Thomas Jefferson, 1802 Appointment Document

Francis Peyton (ca. 1764–1836) was a prominent Alexandria merchant and a nephew of state senator Francis Peyton of Loudoun County, Virginia. On 2 Mar. 1801, in a “midnight appointment,” John Adams nominated him a justice of the peace for Alexandria County in the District of Columbia. He was retained by TJ, however, who renominated him on 6 Jan. 1802. In that same year TJ also appointed Peyton a commissioner of bankruptcy for Alexandria County and a lieutenant colonel in the District of Columbia militia (CVSP, 8:345; JEP, 1:388, 404; RCHS, 5 [1902], 260, 279; 50 [1948–50], 388, 401; Horace Edwin Hayden, Virginia Genealogies [Washington, D.C., 1931], 500; Alexandria Times, 25 June, 9 July 1802; National Intelligencer, 31 Aug. 1836).