Meriwether Lewis Invites A Congressman and Inventor to President Thomas Jefferson’s Glittering White House Table

Only two other documents of Lewis during his time as Jefferson’s secretary are known to have reached the market

President Jefferson’s salary was $25,000, seemingly magnificent for the times, but he was expected to cover not only openhanded hospitality in the Executive Mansion, but upkeep, incidental repairs, furniture, livery, a carriage and feed for the horses, food for the servants, and other outlays as well. No expense account in the modern sense existed.

Jefferson loved to entertain and his dinners were usually given in a dining room on the mansion’s south front; generally the company numbered fourteen. The hour for dining was four o’clock; the style was easy and informal. Rules of precedence were abolished, titles ignored. The host, a tall, lean man of distinction and sensitivity in his early sixties, would typically be clothed in a neat though casual manner, wearing twilled corduroy breeches, scarlet embroidered waistcoat under a more somberly colored coat, and satinette shoes comfortably worn—less costly and splendid apparel than the blue livery coats, trimmed with silver lace, worn by his servants. While Congress was in session Jefferson extensively entertained representatives and senators, often holding three banquets a week for them. He also invited diplomats, distinguished travellers, and men of science; he was interested in everyone. When Congress recessed and he had not yet left for Monticello, his guests included plain citizens of every rank as well as writers, explorers, and Indian chiefs. His daughter Martha and other ladies were occasionally in the company. Jefferson felt strongly that he wanted meet and eat dinner with all the members of Congress. And during his term, he did this. It was a systematic approach that began really in earnest in 1805. But many dinners also occurred earlier.

Anything connecting the President to Meriwether Lewis, the man he chose to open the West to the expansion of the nation, is as compelling as it is uncommon. For a short period of time before he left for the West as an explorer with his Corps of Discovery, Lewis was was a personal aide to President Jefferson. He learned from Jefferson, read his books, met with his friends, and performed some of the formal acts of the assistant to the President of the United States. Also, beginning in 1802 and only extending into 1803, he would take specially created printed invitations and fill them in, thereby inviting Jefferson’s guests for him. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson notes that a document in the Chicago Historical Society, dated January 27, 1802, is perhaps the oldest surviving example of this. This document, offered here, is only 6 days later. It is perhaps the earliest known example to reach the market. In fact, our searches have discovered none of these in Lewis’s hand that have come up for sale before. In fact, only two documents of Lewis during his time as Jefferson’s secretary relating to that work have, according to public records dating back at least 40 years, reached that market. We carried one of these.

Nathan Read is best known as an inventor. During his long life, however, he pursued many different careers: member of Congress, jurist, iron manufacturer, farmer, apothecary, and educator. When Congress passed the first patent act – the “Act to Promote Progress in the Useful Arts” in 1790 – Read petitioned for patents on several of his inventions. These included a light multi-tubular boiler, an improved double acting steam engine, a paddle wheel operated steamboat, and a steam driven land carriage. Read subsequently learned that the use of paddle wheels was not an original idea and presented a new petition to Congress in 1791 for a steamboat propelled by a chain wheel. He also withdrew his plans for a steam rod carriage when it did not quickly gain acceptance. Read’s son, David, and other defenders subsequently maintained that Read should be considered the original inventor of both the paddle wheel operated steamboat (his invention predated Robert Fulton’s 1807 steamboat) and the automobile. In 1802, he was a Congressman from Massachusetts.

Document, partially printed, partially manuscript in the hand of Meriwether Lewis, Washington, February 4, 1802, to Congressman Nathan Read. “Th: Jefferson requests the favor of the Honorable Mr. Read to dine with him the day after tomorrow at half after three or at whatever later hour the house may rise. The favor of an answer is asked.”

The same day as the dinner, Congress declared war on Tripoli.

The dinner itself is one of the most famous Jefferson had, mainly because it has come down through history as one of our only accounts of what Jefferson served at his great dinners. Manasseh Cutler wrote of this very in his journal, “Dined at the President’s-Messrs. Hill­house, Foster, and Ross, of the Senate; General Bond, Wads­worth, Woods, Hastings, Tenney, Read, and myself. Dinner not as elegant as when we dined before. Rice soup, round of beef, turkey, mutton, ham, loin of veal, cutlets of mutton or veal, fried eggs, fried beef, a pie called macaroni, which ap­peared to be a rich crust filled with the strillions of onions or shallots, which I took it to be, tasted very strong, and not agreeable. Mr. Lewis told me there were none in it; it was an Italian dish, and what appeared like onions was made of flour and butter, with a particularly strong liquor mixed with them. Ice-cream very good, crust wholly dried, crumbled into thin flakes; a dish somewhat like a pudding – inside white as milk or curd, very porous and light, covered with a cream sauce – very fine. Many other jimcracks, a great variety of fruit, plenty of wines and good. President social. We drank tea and viewed again the great cheese.”