Jonathan Williams (1750–1815)
Bushrod Washington was a member of the United States Military Philosophical Society, which Williams founded in 1802.
Jonathan Williams was born in Boston on 20 May 1750. Educated at Harvard, he worked in a Boston bank before serving as secretary to his great-uncle Benjamin Franklin in Paris. The U.S. government subsequently employed him as an arms and supplies inspector at Nantes. In 1779 Williams married Marianne Alexander (c. 1761–1816) of Scotland. He returned to America in 1785 and settled in Philadelphia, where he was a merchant and judge of the Court of Common Pleas.
"Jonathan Williams." Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2310000552/UHIC?u=viva_uva&sid=bookmark-UHIC&xid=44c30e79. Accessed 17 Dec. 2023.
"Jonathan Williams to Thomas Jefferson, 17 September 1810," Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-03-02-0056. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 3, 12 August 1810 to 17 June 1811, ed. J. Jefferson Looney. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 93–96.]
Sidney Forman, "The United States Military Philosophical Society, 1802–1813: Scientia in Bello Pax," The William and Mary Quarterly, Volume 2, Number 3 (July 1945), 273–85.
Jonathan Williams Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
Jonathan Williams at Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Jonathan Williams at Find a Grave.
Jonathan Williams at FamilySearch.