I have the pleasure to inform you that the United States in Congress assembled have in Conformity to their Ordanance of the 20 May 1785 elected you a Surveyor for the state of Rhode island in the room of Mr Harris resigned.(1) I enclose you a copy of the Ordanance (2) & the minute of yr appointmt. & beg leave to refer you to Mr T. Hutchins the geographer for further information & instructions.
I am Sr.(3)
1 For Caleb Harris' resignation of this post and Sproat's appointment, see Thomson to Harris, February 24, note 2; and JCC, 30:294.
2 JCC, 28:375-81.
3 Also this day Thomson's clerk John Fisher wrote the following letter to New Jersey governor William Livingston in response to an "application" that had been made to the Secretary's office.
"The Honorable Mr Symmes a Delegate in Congress for your State, made application to this office, for a Copy of the Impost Law, passed last session by the Legislature of the State of New York, in order to transmit it to your Excellency, for the information of your Legislature; he receiving very hastily on Saturday last, intelligence of Mrs. Symme's extreme illness (who is now at Lamington), and requesting his immediate attendance, forgot to enclose the Act above mentioned. He wrote me from Elizabethtown and requested, I would forward it to your Excellency, which I have the Honor to do by this day's Stage. Mr Symmes would have wrote to Mr Hornblower on the subject, but supposed he would be out of Town." Livingston Papers, MHi.