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Lot 179
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Thomas Paine Writes to Fellow Deist Asking Help with His Tenant Farmer and Enclosing an Essay on "Hints" for Establishing a Deistical Church
Thomas Paine Writes to Fellow Deist Asking Help with His Tenant Farmer and Enclosing an Essay on "Hints" for Establishing a Deistical Church
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Description:

Paine Thomas

Thomas Paine Writes to Fellow Deist Asking Help with His Tenant Farmer and Enclosing an Essay on “Hints” for Establishing a Deistical Church

Later endorsement on this letter quotes a New York newspaper notice of Paine’s death declaring that he “had lived long, done some good, and much harm.”

Thomas Paine, autograph letter signed, to John Fellows, July 9, 1804, New Rochelle, New York. 1 p., 6.375" x 8". Housed in a beautiful personalized presentation case.

Complete Transcript

"New Rochelle July 9th 1804

Fellow Citizen

As the weather is now getting hot in New-York and the people begin to get out of Town you may as well come up here and help me to settle my accounts with the man who lives on the place. You will be able to do this better than I shall, and in the mean time I can go on with my literary works without having my mind taken off by affairs of a different kind. I have received a packet from Governor Clinton enclosing what I wrote for. If you come up by the stage you will stop at the post office, and they will direct you the way to the farm. It is only a pleasant walk. I send you a piece for the prospect. If the plan mentioned in it is pursued it will open a way to enlarge and give establishment to the Deistical Church; but of this and some other things we will talk about when you come up, and the sooner the better.

Yours in friendship

Thomas Paine

Mr Fellows

I have not received any news-papers nor any number of the prospect since I have been here.

bring my bag up with you.

[Docketing:]

Tho’s Paine’s Letter

July 9, 1804.  died. June 8. 1809.

[Handwritten copy of the obituary that appeared in The Evening Post (New York), June 10, 1809, 3:4:]

New York June 10 1809 –

Died, on the 8. Ins. Thos Paine He had a drive to be interred in the Quaker burying-ground; & some days previous to his demise had an interview with some Quaker gentlemen on the subject; but, as he declined a renunciation of his deistical opinions, his anxious wishes were not complied with. He was yesterday interred at New Rochelle, perhaps on his own farm. I am unacquainted with his age; but he had lived long, done some good, and much harm.

[Endorsement by friend and biographer Thomas Rickman:]

The hand writing of my old friend Paine (see my life of him) author of Rights of Man, Age of Reason – Common Sense, &c &c &c / 1824 / Clio Rickman".

After an absence of fifteen years in Europe, Thomas Paine returned to the United States in October 1802. He settled in New Rochelle, New York, in the spring of 1803, on a 320-acre farm confiscated from a Loyalist and presented by the state of New York to Paine in 1784 for his services during the Revolution.

Paine spent a part of the winter of 1803-1804 in New York City, but when he returned to his farm in the spring, the farmer who had been living there for 17 or 18 years, instead of paying Paine rent, presented him with a bill for fencing. This dispute led to a lawsuit, for which Paine had to pay legal expenses. Ultimately, Paine was compelled to sell sixty acres of his land and give the farmer notice that he had to leave in April 1805. In this letter, Paine seeks the assistance of Fellows in dealing with his tenant farmer.

Paine also informed Fellows that he had received a packet from New York Governor George Clinton (1739-1812), likely verification of his title to the property as a gift of the State of New York. Clinton had been chosen by the Democratic-Republican caucus in Congress in February 1804 to replace Aaron Burr as the party’s nominee for Vice President when Thomas Jefferson sought reelection to the Presidency in November. Clinton had been governor of New York from 1777 to 1795 and again from 1801 to June 30, 1804. When Jefferson won reelection to a second term, Clinton became his vice president.

In 1804, Paine joined with Elihu Palmer (1764-1806) in founding the Theistic Society. Paine, Palmer, and Fellows, like other Deists, acknowledged the existence of God but rejected revelation and the supernatural doctrines of Christianity and other religions. Their philosophy advocated morals and good deeds without the structure of most churches. Paine also contributed a series of seventeen papers to Palmer’s newspaper, The Prospect, or View of the Moral World, which Palmer published in New York City. The newspaper failed in the spring of 1805, and Palmer died suddenly a year later in Philadelphia. Paine was unable to take over the active leadership of Deism in New York, and it gradually came to an end.

The piece that Paine sent with this letter was likely Hints toward Forming a Society for Inquiring into the Truth or Falsehood of Ancient History, so far as History is Connected with Systems of Religion Ancient and Modern, which was the ninth of Paine’s essays. It probably appeared in The Prospect later in July of 1804. It dismissed the Old Testament as “the contrivance of priest-craft” and “the work of the Pharisees of the Second Temple,” not the revelation of God, as Jews and Christians believe.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English-born intellectual, inventor, and radical pamphleteer who influenced both the American and French Revolutions. He lived and worked in England until 1774, when he migrated to Philadelphia, joining the radical artisan community there. His powerful pamphlet, Common Sense (1776), was the best-selling original work published in eighteenth-century America and had a pronounced impact on the Revolution by making the case for complete independence from Great Britain. He also published a pamphlet series, The American Crisis (thirteen in 1776-1777; three more to 1783), which helped inspire American revolutionaries. General Washington even ordered the first number to be read aloud to his men. Paine later moved to France, published the liberal Enlightenment treatise Rights of Man (1791), and won election to the French National Assembly in 1792. A Girondin, he was arrested in 1793 and narrowly escaped the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason (1794-1807). Paine believed that the American ambassador to France, Federalist Gouverneur Morris, somehow engineered his arrest. Diplomat James Monroe arranged for Paine’s release in November 1794, and Paine turned against George Washington and wrote a scathing public letter to Washington in 1796. Paine remained in France until 1802 when, at President Jefferson’s invitation, he returned to New York.

John Fellows Jr. (1759-1844) was born in Massachusetts. During the Revolutionary War, he served in the regiment of his uncle John Fellows (1733-1808) in the Massachusetts line in the siege of Boston and Battle of Bunker Hill. The younger Fellows graduated from Yale College in 1783, and became a bookseller and publisher in New York City. He supported Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans and wrote books on freemasonry and the controversy over Israel Putnam’s actions during the Revolutionary War. Fellows was a close friend of Thomas Paine after Paine returned to the United States in 1803 and boarded for a year in the same house with Paine. Fellows was also a friend and supporter of Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), who founded a deist society in New York and began publication of two deist journals, Temple of Reason in Philadelphia, and The Prospect, or View of the Moral World in New York. Later in life, Fellows was an auctioneer and a constable in the city courts. Fellows compiled Posthumous Pieces by Elihu Palmer, published in London in 1824. Fellows was also a contributor to and occasional editor of The Beacon (1836-1851), a free-thinking newspaper and journal published in New York City.

Thomas “Clio” Rickman (1760-1834) was born into a Quaker family in Lewes, Sussex, England, where Paine had been a member of the governing body for the town. Like Paine, Rickman was a member of the Headstrong Club, a debating society in Lewes. When Rickman married outside the Quaker faith, the Society of Friends expelled him from membership. He moved to London, where in 1783, he established himself as a bookseller, and also wrote political pamphlets, republican songs, and poetry. Paine lived with Rickman’s family in London for a year when completing the second part of The Rights of Man in 1791 and 1792. Rickman published his biography Life of Paine in 1819.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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