzgerald

Ken Lopez
Posted by Ken Lopez on Feb 8, 2021 1:40:49 PM

When this document was written, the British had just surrendered to America a year and a half before, George Washington had not yet been elected president (the Constitution would not be drafted for two more years), America was still operating without the dollar (that would come a few months later), and Alexandria, Virginia's entire population (~2,500) was smaller than my high school.

The populations of either New York City, Boston, or Philadelphia would fit into last night's Super Bowl stadium with room for social distancing. Most people knew of each other, and everyone knew who George Washington was — especially the parties to this transaction. Thomas Ludwell Lee, Jr. and Colonel John Fitzgerald were all close to Washington in one way or another.

The document reads:

11th of April 1785

Sir,

Please pay to Mr. Thomas Lee Jr on order on demand 200 pounds Virginia currency on account of _____ Your obliged servant Colonel John Fitzgerald Thomas Ludwell Lee ______ in Alexandria 200 pounds

This was no small transaction. Two-hundred pounds of Virginia currency is about $40,000 today.

So, who were these people? For starters, Lee is a member of the prominent Virginia family of Lees. Fitzgerald's name lives on in history books and because of his present-day association with Alexandria, Virginia's Fitzgerald Warehouse, now the waterfront home to Starbucks.

Col. John Fitzgerald (excerpted from Mount Vernon's website):

Born in Ireland and described as “bred to trade,” John Fitzgerald immigrated to Virginia by 1773 and established himself in Alexandria as a merchant, gaining in that town the friendship of George Washington. . . Fitzgerald was commissioned a Captain of the 3rd Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army on February 9, 1776. In the summer of 1776, the battalion was ordered to join the main army in New York and arrived in time to counter the enemy at the Battle of Harlem Heights. The 3rd Regiment’s Major died from wounds received at the engagement and, as senior Captain, John Fitzgerald was promoted to that rank on October 3, 1776. Deeming John Fitzgerald to be “an Officer of unexceptionable merit,” George Washington appointed him an aide-de-camp when an opening on his staff arose a few weeks later. For the next two years, Lieutenant Colonel John Fitzgerald capably served in the Commander-in-Chief’s “military family” on the fields of battle at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Germantown, and in non-battlefield conflict like the Conway Cabal incident. Wounded at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778, Fitzgerald thereafter left the army, returning to Alexandria to marry and resume his commercial pursuits. However, his military accomplishments were not yet complete. When an enemy naval force arrived before Alexandria with intentions of burning the town in April of 1781, Fitzgerald “…made so good a display for the few men he could collect that the enemy were frightened and did not land, although they were five times the number of his men.”

With the peace of the Treaty of Paris, a French traveler observed that the people of Alexandria were at work to make their town “the center of a large commerce” and John Fitzgerald was squarely at the center of the growth. Among other positions, he served on the city council beginning in February 1784.

Additional sources of information about Fitzgerald include this entry from the Valley Forge website and various correspondence with George Washington. John Fitzgerald's warehouse is a prominent building on the Alexandria, Virginia waterfront, and is well described in these PDFs appearing here and here.



Thomas Ludwell Lee, Jr. (excerpted from Sharon Virts' blog):

It was his namesake, Thomas Ludwell Lee, Jr. who would inherit the land where Coton Farm would be built. By 1796, Thomas Ludwell Lee, Jr. (1752-1807) with his wife, Frances “Fanny” Carter (1760-1850), daughter of Robert Wormley Carter of Sabine Hall, had built Coton’s manor house and named the farm after the Lee family ancestral home in England. Thomas set out to improve the land by switching crops from tobacco to wheat and corn, enlarging the mill, and building a distillery and a meat house.

Thomas Ludwell Lee, Jr. was only 55 years old when he died in 1807.

Richard Henry Lee was, at the time this check was written, President of the Congress, something resembling a predecessor position to the US presidency. So, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that Thomas was nephew of the sitting president when he received this check.

TLLeeCheck-frnt

TLLeeCheck-back

 

Topics: Alexandria, VA, George Washington, Thomas Ludwell Lee, Jr., Check, Col. John Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald Warehouse, People, Things

Leave Comment

About OHM

OurHistoryMuseum is a crowdsourced and virtual history museum that anyone can contribute to. We are prototyping with our hometown first — Alexandria, Virginia. The app will be available nationally soon. In the meantime, sign up for our blog or follow OHM on social media (both at the bottom of this page) to keep updated.

Free Subscription to This Blog

Enter your email.
One-click unsubscribe anytime.

Recent Articles

Most Popular Articles

Post By Topic

See all