1849 Cover To William Meredith, US Secretary Of The Treasury At The Time, But Who Is The Sender?

the letter is to William M meredith.

i first was thinking from Robert Maskell Patterson, director us mint, but signatures dont match up form what I can google

i cant really read the letter, I mean I understand what was said but the other namens or town etc in it I dont understand, but that could be my lack of us knowledge I guess as a foreigner.

does it say gov zowie?

hoping for some help.

Dear Sir,

We received some days ago your valued favors and regret extremely that you are constrained to decline the case.

Mr Marbury of Georgetown has attended to some business for us and we have written to ascertain whether he practices in the Supreme Court.

Very Truly Yours

R Patterson & Co.

your the best john! thank you again!

They used a lot of abbreviations in business letters and now-obsolete terminology. Spelling, grammar, capitalization, hyphenation, punctuation and penmanship are also quite variable with the education level of the writer.

(Georgetown is Georgetown, DC, just like Washington, DC. To generalize broadly, there were other early post offices within the District of Columbia which have since become stations/branches of Washington or disappeared into Washington completely.)

Nice cover !

Very interesting john, thats why I cant read it properly

thanks txstamp, obviously I agree. got at the dec Kelleher sale

Great piece of American history. Nice translation.

john, what does hyphenation mean in this context. I know it as: spel-ling

would the reason for constraining (not being able to? right??) be his very recent appointment as secretary of state. he was appointed march 8th 1847

"Mr. Marbury of Geo.Town"? As in Marbury vs. Madison? It was not William Marbury himself since he passed in 1835, but perhaps his law firm headed by a descendant survived this long.

Hy Brasi I thought the same thing. I googled for 10 minutes and found nothing. My other thought was that Georgetown was a colonial city, D.C. Was barely a town. Lincoln fled the whitehouse for the Soldiers Home for the mosquitos of D.C. which was basically a drained swamp. This was when malaria, yellow fever which are mosquito vectored still existed. The other question is what was the case that Paterson was to bring before the Supreme court.
I am beginning to see what you guys see in postal history. I always skip to get to the stamps.
Cheers

hyphenation is breaking a word between syllables at the end of a line. Like re-gret in your letter above.

This may be your sender..or maybe not?

http://www.aztecclub.com/bios/patterson.htm

al e gator, great find.

i have searched all supreme court cases online but could not find anything so far.....