To Thomas Jefferson from Mrs. Noland, 15 November 1804
From Mrs. Noland
Washington near the Six Buildings
Nov. 15h. 1804—
May it please Your Excellency
The Voice of Misfortune & Misery have presumed to enter the Apartment of Your Excellency:
’Tis not common Distress, or patient suffering would have continued to have mourn’d in silince.
The Widow Noland a resident near the Six Buildings, brought up in the tender lap of sensibility & introduced into this Country from England by the late Mr. Johnstones family as a superior Domestic, has now long suffer’d under a most severe indisposition, totally friendless & helpless, save what common humanity may have drawn from the Citizens of her Vicinity.
She is now streched on her Sick-Bed surrounded by the Cries of three most promising Children, literally wanting food & raiment;
Her Caracter is will known to several Families in the Six & Seven Buildings for respectability of deportment when in health
If too many Pictures of distress are not crouded on Your Excellency the Widow Noland & her three helpless Infants may probably claim some temporary Relief on Your Philantrophy
Mr. Carlon the Bearer a respectable Citizen near the West-Market Ho: has been kind enough to Interfere in behalf of this
Unfortunate Family
RC (MoSHi: Jefferson Papers); addressed: “To His Excellency Thos. Jefferson Esqe. President of the United States”; endorsed by TJ as received 16 Nov. and so recorded in SJL.
Mrs. Noland had worked in London for Joshua Johnson, the U.S. consul. Financial difficulties forced Johnson and his family home in 1797. He was appointed superintendent of the Treasury Department stamp office in 1800 and died in 1802. After his death, his wife, Catherine Nuth Johnson, moved in with relations. Johnson’s daughter Louisa Catherine Adams mentioned “Mrs. Nowlan” twice in her writings, once in describing having learned housekeeping under her “judicious instruction” and again in 1818, after Mrs. Noland called on her in Washington (Judith S. Graham and others, eds., Diary and Autobiographical Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams, 2 vols. [Cambridge, Mass., 2013], 1:50-1, 173, 177; Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to Abigail Smith Adams, 1 Jan. 1818, in MHi: Adams Papers; Vol. 20:xxxi).
Your Philantrophy: on the day he received this letter, TJ gave $10 in charity to an unnamed recipient (, 2:1140).