Note 213 — Chapter LII

Andrew Ellicott was an American engineer of note. Born in Pennsylvania (1754) of Quaker ancestry, he passed his early life in Maryland, devoting himself especially to mathematical studies. In Baltimore and Philadelphia he became a friend of Washington and Franklin; and at their suggestion was employed to define the boundary between Virginia and Pennsylvania, and later that between New York and Pennsylvania. In 1792, he was appointed surveyor-general of the United States. He also assisted in laying out the national capital. While acting as commissioner for adjusting the southern boundary of the United States with Spain, according to the treaty of 1795, Ellicott encountered serious diplomatic difficulties, and alienated a party of the English inhabitants of the Natchez district. Claiborne’s animadversions, however, in his Mississippi, seem hardly borne out by the facts. In 1808, Ellicott was appointed secretary of the Pennsylvania land-office; and four years later, professor of mathematics at West Point, where he died in 1820. His journal during his employment in the Southwest, is valuable as a record of conditions in that region.

Stephen Minor was a Pennsylvanian by birth, educated at Princeton, and early came west to explore the new country. At St. Louis he was persuaded to convey some dispatches to the governor-general of Louisiana at New Orleans, who, fancying the frank but politic young American, offered him a position in the Spanish army. Minor served the Spaniards with address and fidelity. Taking no advantage of his position, he remained loyal to Spain, at the same time becoming popular with the English-speaking inhabitants of the Natchez district, where he was stationed. He was finally promoted to the governorship of Natchez, which he retained until its surrender to the United States (1798), when he became an American citizen, and died at Concord, Mississippi.—Ed.