Rusk: The Adventures of Gilbert Imlay 
11 
and Plunkett Fleeson, justices of the Court of Common Pleas 
in Philadelphia, and executed legal papers providing for the 
sale, by his Kentucky attorneys, of his extensive lands in Jef- 
ferson County to Silas Talbott of Philadelphia.®^ Not long 
after he had transacted this legal business, Imlay was again 
in Richmond. It is likely that he was there to receive in per- 
son patents issued to him on November 14 for a considerable 
tract of land in Fayette County, Kentucky.®® On the third of 
December he made a small payment to Colonel John Camp- 
bell®® on account of his debt to Rogers. The record of this 
transaction seems to be the last substantial evidence of Imlay’s 
presence in the United States. And according to testimony 
offered in the Kentucky courts during the following year — 
testimony which, for a number of reasons, may be accepted 
as convincing — Imlay left the continent of America before 
the end of 1786.®^ 
leaving Forman’s Regiment, a time when he might well have appeared in the capital, 
which had recently been evacuated by the British. 
See Deed Records, Book 1, Nelson County Court, as cited above. The transfer 
of these lands was not completed until June of the following year, presumably after 
Imlay had left the continent of America. At that time Benjamin Sebastian received 
from Talbott, on behalf of his principal, a total of £750 in Pennsylvania money and 
12,771 Spanish milled dollai’s. Thus Imlay’s receipts averaged about a dollar an acre, 
which, according to Thomas Jefferson {Writings, ed. Ford, IV, 472), was the usual price 
for Kentucky land at that time. 
See Grant Books for 1786, Land Office, Richmond, Virginia. 
See Campbell’s indorsement, December 3, 1786, on Rogei's’s order of December 9, 
1785, as cited above. 
See Hite’s bill of complaint against Imlay and Ogden (file of Chancery Decrees, 
1798 to 1800, Nelson County Circuit Court, as cited above), in which Hite testifies 
“That the said Deft Imlay some time in the fall of the said year [1785] left this Dis- 
trict and as your orator hath been informed sometim^ in the year 1786 left the Conti- 
nent of America, and that your Orator hath never since heard of him’’. It may be 
said for the credibility of Hite’s testimony that he was in a position to be well in- 
formed, as he must have been acquainted with Imlay’s former friends and associates in 
Kentucky. In December, 1784, he had become an inspector whose duty it was to 
examine men nominated by George May to be deputy surveyors in Jefferson County : 
and at the same time his son, Abraham, had received an appointment as deputy sur- 
veyor (Minute Book No. 1, 1784-1785, Jefferson County Court, p. 77). Hite was, more- 
over, as is shown by his will (Will Book No. 1, Jefferson County Court, pp. 51-54) a 
man of considerable wealth and influence : his executors were required to give bond for 
£5000. But aside from the weight of Hite’s testimony there is almost conclusive evi- 
dence that Imlay, after 1786, kept clear of Kentucky at least, for the Supreme Court 
of the District was unsuccessful in its attempts to find him, in spite of the fact that 
he had been known in all quarters of Kentucky, The usual conjecture of his biographers 
that he remained in Kentucks'^ till about 1792 seems to be based almost wholly upon the 
assumption that A TopographiGal Description was written in the form of letters sent 
from Kentucky. For evidence tending to show that Imlay may have remained in America 
for more than a year after quitting Kentucky, see a letter to Arthur Lee, dated 
March 5, 1787, and written from Richmond, apparently by John Marshall, later the Chief 
Justice (R. H. Lee’s Life of Arthiir Lee, II, 321). The first paragraph, in which 
occurs the only mention of Gilbert Imlay— if, as seems likely, the Mr. Imlay of the 
letter is he is as follows: “Your favour of the 10th of January is now before me. 
