employing an agent to proceed immediately to Britain, there to solicit the Company's Grant, as fully, speedily, and effectually as the nature of the Business will admit. It is resolved that Wm Lee, Esq., the Treasurer, has presented his Account to the Company which is admitted. It is resolved that Wm Lee Esq., be continued Treasurer to this Company. Sir, It is resolved that the Treasurer pay the Expence of this meeting. Test, WILLIAM LEE, Secretary. measures. LONDON, May 30, 1769." Above is a Copy of the Articles etc. of the Mississippi Co. which cost II/ and 4/6 for the postage of your sundrie letters added to £13–11, your quota to the Mississippi Co. makes £14-6-6, for which Sum I have this day drawn on you at two days sight payable to Dr. Arthur Lee which I hope will meet with due honor. The temper of the present Ministry being much against America, it is tho't advisable to let the petition lay undetermined on, before the Board of Trade where it now is, in hopes a change of men (as is commonly the case), will bring also a change of With regard to your Br. Robert's affairs in Virginia I am too little acquainted therewith to give you any authentic account thereof, but you may be much better informed by writing to Mr. John Ballantine Junr. mercht. on Nomony, Potomac, Virginia, or to Mr. David Boyd, Atty. at Law, Northumberland County, Virginia, either of these Gent. can give you a full acct. of his affairs. Capt. Gordon administered upon his estate and I believe has sold all the moveable estate, the lands were your Property and I don't see what occasion you had to sell them, but I suppose they were sold for your benefit. I wish it was in my power to give you more full information. I am Yr most Hble Servt. WILLIAM Lee. 2. A Projected Settlement of English-speaking Catholics from Maryland in Spanish Louisiana, 1767, 1768. THE three documents printed below1 form part of a correspondence relating to a proposed settlement in Spanish Louisiana by Maryland Catholics. Research in the Archivo de Indias has failed to It does not appear to whom this letter was written. Its significance lies in its reference to the postponement due to the feeling of the ministry. For Lord Hillsborough's attitude, see the report of the Board of Trade in N. Y. Col. Docs., VII. 19. 1 All copied from originals in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Audiencia de Santo Domingo: Luisiana y Florida, Correspondencia Oficial con los Gobernadores, años 1751 á 1768, estante 86, cajón 6, legajo 6. The copies form part of a collection made for Mr. Louis Houck, of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, who has allowed use to be made of them here. The two English letters were evidently copied for Ulloa by a copyist unacquainted with English, and hence were poorly done. Mr. Houck's transcripts were carefully re-collated in Seville, thus proving that the original copies were faulty. Some of the most obvious errors have been corrected without comment, while in other cases the editorial bracket has been employed. locate the other letters touching this matter (Jerningham's of May 2, 1767, and the reply of July 31) that are mentioned in the documents here presented, or to discover any other additional material regarding it. The attempt to found a Catholic colony from Maryland in the midst of the French and Catholic colonists was never carried out. It was no new idea. Already in 1752, Charles Carroll had gone to France on a fruitless mission, to petition for a grant of land on the Arkansas River, in order that the oppressed Catholics of Maryland might settle there and have freer scope for the practice of their religion. After 1755, some of the Acadians who had been deported from their own country to Maryland found their way to Louisiana, where they were given lands, and where they received a hearty welcome from the French population. According to the letters presented here, bands of Acadians must have gone to Louisiana in 1766 or 1767. Their reception by the Catholic government may have inspired Jerningham's attempt. At any rate tentative efforts were made for the founding of a settlement by Catholics from Maryland, as outlined partially in Jerningham's two letters and the letter of Governor Antonio de Ulloa, the two former being enclosed by the latter to his home government. But the time had gone by for such a colony. Had Carroll's negotiations in 1752 met with favor in France, doubtless many of the Catholics of Maryland would have sought an asylum under a Catholic government. Double taxes, and the various other oppressions, both economic and religious, and the intolerant spirit of the Protestant government, might easily have driven off some of the best families of the colony, and much wealth. After the treaty of 1763, however, conditions had almost insensibly been improving. There was a more tolerant spirit. Catholic worship was more freely permitted. There was less talk of persecution. Consequently, there was not the same reason for migration as before. The very tone of Jerningham's letters is indicative of the fact that the Catholics would migrate only if their conditions were met by the Spanish authorities. This in itself points to a larger tolerance of their worship in Maryland. The same independence would not have been expressed fifteen years earlier. The agitation was no longer principally on religious but on economic grounds. The presence in Louisiana of a body of colonists, although Catholic, from the near-by English colonies, who expressed themselves so distinctly and independently, would later not have tended to ensure the Spanish authorities, who were so soon to be seized by a veritable hysteria against all Americans. It is more than likely that most of those who might have migrated and their descendants would have favored, if they had not joined in, the movement that was inaugurated from above for the opening of the Mississippi; and with effect, for the families who proposed to migrate were for the most part industrious tradesmen and owners of property. The end' of Louisiana must have been the same. There might have been a greater English-speaking Catholic body in certain districts. Otherwise, the course of history would have remained unchanged. The economic aspects would continually have assumed greater proportion at the expense of the purely religious, among a people independent by nature and training; and this would in time have dominated and controlled the political. The attempt is more interesting, however, from its mere historic aspect than from the speculative side. It is illustrative of one phase of life in the colonies, Spanish as well as English. It shows also the tendency toward a break-down of the artificial barriers between the Latin and Anglo-Saxon centres in America. That the attempt failed was perhaps a gain to the American revolution against England that broke out eight years later. For notices of the Catholics of Maryland during the period from about 1750 to 1771, see the Maryland Gazette; the correspondence of Governor Sharpe (1753-1771) in volumes VI., IX., and XI. of Archives of Maryland, published by the Maryland Historical Society; and J. G. Shea, The Catholic Church in the United States (New York, 1886-1892), volumes I. and II. In the archives of Georgetown University (no. 43, envelope 10) is a manuscript volume on the state of the Catholics in Maryland, in which is a petition (April 10, 1756) of the Maryland Catholics to the provincial Assembly, praying that no double or increased tax be laid on Catholics. See also the document on page 819 of volume XV. of this journal, where mention is made in 1784 of the prospect that, independence and tolerance being now assured, Catholics might extensively migrate from Maryland and the neighboring regions to those on the left bank of the Mississippi. Definite notices regarding Henry Jerningham are scant. An old family tree in the possession of Mrs. H. Q. Slye, of Washington, D. C., shows that Henry Jernegan (an old form of the name), M. D., embarked for Maryland, in America July 22". Inquiries addressed by the managing editor of this journal to Lord Stafford of Costessey Hall, the present head of the Jerningham family, and to Stafford Henry Jerningham, esq., of the same residence, and pursued through the aid of Dr. Marcus W. Jernegan of the University of Chicago, elicited some information. Mr. Jerningham writes: "I have . . . carefully waded through six boxes of documents in our Muniment Room here and I regret to say that I cannot come across anything which would throw a light on the matter. I see that this Henry Jerningham was the grandson of Sir Francis Jerningham, third baronet of Costessey. He died in the Province of Maryland on November 20, 1772, leaving two sons and five daughters." A pen-and-ink sketch of his family, sent over from Maryland by him, is preserved at Costessey. Several advertisements inserted in the Maryland Gazette make it evident that Jerningham had a private hospital in connection, with his medical practice. The issues of February 10, March 20, and September 26, 1771, contain notices in regard to vaccination against smallpox, his prices for that service, and the number treated at his house. His original will is owned by Mrs. Jessie Thomson, of St. Louis, and copies of it are in the possession of Mrs. H. Q. Slye. It bears date November 19, 1772, and was witnessed by Eleanor Lancaster, George Slye, and Ignatus Craycroft. In this document the names of his five daughters are given as Frances Henrietta, Mary, Helloisa, Edwardinna, and Olivia; and those of his sons, Charles and Henry Tobias. A notice in the Maryland Gazette, September 9, 1773, signed by his wife Catherine and his daughter Frances, offers for sale the medical possessions left by Jerningham, various articles of furniture, etc. Jerningham appears to have been a man of considerable wealth and influence in his district. The family connections alluded to in the postscript to the first letter can be readily made out, and the claims made confirmed. One learns from Playfair, British Family Antiquity (London, 1811), VI. 184, 185, that Sir Francis Jerningham (1650-1730), third baronet, married Ann Blount, aunt of Mary Blount, duchess of Norfolk; that his second son was Sir George Jerningham, fifth baronet, whose elder son, afterward Sir William, was married in June, 1767, to the daughter of Viscount Dillon, while his younger son, Charles, became a general officer in the service of the King of France; that Henry Jerningham, fourth son of Sir Francis, had five sons and three daughters; that the second of these sons, Henry, married and settled in America, had two sons and five daughters, and died in Maryland November 20, 1772; that the third son, Charles, became a general officer in the service of the Emperor and died at Vienna in 1802 at the age of 80; that the fifth son, Hugh, was a religious at Douay till 1793 when he died at Dover while returning to England after the expulsion of the Franciscans from Douay; that the three daughters, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edwardina, were religious in the English Augustinian monastery at Bruges until 1794. The Jerningham and Dillon families, between whom marriage was not uncommon, were among the most famous of Catholic families in England and Ireland. Much of the correspondence of Frances Dillon (d. 1825), wife of Sir William Jerningham, was published in the Jerningham Letters (London, 1896), edited by Egerton Castle. An old pamphlet is conserved among the Jerningham papers entitled Particulars illustrative of the Genealogy of Jerningham, or Jernegan, compiled from the Antient Family and other Records. JAMES ALEXANDER ROBERTSON. I. DR. HENRY JERNINGHAM TO DON ANTONIO DE ULLOA. Excellent Sir. I have inclosed to your Excellency a faithfull Copy of a letter dated New Orleans July 31, 1767. it having no nominal or manual signatur[e] Credit could not be given to it here; besides it hints only at the questions pointed at. permit me to request an answer more explicit. grant me also the favor of your pardon, if I undertake to acquaint you, that a British subject is free, that he may emigrate Where he pleases, in time of peace, nothing Can Stop him but his Creditors, Should he have any. your Court and governors of his Catholic Majesty, need be under no aprehensions, of Kindling any Jealosy in the Breast of the British Ministry on that account, because a Clearance from the officer of the port where the adventurers Would ship themselves as migrators is not only a passport and permission, but a positive assent of his Britannic Majesty ratified by his officer affixing his seal to it. the Letter of the 31 July says, lands are granted in property Without fee, or futur[e] taxation. it does not inform What is the lot of individuals, or What people of property, may purchase or What price. Was this certyfied. With the other proposed of the 2d May many Who are the descendants of pure noble and ancient Blood Would Settle among you. Objection: unless we have his most Catholic Majestys royal assurance of Irish or English priests the Migrants could not comply With the dutys incumbent of a Roman Catholic, nor have any spiritual consolation at the hour of death. this the letter Says his Catholic Majesty shall be incessantly consulted on; all that would enter to plant there familys among you could not have objection to taking the oath of allegiance to his Catholic Majesty, as their intention it Would be to become his subjects; in consequence, must conform to all the Laws and customs as every good Citizen Should doe Where he resides. None of the roman Catholics of 'Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrived in Louisiana, March 5, 1766, and was expelled from the colony by the French citizens, November 1, 1768. See an account of his term of government in Gayarré, History of Louisiana, II. The original from which this transcript is made reads incorrectly, " 1768". |