Henry Knox, A.L.S. Thomaston [Maine], 28 November 1799 : to Henry Jackson

Henry Knox, A.L.S. Thomaston [Maine], 28 November 1799 : to Henry Jackson

Thomaston, Me. 1782

[2] p. ; 25 cm.

MSS L2017F147 M

Concerns his son's misbehavior that left a man wounded, Knox writes to his friend "A dagger indeed was your letter my dear friend of the 17th … a volume of words would give no adequate conception of the agony of soul in which we are plunged. We are his parents - we are bound by the ties of the human heart, and by the laws of Society, to endeavor his reformation. But the means seem to be beyond our control ..."
Henry Jackson Knox was Henry Knox's only surviving son, and named for Henry Knox’s comrade-in-arms Henry Jackson. Henry Jackson Knox lived a difficult life, often in trouble for drinking and fighting. When he was rejected from admission to the navy during the Adams administration, General Knox wrote to Thomas Jefferson, "I justify no part of his errors, or crimes. I know however he has a good heart, and hope whispers, he may reform, the fact is that his faults have been magnified into crimes, & his crimes swelled in a ten-fold degree."
Henry Jackson Knox did not succeed his father in Society membership, but Knox's grandson, Henry Knox Thatcher, joined the Massachusetts Society in 1843.

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