Browsing: Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 1

1. Eunice Paine (1733–1803), sister of JA's friend and rival at the bar Robert Treat Paine. She never married and for years led a somewhat peripatetic life in the homes of her friends. In the Cranch-Palmer-Smith circle of female correspondents she used the fanciful name “Silvia,” and it is by that name that JA alludes to her in several letters that follow. (Eunice had evidently had the smallpox and, since she was staying in Boston, frequently visited the Palmer girls at the Cunninghams.) Some of her letters are published in Ralph Davol, Two Men of Taunton, Taunton, 1912; more will appear in the forthcoming collection of Paine Papers in preparation by Stephen T. Riley for the Massachusetts Historical Society.