# James Neelly to William Eustis (Secretary of War), "Chickasaw agency", 18 October 1809 — a $90 draft for transporting the prisoner George Laneheart to Nashville; read from the manuscript image reproduced in We Proceeded On

CITATION (primary): James Neelly to the Secretary of War, Chickasaw Agency, 18 Oct. 1809, Letters Received by the Secretary of War, Registered Series, RG 107, M221, roll 27, National Archives (Gale's n. 23; she also cites Starrs & Gale, The Death of Meriwether Lewis, 346-47, and Gale, Meriwether Lewis: The Assassination of an American Hero, 423-24). The item number on the roll is not given by Gale.
CITATION (image used): Kira Gale, "A Cold Case Mystery: Why Didn't Meriwether Lewis's Two Best Friends Investigate His Death?," We Proceeded On 42:4 (Nov. 2016), p. 26 (PDF page 28), photograph of the manuscript (601 x 723 px in the PDF), captioned in the text: "on the very same day that Brahan was writing his letters, October 18, James Neelly was writing his own letter at the Indian Agency near Houston, Mississippi, to Secretary of War William Eustis asking to be reimbursed for $90 (which was a month's pay for Neelly), which he had spent paying someone else to take the saddlebag money thief to jail in Nashville."
URL fetched: https://lewisandclark.org/wpo/pdf/vol42no4.pdf (image extracted with PyMuPDF and enlarged x3)
DATE FETCHED: 2026-09-14
TRANSCRIPTION: FACSIMILE-READ from a small, low-contrast reproduction of the manuscript; the hand is cursive and several words are doubtful (marked [?]). The date reads "october 18th 1809" to me, as Gale reads it, but the day figure is not beyond doubt on this image ("18" could conceivably be "13" or "10"); the date should not be built on without the NARA roll. Line breaks as in the manuscript ("/" marks the end of a manuscript line). The marginal "$90" stands beside the third line. This is the only letter of Neelly's in his own hand (or at least not in Brahan's hand) that was obtained; compare the Princeton editors' source note on his 18 Oct. 1809 letter to Jefferson: "RC (DLC); in John Brahan's hand, signed by Neelly".

----- TEXT AS READ FROM THE IMAGE -----

Chickasaw agency october 18th [?] 1809 /
Sir I have this day taken the / liberty of Drawing on you in / favour of Jeremiah [Chore?] for service[s] / rendered the united States by guarding / and transporting George Lanehart [? Gale's n. 22: "George Laneheart"] / (a prisoner charged with felony) / from the Chickasaw nation / to nashville and oblige which / Draft I hope you will [word struck through] / honour at sight and charge the / same to acct. of your most Obt. / humble servant / J. Neelly u.s. agent / to the Chickasaws
The Honl. / William Eustis Esqr. / Secty. for the Dept. / of war
[margin, beside "rendered ...":] $90

----- NOTES -----
- Gale's reading of the document's purpose (n. 22): the prisoner George Laneheart "had stolen saddlebags belonging to Colonel Joseph Van Meter which had been placed in the safekeeping of inn owner James Colbert" and "appeared before the judge on November 3, 1809" (court record, NARA Atlanta, Mississippi Territory, R MI315). Neelly's advertisement about the theft, dated 3 Oct. 1809, ran in the Nashville Democratic Clarion of 20 Oct. 1809 (see sources/1809-10-20_nashville_democratic_clarion_FRAGMENTS.md).
- Gale uses this letter to argue that Neelly was at the Chickasaw Agency, not at Nashville, on 18 Oct. 1809 and that the Nashville letter to Jefferson bearing his name was "forged" by Brahan. The Princeton editors say the Jefferson letter is "in John Brahan's hand, signed by Neelly" and that a duplicate "entirely in a clerk's hand" also exists; Brahan himself wrote to Jefferson the same day that "The following Circumstances attending this unhappy affair I have obtained from Major James Neelly". Danisi (WPO 40:4, 2014) explains Neelly's use of amanuenses by rheumatism ("could barely write") and prints a May 1812 note in Neelly's own hand. The hand of the present draft, if it is Neelly's, is a fluent clerical hand; it may equally be that of a clerk or of Neelly's son.