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Biography/History:
William Charles Cole Claiborne was born in Sussex County, Virginia, in 1775, but as a child, he moved to New York City. He later studied law in Richmond, Virginia, and after being admitted to the bar, he practiced law in Sullivan County, Tennessee. In 1796, Claiborne served as a delegate to the Tennessee constitutional convention, and he was appointed as a judge of the Tennessee Superior Court. Claiborne served as a United States congressman from Tennessee between 1797 to 1801. He was appointed as Mississippi territorial governor by President Thomas Jefferson in 1801, serving until 1805. President Jefferson also appointed him as one of the commissioners responsible for taking possession of Louisiana after it was purchased from France in 1803. Claiborne served as governor of the Orleans Territory from 1804 to 1812 and as governor of Louisiana from 1812 to 1816. He was elected as a United States senator from Louisiana, but he served less than a year in that capacity before his death in New Orleans on November 23, 1817. William Charles Cole Claiborne was the brother of Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne and the uncle of historian J. F. H. Claiborne.
General Samuel Smith was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on July 27, 1752. He moved with his family to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1759. Smith was engaged in the mercantile and shipping trades. He served as a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the Revolutionary War; in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1790 to 1792; as a brigadier and major general in the War of 1812; as a United States congressman and senator from Maryland; and as mayor of Baltimore from 1835 to 1838. He was the brother of Robert Smith, President Jefferson’s secretary of the navy from 1801 to 1809.
Scope and Content:
This collection consists of a letter from William Charles Cole Claiborne, Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi, to General Samuel Smith, Baltimore, Maryland, dated November 26, 1801. Claiborne was asking General Smith to assist his brother, Captain Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne, who was retiring from the army and hoping to enter a mercantile business in Baltimore.
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