Browsing: Early Diary of John Adams, Volume 1

1. This entry, begun on {26} upside down and continued on {25} upside down, apparently comprises a list of pleadings which JA may have copied from another lawyer’s pleadings book or book of forms, such as JA himself later compiled, with his law clerks participating. See JA, Legal Papers , 1:26–86. The daggers prefixed to certain items may possibly indicate pleadings that JA copied or intended to copy in full.

There is nothing to indicate when the list was compiled. This and the following entry, on Probate Law, are the only ones in the Diary Fragment for which an argument might be made that they belong to JA’s period of law study in Worcester, Aug. 1756–Sept. 1758. On the other hand, nothing else in the entire MS suggests that he even had it in his possession in Worcester, and the manner in which these two entries are fitted in among the materials known to date from late 1758 is against their having been written at any other time.