Summary Information
Samuel Relf Collected Correspondence and Biographies
1801-1807, 1972
Micro 623
1 reel of microfilm (35mm)
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Ten letters, 1801-1807, written by William Tayler, a London businessman, to Samuel Relf, editor and owner of the National Gazette of Philadelphia; and ten letters, 1802-1803, written by William Poyntell, a Philadelphia merchant traveling in Europe, to his wife Ann. (William and Ann Poyntell were the parents of Relf's wife, Sarah Poyntell Relf; William Tayler was an uncle of William Poyntell.) The letters were, in fact, news dispatches intended for publication in the Gazette, reporting on current political, military, and naval developments in Europe, or on social and cultural events in England and on the Continent. Included also are handwritten biographical sketches (1972) by Samuel Relf Durand of Samuel and Sarah Relf's daughter Ann Relf Kemper and her husband Bishop Jackson Kemper, Sarah Poyntell Relf, Samuel Relf, Anne Wilcocks Poyntell, and William Poyntell; and photographic copies of portraits by Rembrandt Peale of Samuel Relf and William Poyntell.
English
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-micr0623 ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Biography/History
Samuel Relf (1776-1823), a respected journalist, and editor and owner of the National Gazette of Philadelphia, is better-remembered by posterity than either of his contemporaries whose letters constitute this collection. Relf was born in Virginia on March 22, 1776, and at an early age was brought by his mother to Philadelphia. As editor and owner of the National Gazette, he made his imprint on the community. In 1819, however, due to financial reverses he lost the paper. Reif was also author of a novel, Infidelity, or the Victims of Sentiment (Philadelphia, 1797).[1] He died in Philadelphia at age 47 on February 14, 1823. His widow, Sarah Poyntell Relf, the oldest daughter of William and Ann Poyntell, was born September 30, 1780 and died on September 5, 1865.[2]
William Poyntell , son of Jonathan and Anne Tayler Poyntell, was the father-in-law of Samuel Relf. He was born in Oxfordshire, England on March 23, 1756. He came to Philadelphia as a boy of fifteen, and at the time of his death on September 10, 1811 was a well-to-do, retired Philadelphia merchant. His widow, Ann, died on October 6, 1829 at the age of seventy. William and Ann Poyntell and at least five of their children, including a young William (1791-1817), are buried in St. Peter's Churchyard, Philadelphia.[3]
William Tayler , whose letters appear in the collection, was an uncle of William Poyntell. He apparently lived in England and owned a London business. He was also a correspondent in London for the National Gazette. Other than what can be discerned from his letters, nothing is known about him.
Scope and Content Note
The microfilm of the Samuel Relf Collected Correspondence and Biographies includes letters from William Poyntell to his wife, and letters from William Tayler to Samuel Relf. The ten Poyntell letters date from July 4, 1802 to June 23, 1803. They were written while Poyntell traveled through western Europe on a trip apparently undertaken for pleasure only. However, in one letter Poyntell mentioned sending a sixty-to-seventy page dispatch (his journal?) describing his impressions of Europe to his son-in-law, Samuel Relf. The latter document was not with the letters in this collection when it was loaned to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for microfilming, but it is certain that the news from Europe in Poyntell's letters to his wife was intended to be used by Relf for publication. In the letters preserved here, Poyntell described his various travel experiences in detail as he moved through England, Scotland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. The correspondence is not complete; there are references in the letters to other letters not in the collection. Poyntell's persistent misspellings of French and German place-names indicate his unfamiliarity with languages other than English, and although he visited the usual points of interest and talked to prominent citizens, he seemed to have slight understanding of, or sympathy with, the societies of which they were part. He was scandalized in Brussels to find people playing cards on Sunday; and showed no empathy for French life, as when he wrote: “It [Paris] is all very well to see but give me the quiet and simple scenes of America in preference to all the splendor and dissipations of Europe.” Despite the shortcomings of the letters, something of the spirit of Europe at that time has been preserved. Poyntell's correspondence may well be valuable, because so few Americans were abroad and recording their impressions at that time.
The ten Tayler letters date from July 1, 1801 to March 18, 1807. Judging from the references within them, they constitute only a fraction of the total correspondence between the two men. The letters were reports on current political, military, and naval developments in Europe and were meant for publication in the National Gazette. Since all of Tayler's dispatches originated from London and were the products of second-hand information-gathering, they often show only superficial knowledge and perception of the processes underlying the events. A week before the Battle of Trafalgar, Tayler was discounting the possibility of renewed war in Europe, probably an understandable misreading of the situation considering the difficulties of diplomatic reporting. Tayler's correspondence is perhaps valuable less for the information contained therein than for revealing something of the journalistic methods and standards of the time.
The handwritten biographical sketches of Ann Relf Kemper, Bishop Jackson Kemper, Sarah Poyntell Relf, Samuel Relf, Anne Wilcocks Poyntell, and William Poyntell, which follow the letters on the microfilm, were written in 1972 by Samuel Relf Durand, a descendant of William Poyntell and Samuel Relf, and are accompanied by photographic copies of portraits by Rembrandt Peale of Samuel Relf and William Poyntell.
Provenance
William Tayler's letters (1801-1807) were written to Relf; and at some undetermined time, Reif also acquired the letters which his father-in-law, William Poyntell, had written to his wife from abroad in 1802 and 1803. It is presumed that after Relf's death the letters passed to his daughter Ann (born December 16, 1803; died May 15, 1832 at Norwalk, Connecticut), who on October 9, 1821 had married Jackson Kemper (1789-1870), then a Protestant Episcopal priest in Philadelphia. Kemper later served as a pioneer Episcopal missionary in the Midwest, and as the first diocesan bishop of the Episcopal Church in Wisconsin. The originals of the Poyntell and Tayler letters in this microfilm remain in the possession of the descendants of Bishop Kemper and Ann Relf Kemper.
The handwritten biographical sketches were loaned to the Historical Society in September 1979 by Samuel Relf Durand along with photographic copies of portraits by Rembrandt Peale of Samuel Relf and William Poyntell. Durand also loaned for copying a letter written by William Tayler to Samuel Relf on September 5, 1805, with the request that these items be added to the Tayler and Poyntell letters previously loaned to the Society for microfilming by Mrs. Charles B. Jackson of Nashotah, Wisconsin, also a Poyntell-Relf-Kemper descendant.
Administrative/Restriction Information
Letters loaned for copying by Mrs. Charles B. Jackson, Nashotah, Wisconsin, 1976; biographies and photographs loaned by Samuel Relf Durand, Palo Alto, California, 1979. Accession Number: M76-578; M79-527
Processed by V. Paul Rood and Joanne Hohler, 1978-1979.
Notes:
[1]
Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, ed. Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, volume V. (New York, 1888), p. 219.
[2]
Bronson, William White. The Inscriptions in St. Peter's Churchyard, Philadelphia. (Camden, 1879), pp. 44-45, 251-252, 260, and passim.
[3]
Ibid.
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