[REVOLUTIONARY WAR]. READ, James (1718-1793). Letter signed ("James Read"), regarding the exchange of British Officer Captain Antoine Juchereau Duchesnay. Reading, Pennsylvania. 26 February 1777.

1p, approx. 7 1/2 x 9 1/4 in. with integral address leaf addressed to "Samuel Cadwallader Morris, Esquire. / By favour of Captain Duchesnay." Docketed by Morris.

James Read writes to Samuel Cadwallader (sometimes Cadwalader) Morris (1743-1820) on behalf of British officer Antoine Juchereau Duchesnay. "I have the Pleasure of writing to you by a Gentleman who has been some months in Reading, and is now going to the City in Expectation of being exchanged...He is so much a stranger in Philadelphia that he may be at a Loss to get early introduced to the president of the Council of Safety, to whom he has a Letter. As you are, Dear Sir, a member of that Honorable Council, I doubt not you will do Captain Duchesnay a Service there. He would have gone with the British officers last Fall when there was nearly a general exchange but he was then in an ill State of Health...."

Antoine Juchereau Duchesnay (1740–1806) was a wealthy Canadian who had served as an ensign in French regiments during the French and Indian War. He supported the British when the Americans invaded Canada in 1775, and volunteered his services for the defense of St. Jean. He was captured and imprisoned by the Americans in 1775. He was released from captivity during the summer of 1777 and returned to Canada, where Duchesnay began rebuilding and improving his plundered estates.

James Read was the son of Charles Read who was a cousin of Deborah Read Franklin; and went into business with his widowed mother Sarah Harwood Read, 1737, in a shop next to Benjamin Franklin's. He was admitted to the bar, and removed to Reading, Pa., where he was appointed prothonotary, 1752, and subsequently and simultaneously held the offices of register of wills, clerk of Quarter Sessions, and justice of the peace; held minor appointments from the Board of War and Supreme Executive Council, 1776–77; elected to the Assembly, 1777, to the Supreme Executive Council, 1778–81, 1787–90, and to the Council of Censors, 1783; appointed register of the Court of Admiralty, 1781. “Benjamin Franklin to James Read, 17 August 1745,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0014. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 3, January 1, 1745, through June 30, 1750, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961, pp. 39–40.]

William L. Taylor

This lot is located in Cincinnati.