About
Thomas Barclay (1728-1793) was a Philadelphia merchant and diplomat. He was a partner in the Philadelphia mercantile house Carson, Barclay & Mitchell. He served on the Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence and as a consul in France from 1781 to 1787. In 1786 he negotiated a treaty with Morocco. Returning to the country in 1791, he died there in 1793. Both William Short and William Smith appear to have had a poor opinion of him.
Citation(s):
“[October 1774],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-03-02-0004-0019. [Original source: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 3, 1 January 1771–5 November 1781, ed. Donald Jackson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978, pp. 282–288.]
The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008, https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/GEWN-05-01-02-0234, accessed 26 January 2026.
George G. Shackleford, Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759-1848 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky Press, 1993), 31-32.
Priscilla H. Roberts, Thomas Barclay (1728-1793): Consul in France, Diplomat in Barbary (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2008).
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- A Philadelphia merchant indicates that he has already received two copies of a letter William Short forwarded him and that he has sent Short's…Written by: