Document 52819 |

Mavi Boncuk | Document 52819

 MARTIN VAN BUREN.

Manuscript LS: "M. Van Buren" as Jackson's Secretary of State, 2p, 8x9¾ (front and verso).

Washington, 1831 April 19. To David Offley, Smyrna.

In part: "By Commission from the President of the United States...under date of the 21st July 1828 & the 12th Sept 1829, you was (sic) each time appointed a Commissioner to execute certain duties and...you was (sic) informed that such compensation would be made for your services as Congress may allow...To enable the President to liquidate your claim, you will please furnish his Department with an account (the amount left in blank) stating the time that you was (sic) actually engaged in the business of each Commissioner...." On May 7, 1830, a treaty of commerce and navigation was signed by DAVID OFFLEY, Charles Rhind[1] and James Biddle as commissioners on the part of the United States and by Mahommed Hamed, Reis Effendi, on the part of the Sublime Porte at Constantinople. On February 25, 1831, Congress voted compensation of $4500 per annum "for the time that each of them was engaged in the said negotiation" with the Sublime Porte. In 1832, President Jackson appointed David Offley, "our present commercial agent at Smyrna, to be consul of the United States at that place". Smyrna, on the Aegean Sea, is now Izmir, Turkey. Fragile, worn, torn and stained. Folds. Vertical fold touches "M".

Note for the intriguing mind:
[1] Spanish mustangs weren’t the only source of Oriental blood in the early Quarter Horse. In fact, several Arabian stallions from one of the first groups of desert-bred American imports made their mark in Texas prior to the Civil War.

Dr. George Feris, Richmond, Texas, developed an admiration for Oriental horses during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), when he rode a horse whose first dam was sired by Amurath, a Barb stallion imported to New York from Tripoli in 1838. The second dam of Feris’ mount was sired by Stamboul, an Arabian given to Charles Rhind, U.S. minister to Turkey, by the Sultan of Constantinople.

“For style, courage and endurance, he took the palm from all others, but was unfortunately killed by a lance thrust at the Battle of Buena Vista,” Feris wrote to Randolph Huntington in 1887.