Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 4
I1 must beg you would excuse my frequent application to you relative to the Libeling of Mr. John Simpson’s Estate,2 which is now under the improvement of Mr. Joseph Barrell. A few days ago Mr. Soley and myself waited on you respecting this matter, and you were pleas’d to say, that you would have it Libeld this Court. Since that day I have seen Mr. Price who inform’d me that the above Estate is not Libeled, which suppose was omitted through the great hurry of Business. Necesity urges the importunity and of addressing you in this way—and permit me again to request the favor of haveing it Libeled this Court. The Demand I have to exhibit against the Estate is the greater part of what I have in the World—and am greatly necesitated for the want of it.
Nathaniel Glover (1756–1790) started a mercantile career in Boston but at the age of twenty-one inherited a fortune from his father and retired from business. Thereafter he “devoted himself to literary pursuits” (Anna Glover, Glover Memorials and Genealogies [Boston, 1867], 299–300). As a first cousin to John Simpson 208 and his closest relative still in America, Glover is here seeking clarification on the status of Simpson’s estate (Jones, Loyalists of Massachusetts, 261–262).
John Simpson (d. 1777) and his brother Jonathan (1753–1834) were involved in the family mercantile business. At the evacuation of Boston virtually all of the family left and scattered, some to Halifax, others to London. John went to New York, where he died. After the war Jonathan returned to Boston and reclaimed some of the family properties but eventually lost them all (Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 18:154–158).