10/02/2026
HCC&M History Mystery #266 - October 2, 2026
Drafted in late 1780, this manuscript (detail shown here) contains a copy of a list of queries about New Jersey submitted in October 1780 by a French official who served as secretary to the French Legation in Philadelphia during the American Revolution. The Frenchman sent his list of questions to delegates from all thirteen states, requesting descriptions of each state’s territory, history, population, religion, rivers and natural resources, commerce, indigenous population, currency and more. John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence and one of James Madison’s teachers at the College of New Jersey in Princeton, compiled the answers for New Jersey. Roger Sherman, another signer of the Declaration and one of the Committee of Five appointed to draft it, authored those for his beloved Connecticut.
For Virginia, the queries made their way to Joseph Jones of King George County, who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1777 and 1780-1783. Jones thought no one better qualified for the task than Thomas Jefferson, at the time in his second, one-year term as governor of Virginia. At the end of November 1780, Jefferson described himself as “busily employed” with the project and said he felt compelled to “acknolege…the mysterious obligation” he felt towards this Frenchman “for making me much better acquainted with my own country than I ever was before.”
Though he took “every occasion which presents itself of procuring answers to” these queries, Jefferson recognized that he could not address some of them until he could return to Monticello where “alone the materials exist” to enable him to research and compile informed answers. By March of 1781, wartime disruptions from Benedict Arnold’s raid into Virginia and the demands of his governorship had given Jefferson time “to collect a few materials only,” which his “present occupations,” Jefferson said, “disable me from compleating.” He was sanguine, however, that in a short time he would “be in a condition which will leave me quite at leisure to take them up” and promised to make it one of his “first undertakings” to provide as much information as he could on “such of the subjects as are within the sphere of my acquaintance.”
Five days before Christmas 1781, Jefferson finally submitted his answers. He feared his French acquaintance had “exhausted” his patience waiting for them, and Jefferson cautioned he would “find them very imperfect and not worth offering but as a proof of my respect for your wishes.” When he received Jefferson’s responses the following April, however, the Frenchman proclaimed his “inexpressible pleasure” for Jefferson’s “candor and frankness on those subjects which politicians of narrow vision call secrets of State.”
Jefferson would continue to revise his answers over the next two years, expanding, correcting and reorganizing the material from the original twenty-two queries into a manuscript he described in January 1784 as having swollen “nearly to treble bulk.” Too large to produce manuscript copies, Jefferson arranged in 1785 while he was in France to have 200 copies of this work printed. Other editions including a French translation and an English edition by the London printer John Stockdale would follow within a couple of years.
1. What was this work, the only full-length book Jefferson published during his lifetime and one cited as perhaps the most important American book before the turn of the 19th century?
2. Who was the Frenchman whose queries in October 1780 provided the impetus for Jefferson?
3. And what famous acquisition in the early 1800s during Jefferson’s first term as president would this Frenchman negotiate with James Monroe and Robert Livingston?
Send your answers to info[at]christchurch1735[dot]org. Please do not post to Facebook.
Check out last week's answer and the winner: Thanks to everyone who participated in the August 28th History Mystery. Congratulations to Michael Carter, who submitted the first correct answer: the two items George Mason (as executor for builder Daniel French) had to complete around the churchyard at Pohick Church in February 1774 were "Horse Blocks and Benches under the Trees, which was Part of the original Agreement of the Undertaker."
Learn more here:
Vestry Book for Truro Parish, Virginia 1732 - 1785 (see pages 82, 92)
https://dq5pwpg1q8ru0.cloudfront.net/2025/06/24/03/00/24/6c50b195-9047-49a3-8bef-f8f076fe1f9c/ColonialVestryMinutes.pdf
