(NAVY) Barron Jane W Letter to Dolley Madison seeking a patr

Sale 2486 - Lot 333

Price Realized: $ 938

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(NAVY.) Barron, Jane W. Letter to Dolley Madison, seeking a patronage post for her father. Autograph Letter Signed to "Mrs. Madison" in Washington. 3 pages, 10 x 8 inches, on one folding sheet, with address panel sans postal markings on verso; moderate wear, 4 early tape repairs to address panel, early inventory label on signature page. Hampton, VA, 16 June 1815

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The author wrote on behalf of her father Commodore James Barron (1768-1851), who had been suspended from naval duty for allowing his ship to be boarded by a British impressment crew in 1807. His daughter Jane writes "Yet for the misfortune of one day, when our country slept in peace, what has been his fate?" She describes his years in the merchant service to support the family, and pleads that he "be restored to such a situation as to enable him to endure life . . . as consul of one of the ports to the north of Europe." She flatters the First Lady as "the ornament of her sphere." James Barron was later restored to active naval duty, and killed Commodore Stephen Decatur in a duel in 1820.