RC ( DLC ); addressed: “Monsieur De Jefferson ministre des affaires etrangeres à philadelphie”; endorsed by TJ as received 17 Dec. 1793 and so recorded in SJL .

Joseph Dombey (1742–94), a French physician and botanist who had undertaken a noted botanical expedition to South America on behalf of the French crown from 1777 to 1785, was currently serving as surgeon of the Lyon military hospital. In December 1793 Dombey was commissioned by the Committee of Public Safety to journey to the United States in order to deliver the standards for the new metric system and purchase grain for the French Republic, but while on his way to America he was captured at sea by the British and died in a prison on Montserrat (Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, 17 vols. [Paris, 1933– ], xi, 468–70; DSB description begins Charles C. Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, New York, 1970–80, 16 vols. description ends , iv, 156–7).