Browsing: Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 4

1. Stephen Sayre (1736–1818), Princeton 1757, was an international adventurer and free-lance diplomat who had spent more than a year in St. Petersburg intriguing to promote U.S.—Russian trade and his own fortune. The most recent biographical account of Sayre is in Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates (he held a Harvard M.A.), 14:204–215. Still valuable is Julian P. Boyd, “The Remarkable Adventures of Stephen Sayre,” Princeton Univ. Libr. Chronicle, 2:51–64 (Feb. 1941). The article by David W. Griffiths, “American {p. 265} Commercial Diplomacy in Russia, 1780–1783,” WMQ , 3d ser., 27:379–410 (April 1970), is informative on Sayre's Russian mission; see esp. p. 384–389.