Supervisor's Office Baltimore, February 11^th 1799 On the receipt of your letter of the 1^st instant I w[ent] to Fells Point, and after some Search, found the person therein mentioned, not at Price's, but at another Ship Yard. I call[ed] him aside, and informed him of your claim. I [undecipherable] [undecipherable: several lines obscured by fold] [to] state what he said on [this] occasion — the letter which he afterwards determined to write [to you], which is herewith enclosed. I demanded some Security for [the] payment of the money, if, after time had been allowed for necessary explanations, he should not be able to convince you that it was not justly due. He did not immediately consent to give such Security, but promised to come up to my Office the next morning. He came accordingly, and after some consideration went back with a kind of obligation which I had drawn up, and which he promised to shew to a M^r Weedon, with whom he appears to have some engagements, and procure his signature to it, if, upon consideration, they should agree that such an obligation ought to be given. He came again this day, to my office, accompanied by M^r Weedon, but did not seem inclined to give any security, untill an answer should be made to the letter already referred to which he had in the interim prepared. I readily agreed to forward his letter, but insisted on some kind of Security for the ultimate paym[ent] of the claim if it should be found due, and at length obtained M^r Weedon's Signature to the paper of which a Copy is enclosed. It is not so precise as the one I had first drawn, but I could not get a stricter obligation Signed, and I thought it better to take this than to institute a suit for the same, I believe, loose and informal as it is, that it yet secures the claim, but I cannot help wishing that there may be [something] disclosed, on further examination, Sufficient to [undecipherable: several lines obscured by fold] [and] the decency of his behaviour in the conversation I have had with him excite this sentiment, which however shall not prevent me from taking any further measures that you may hereafter think proper to suggest. I take this occasion to acknowledge your Letters of the 7^th and 14^th of December 1798. The latter arrived long before the other, and judging from it's contents that the musquets would not come in time, I applied, of those already in my hands to the purpose for which these last had been directed to be sent; a step from which no inconvenience can arise, as I mark them all in the same manner. Your letter of the 7^th was accompanied by the one from M^r Zebulon Hollingsworth of which a copy is enclosed. The musquets have not yet arrived and I have heard no more about them. Perhaps you can find the means of giving them a start from the place where they lie. I am Sir [undecipherable] Hodgdon Esq. Your Most obedient Servant John Kilty [Dorse: [36] Received / State Dep't. / Nov. 24. 1891 / M.F.O. 401810] [undecipherable: docket notation, probable reading John Kilty Supervisor No 14 Feby 11^th 1799]