Auction Closing: June 8, 2024 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time
Lot Number: 20
Estimate Range: $600 - $800
South Carolina Congressman Benjamin Huger Autographed Note Signed Inviting President James and First Lady Dolley Madison to Dinner

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BENJAMIN HUGER (1768-1823). Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from South Carolina (1799-1805) and elected to the Fourteenth U.S. Congress, serving from March 4, 1815 to March 3, 1817.

c. 1815 Autograph Note Signed to President James Madison, inviting the President and First Lady Dolley Madison to dinner, Signed (in the 3rd person), "Mr. & Mrs. Huger". Dated “Dec. 10th” (no year date, but dates from 1815-1816, when Dec. 10th fell during Huger's term in Congress during Madison's Presidency). Choice, handwritten in rich fine brown pen on clean high quality wove period paper. Measures 5" x 8". Congressman Huger's Invitation to James & Dolley Madison reads, in full:

"Mr. & Mrs. Huger will do themselves the Honor of waiting on Mr. & Mrs. Madison to dinner on Saturday next at 4 o'clock.

Dec'r 10th"

Addressed on the reverse to "The President of the United States"

Provenance: from the James Madison papers offered for sale in 1894 by Edward Boker Sterling, (1851-1925), a stamp, coin and autograph dealer of Trenton, NJ. Still in Sterling's original folder with his handstamp at bottom.


Benjamin Huger (1768 - July 7, 1823) was a United States Congressman, a Representative from South Carolina. Born at or near Charleston in the Province of South Carolina in 1768, he pursued an academic course and engaged in the cultivation of rice on the Waccamaw River.

He was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1796 to 1798, and was elected as a Federalist to the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth U.S. Congresses, serving from March 4, 1799 to March 3, 1805.

He was again a member of the State house of representatives from 1806 to 1813, and was then elected to the Fourteenth U.S. Congress, serving from March 4, 1815 to March 3, 1817.

He was a member of the South Carolina Senate from 1818 to 1823 and served as its president from 1819 to 1822. He died on his estate on Waccamaw River, near Georgetown, South Carolina; interment was in All Saints' Churchyard. A portrait of Huger was engraved by the famous artist St. Memin.