156. Elizabeth Hingston to Robert Bloomfield, 11 February 1805* 

George Town, Potomac

Your Poems &c make a great bustle here; they are printing again at New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia; and before I left Philadelphia the Governor of the State of Jersey sent for me. He is an original in his manner; his name is Bloomfield, and every one of that name he meets with he sends for, and examines his genealogy to find if they spring from the same branch. I assure you I have not been so catechized since I was a baby: he seemed to wish to find himself allied to the Poet, as he was pleased to call you. He is an old man; he tells me his great-great-grandfather fled from England in the time of the revolution in England, in the time of Oliver Cromwell. He had a town in the Jerseys called Bloomfield, the inhabitants chiefly composed of that name, which he has hunted out:—he finished by telling me, if ever I wanted assistance to apply to him, as he made it an invariable rule to help his country people all he could, and particularly those of his own name.