
The researcher I hired at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania found five letters from Joshua John Moore to a man named Tench Coxe; there were no letters there from Tench Coxe to Moore.
When I first learned about these letters, the name "Tench Coxe" rang a bell. Tench was the grandfather of Colonel Frank Coxe, who was a land baron and one of the founders of Asheville, North Carolina, my home town. Colonel Coxe built the old Battery Park Hotel in Asheville that Edwin Grove tore down and rebuilt in downtown Asheville in 1925, and that my maternal grandfather Albert Barnett managed from 1940-1950. Coxe Avenue in Asheville is named for the family.

The Coxe family in Western North Carolina was also close to the Brown family that married into my Moore line. The Browns were likewise land barons, and had known the Coxe family in Pennsylvania before the younger generations moved to North Carolina. There is an article here from the Asheville Citizen-Times that talks about Tench Coxe's connection to Asheville and North Carolina.
Tench Coxe was a controversial figure born in Philadelphia in 1755. His forbearers were wealthy and had been granted extensive swaths of land in America by King Charles II. His great-grandfather, Daniel Coxe, was a prominent English physician who was a member of the Royal Society along with astronomer Neville Maskelyne, and was nominally the governor of the Royal Colony of West Jersey without ever leaving England for the New World. The Coxe family's history with the British monarchy led people to wonder about Tench Coxe's allegiance to America at the time of the American Revolution and for a number of years thereafter.
Tench, while educated in the law, was forced by his father to become a merchant. He became a partner in his father's Philadelphia counting-house Coxe & Furman at the age of 21. According to Wikipedia, ''a counting house, or counting room, was traditionally an office in which the financial books of a business were kept. It was also the place that the business received appointments and correspondence relating to demands for payment."
Tench Coxe wore many hats in his lifetime, but he was probably best known for being a Pennsylvania representative to the 1788 Continental Congress and as an economist who had many ties to Alexander Hamilton. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Alexander Hamilton in the George Washington Administration, and co-wrote with Hamilton the notable "Report on Manufactures" in 1789.
As I've previously reported, when Joshua John Moore came to America in 1794, he and his friend Nicholas King first found work as surveyors with Robert Morris's North American Land Company, which was based in Philadelphia. After a very few years, the NALC collapsed along with Robert Morris himself, who lost his considerable wealth due to the Napoleonic Wars in Europe.
Joshua John and Nicholas King parted ways. King was appointed by Thomas Jefferson to be the Surveyor of Washington City, the new capital of America. Joshua John, however, found himself without employment at a time when he had taken a wife and had a young son, John, with a new baby on the way. As mentioned in an earlier post, not only was he out of a job, but he was owed about $800 in back wages from the NALC, which as far as I can tell, was never paid. He and his young family had to sell their furniture in Philadelphia and move in with some of his wife's relatives in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He became desperate to find employment, which you will see in his letters to Tench Coxe.
Here are the five letters, posted in their entirety, in chronological order:
July 5, 1797
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Sir:
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I have received your Letter in answer to mine on the Subject of employment, and return you my sincere Thanks for the kind Disposition which you manifest to do me service. Some opportunity may offer when least expected, but I thought that unless I informed you of my wishes, knowing me to be already in an Employment (though a very disheartening one) it might not occur to you that I wanted another.
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To your Question whether I understand Merchants Accts according to the Method of the British and American Counting houses, I do not ought to answer in the affirmative, because I have never professionally practiced in either, excepting three months previous to an intended apprenticeship to a mercantile house. I was conscious that my deafness would disqualify me from transacting much of the business which is generally done by persons in the Capacity of Clerks, and therefore declined the pursuit. Yet it would not be right to say that I am ignorant of Accts; they were a part of my Education, but never used. A little practice with Attention would soon recall them to me.
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Your recommendation of me to Mr. Rigal [?], or to any other Gentleman as may happen, be assured shall have my every Exertion to be supported with Credit; and I am,
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Sir,
With the highest respect,
Your obliged and grateful serv’t,
Joshua J. Moore
July 5th, 1797
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As you desired, I have inclosed [sic] my Bill.
____________________________________________________
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As you can see, he worried that his deafness would come in the way of getting employment, and I'm sure it winnowed down the jobs possible for him. He also alludes to a previous failed apprenticeship in a mercantile house.
November 9th of 1797
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Sir [Tench Coxe, Esq.]
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I am in great want of Employment, and very probably much more out of the way to procure it than those who have the blessing of a perfect hearing: for which reason I have no doubt you will excuse my present troubling of you.
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I hear something about the likelihood of a person in my way being now wanted by the Gentleman who has the Superintendents of the Surveys of the Lands NW of Ohio, but do not know how to or to whom to apply.
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I hear also of a discount Clerk being wanted in Bank of Penna, for which office you may be able to form some opinion whether I am capable notwithstanding my hardships of hearing; and indeed I know no one whose advice and influence is more likely to do me Service than yourself, either in the above mentioned Situations, or in any other which may be open to application.
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Your kind Consideration, advice, or influence will confer a lasting Obligation on [illegible] [address] Vine Street.
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Sir, your most respectful and obliged humble Serv’t
Joshua John Moore
N. 169 Vine Street
 ____________________________________________________
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Tench Coxe Esq.
 16th January 1799
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Mr. Moore presents his respectful compliments to Mr. Coxe, and begs leave to inform him that the firm of his Dublin Friend’s House is “[illegible address] at St. Mary's Abby [sic].
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______________________________________________________Â
Lancaster Feb 17th 1801
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Sir,
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I shall acquiesce in the terms which you yesterday thought sufficient for the draughts; under the Impression that the Opportunities of advantages which you mean hereafter to put in my way will amply compensate me. Twenty dollars was the price assented to by you.
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Permit me, however, to observe that going to you yesterday, as a Suitor [?] to a Patron – with a letter recommendatory from another well wishing patron: I went with all that depressed tone of feeling natural to the Case, and had, of course, made the most moderate change I could, consistent with the value of my time, and the welfare of my family.
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I am, Sir, very respectfully,
Your most obed’t serv’t,
Joshua J. Moore
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Your payment may either be to Mr. Jones or to myself when on my Return to the City.
____________________________________________________
It's not clear what the payment was for; but apparently Joshua John had done some drafting for him. At this point, Joshua John had moved his family to the utopian village of Beula, where he was employed as a surveyor. The final letter to Coxe asks again for the money he was owed:
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Philadelphia May 23, 1801
No. 13. South Seventh Street.
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Sir [Tench Coxe Esq., Lancaster],
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As I am now settled here with my family, after a tedious and expensive Journey, and cash would be very serviceable. I request that you will be so good as to remit me the money or part of the money due for drafting.
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I have at present nothing to employ me; but having to take a Journey to N. York in a few days, the money, if forwarded, will be useful to my family during my absence.
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I am, Sir,
Your mo. Obed’t Serv’t,
Joshua J. Moore
I don't know how Joshua John Moore met Tench Coxe, but would note that he always seemed to have friends in high places. And Tench Coxe was close friends with Mathew Carey, prominent publisher in Philadelphia, who ultimately published Moore's Traveller's Directory in 1802, and was also friends with Thomas Pinckney -- briefly the U.S. Ambassador to England -- whose services Joshua John had requested when he was making the move to America. And that's not to mention Dr. Benjamin Rush, William Rogers, Albert Gallatin, and Thomas Jefferson and the people he knew in England, including astronomer Neville Maskelyne, mathematician Malachy Hitchins, and the well-known people who gave him personal references. It's extraordinary for a deaf man who was not from a prominent family.
Next I will post about Joshua John Moore's writings inspired by George Washington's death in December, 1799.
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