Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 2

1. First entry in D/JA/47. This is a small quarto volume bound in marbled boards and may well be one of the two “Account Books” or “Memd. Book” purchased by the Navy Board for JA's use on his voyage and mission; see John Bradford to JA, 11? Feb. 1778 and enclosures (Adams Papers); the enclosures are reproduced in this volume List of Stores Sent on Board the Continental Frigate Boston, February 1778 facing page 194 . The book contains about a hundred pages of journal entries, 13 Feb. 1778–26 April 1779, and though not nearly filled it was doubtless left home when JA sailed for Europe again in Nov. 1779. Years later the blank leaves were thriftily used for transcripts of JA's earliest Diary booklets, 1755–1761, made under the supervision of JQA; see Introduction.

When JA arrived home from Congress on 27 Nov. 1777, he had every expectation of a long leave and began to pick up the threads of his legal practice. But in York, Penna., on the following day Congress elected him a joint commissioner with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee to represent the United States in France, Silas Deane having been recalled on 21 Nov. ( JCC , 9:946–947, 975). JA's commission, erroneously dated 27 (instead of 28) Nov., was enclosed in a letter to him from Richard Henry Lee and James Lovell, “In Committee for foreign Affairs,” York, 3 Dec. (Adams Papers; JA, Works , 7:6–7). “After much Agitation of mind and a thousand reveries,” as he says in his Autobiography, JA announced his acceptance in a letter to President Henry Laurens, 23 Dec. (PCC, No. 84, I; Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev. 2:458).

2. In what is now Quincy Bay, though the name “Moon Head” is confusing and has been much disputed. There was and still remains a “Moon Head” on Moon Island off the tip of Squantum, the peninsula that encloses Quincy Bay on the north. But this Moon Head could not have been accessible by foot and is thus ruled out as the place from which JA embarked. Family and local tradition in Quincy long designated a low eminence on the shore near Norton Quincy's house and just opposite Half Moon Island as the spot, but when some antiquarian-minded friends sent CFA a sketch of the ground in 1877 he declined to interpret what JA meant by Moon Head and in effect declared the problem insoluble (Cyrus Woodman to James Baxter, 10 Aug. 1877, enclosed in Baxter to CFA, 13 Aug., Adams Papers; CFA to Baxter, 15 Aug., LbC, Adams Papers). Two bits of evidence, hitherto overlooked, settle the question where JA embarked from, though not why he called it what he did. The first is in a letter from AA to John Thaxter, 15–18 Feb. 1778, in which she says that her husband and son “embarked from this Town, the place you well know, Hofs Neck” (MHi:Waterston Coll.). The second is a passage in JA's Autobiography that was not published by CFA: “In our Way [from Norton Quincy's house] We made an halt of a few minutes at the House of Mr. Seth Spear on Hoffs neck, where some Sailors belonging to our barge had been waiting for us.” He then relates the conversation that passed between him and Mrs. Spear, who predicted an unfavorable voyage. Clearly, then, the party embarked from Hough's Neck, the southern extremity of Quincy Bay. This point was directly on the way to Nantasket Roads, where the Boston was anchored. Capt. Tucker's logbook (see the following paragraph) has this entry for 13 Feb. 1778: “I haveing Some Capital business at Brantre Send my boat on Shore to Georges Island [in Nantasket Roads] and brought {p. 271} off a Pilot to Conduct me their att 10 AM Proceeded their finisht my business and Returned on board by 5 PM.”

The original logbook of the Boston, a 24–gun Continental frigate, is in the Samuel Tucker Papers (MH) and forms a valuable supplement to JA's record of this voyage; it is printed with reasonable fidelity as an appendix to Sheppard, Tucker , p. 261–327. Tucker prepared what he called “An Abstract of a Journal Kept ... on Board the Contl. Frigate Boston,” and presented it to JA in 1791 (Adams Papers, Microfilms, Reel No. 342). The “Abstract” differs in many details from the logbook, a fact which accounts for the variations between material quoted from the log in our notes and quotations attributed to it in notes by CFA, who used the “Abstract” when editing JA's Diary (JA, Works , 3:95 ff.).

3. William Vernon Jr., College of New Jersey 1776, was going to France to gain experience in trade; after a brief stay at Bordeaux he entered the house of “Mr. Revellat ainé, one of the Principal Negociants” of Montauban in Guienne, declining an offer by JA to serve as his secretary (entry of 16 Feb., below; Vernon Jr. to JA, 10 April, 16 May, 26 Sept. 1778; JA to Vernon Jr., 12 May, 15 Sept. 1778, both LbC; JA to Vernon Sr., 2 Dec. 1778, LbC; all in Adams Papers). As for Jesse Deane, he was placed with JQA and other young Americans in M. Le Coeur's private boarding school in Passy. He stayed in Europe five years, spending the last two of them with his father in Ghent and London. Returning to America in 1783, he joined a business enterprise in Hartford, but was apparently not successful. See entry of 14 April, note, below; Deane Papers , index, under his name.

On Nicolas Nöel, chirurgien-major in the French army, see Lasseray, Les français sous les treize étoiles , 2:342–345. The official ship's doctor was Benjamin Brown, later a member of Congress from Massachusetts (Sheppard, Tucker , p. 84 and passim).