Gair Thomas (1 results)

Small 4to, in ink, approx. 42 lines and 400 words, address panel on verso of integral leaf; previous folds, some toning, all else very good. Two recent college graduates looking for purpose in Revolutionary New England. Gair, age 22, writes from Providence where he had just earned his A.M. and was about to depart to establish the Baptist church in Medfield, Mass., to his fellow recent Rhode Island College (later Brown University) graduate (and eventual Federalist senator) Dwight Foster, who was then studying law in Northampton. Foster appears to be having difficulties adjusting to studying law, presumably with the excitement of patriotic ferment bubbling up around him. Gair writes: "Your observation respecting true filicity is just. Unhappy for us . we form such wrong conceptions of it, & yet we should place our affections on anything of a temporal nature . You complain of Darknss of Mind, under which you say you labour. It must be a consolation to every unprejudiced enquirer after truth, yet tho' we are in ye present calamitous day deprived of many sacred rights, we in some good degree are indulged with Liberty of Conscience." Gair adds he is pleased to hear "your determination is Cheerfully to go, & also to do, wherever & whatever, appears duty." Gair concludes with instructions on directing correspondence to Medford.…