Koscuiszko Armstrong, a minor petitioning through his father and next friend, John Armstrong, seeks to settle a dispute regarding the estate of Thade [Thaddius] Koscuiszko. Koscuiszko, a Polish officer who had been "in the service of the United States in the war of their Revolution" executed a Last Will and Testament and placed "a large fund in the hands of Thomas Jefferson Esquire" in 1798. In 1806, while Koscuiszko was in Paris, he "executed a certain instrument of writing being in the nature & of the effect of a last will or writing testamentary" in which he bequeathed $3704 to Koscuiszko Armstrong out of the funds held by Jefferson. Koscuiszko died in 1817, Jefferson declined execution of the estate, and Benjamin L. Lear became its administrator, thus coming into the possession of a sum "far exceeding" $10,000. Lear refuses to turn over the $3704 bequeathed to Armstrong, who charges that Lear has been "combining and confederating" with a Major Estko of Russia and a Monsieur Zeltner, who now resides in Switzerland and who "pretend" that Koscuiszko did not write the testamentary. Armstrong asks that Lear be compelled to reveal the amount of Koscuiszko's money in his possession, and to turn over the $3704, plus interest. A copy of Koscuiszko's 1798 will, included with the petition, states "I hereby authorise my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing negroes, from among his own or any others, and giving them liberty in my name, in giving them an education in trades or otherwise and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality which may make them good neighbours good fathers or moders husbands or wives and in their duties as citizens teaching them to be defenders of their liberty and Country and of the good order of society and in whatsoever may make them happy and useful."
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Repository: National Archives, Washington, D. C.
