Robert Fergusson and Alexander Hamilton papers

Robert Fergusson and Alexander Hamilton were buying agents for Scottish trading firms during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Both Fergusson and Hamilton were born in Scotland, but came to Maryland as young men and established themselves both as agents and as men of property. Fergusson owned Nanjemoy, an estate in Charles County, though he lived in Georgetown and later at "Mulberry Grove," also in Charles County, near Port Tobacco. Hamilton maintained a sizeable estate in Prince George's County and enslaved more than ten people at the time of his death in 1799. The papers date from 1761 to 1827, with the majority of documents dating from the 1780s and 1790s. The bulk of the papers consist of correspondence between Scottish firms such as Glassford & Company and their Maryland representatives Fergusson and Hamilton. Other documents include statements of debts incurred by planters and storekeepers with whom the agents dealt, records of the disposition of estates, and some agreements about the running of Fergusson's own estate. The collection also includes a number of legal writs from Worcestershire, England, and several drafted commentaries on a 1786 debate in the Maryland legislature on how to ease the post-Revolutionary War economic depression. The authorship and precise date of the political commentaries are unclear.