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Browsing: Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 6
Docno: ADMS-04-06-02-0028
Recipient: Adams, Abigail
Date: 1785-04-11
Cotton Tufts to Abigail Adams
[dateline] [11 April 1785]1
[salute] Dear Cousin
I have not received any Letter either from Mr. Adams or from you since Yours, just
after your Arrival at Passy.2 We are solicitous to hear, from You—and I flatter myself that We shall for the future
have more regular Intelligence. We have had much to do in the Electioneering Way.
So far as we can judge from Accounts from different Parts of the Country, Mr. Bowd[oi]n will be elected Governor. Am doubtful whether the Lt. Governor is elected by the
People. Had Your nearest Friend been here, No Struggle would have arisen who should
have been the first Magistrate. I think there would have been a Unanimity. Mr. H[ancock] and his Adherents struggled hard to introduce Mr. C[ushin]g.3
Bror. Cranch and Sister, Betsey and Lucy are all well. Mr. P[alme]r is reduced to a deplorable Scituation as to Estate. German Town is advertised f[or sale?]4 and he still possesses his State for planning. His Daughter B[etsy] is I fear in a Hectic State.5 I had no expectation [of] writing a Line to you, But Mr. Smith presenting to me this Letter6 { 82 } and informing me that Col. Norton who will probably be the Bearer of this, will not
go on Board untill half an hour hence I could not resist the Impuls of writing. Love
to Cousins. More hereafter. Your Affectionate Frd. & Kinsman
[signed] Cotton Tufts
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “Mrs. Adams at the Honble. John Adams Esqr. Boston favd. by Capt. Grant
with A Box”; marked: “<Postage 12d>”; endorsed: “Mrs Fitchs Letter.”
Tufts wrote this letter on the blank third sheet of Mary Fitch's brief letter to AA, dated “Kingston Jamaica Jan. 11th. 1785” (Adams Papers). Fitch sent her letter with “a small Box, which contains [three?] Potts of our Country preserves and two Bottles of Cayan Pepper,” to AA in Massachusetts as a token of her appreciation for the “polite Attention” which
JA and JQA had paid to her and her husband, Eliphalet Fitch, one of JA's Boylston relations, in Europe in 1783 (see JA to JQA, 12 June 1783, above; JA, Diary and Autobiography, 3:134; JQA, Diary, 1:175, 204). Isaac Smith Sr. gave the letter and box to Cotton Tufts, who wrote the following
postscript to Fitch's text: “April 11. 1785. I have broke open this Letter and finding
that it communicates sweet Things, which as You cannot reep the Advantage of them,
personally, consulting Your Disposition I shall take the Liberty to give Your Friends
a Taste of them.” Then, after adding the text printed here, Tufts entrusted the letter
to Col. Beriah Norton. See Tufts to AA, 19 April, below.
2. Of 8 Sept. 1784, above.
3. John Hancock abruptly resigned the governorship on 29 Jan., in a winter of increasing
economic distress, political controversy, and social discord. He was succeeded by
his protégé, Lt. Gov. Thomas Cushing, but Cushing was defeated by James Bowdoin in
the spring, and the Hancock forces were out of office until the spring of 1787. See
Tufts to JA, 11 March (Adams Papers); William M. Fowler Jr., The Baron of Beacon Hill, A Biography of John Hancock, Boston, 1980, p. 255–261.
5. Whatever medical problem she had in 1785, Elizabeth Palmer, daughter of Gen. Joseph
Palmer, survived it to marry Joseph Cranch in 1790.
Docno: ADMS-04-06-02-0029
Recipient: Cranch, Mary Smith
Date: 1785-04-15
Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch
There is a Young Gentleman going from Passy in the pacquet for New York. His Name
is Chaumont, the Son of a Gentleman whose Name is well known in America. I have met
him once or twice at Dr. Franklin: whose next Neighbour he is, and he has once dinned
here: the Ministers have intrusted him with publick dispatches of importance to Congress.
He appears a modest agreeable Young Gentleman. He proposes visiting all the States
and has requested Letters of introduction from Mr. Adams, which he has given him,
to some of { 83 } our Boston Friends who will be kind enough to notice him.2 All foreigners who have visited America speak in the highest terms of the Hospitality
of the people of Boston, and with reason, for I do not believe that it is exceeded,
if equald: in any part of the World. Mr. Chaumont speaks english tolerably, so that
he will have that advantage, over many others of his Nation. Nothing can be more dissagreeable
than liveing in a Country, the language of which you cannot speak.
He has requested me to give him Letters but as I expect my son will sail in the next
pacquet, I have not been very solicitious to write this way, as it is probable the
Letters will be very old before they reach you.
I have not heard from my American Friends since December, but as the Spring opens
I begin to have my usual impressions that there are some Letters on their way. If
my Friends have any thing pressing at any time which they wish to communicate by covering
to Mr. Jay who is Minister of foreign affairs; or to Mr. Gerry whilst he is at Congress
it will come more speedily by the pacquets; I have writen by way of England when ever
a private opportunity has offerd of conveying Letters from hence; most of the Americans
who have past the winter in Paris, have left it, and are going, so that I fear we
shall be very trist, especially when Master JQA leaves us. In proportion as a person becomes necessary to us we feel their loss:
and in every way I shall feel his absence: I dare not trust myself with thinking upon
the Subject. He is now at a time of Life when it is necessary for him to Regularly
compleat his Education at some Seminary: that he may go into the Study of the Law
which he proposes; we expect he will be at Home before his Brother enters Colledge:
but if he should not, so that I should be able to write by him concerning Charles:
I must request you to take care to provide what ever is necessary for him, and to
have the Same care of him, that I would take for Yours, in the like circumstances.
Whatever expences occur you will apply to Dr. Tufts, and consult with him in all things
with respect to him. Mr. Adams and I both think that in order to prevent confusion
all money Matters should pass through the hands of the Dr, and that he should make
the necessary draughts upon Mr. Adams here, both for our sons in America and that
which is going out, always remembring that there is to be no extrodanary expences
on account of the publick Character which Mr. Adams sustains, because he is not half
so able to bear them, as he would have been if he had been only a private citizen.
In short I am weary of being obliged to eat and drink up all we have. { 84 } This is very easily done, and have company no oftner than once a week neither: I dare
say we should be able to live, and I hope educate our children in America. We shall
do no more here, and must excercise a frugality to accomplish that; which is thought
meaness here. A Minister who cannot keep a train of Servant[s], a publick table &c. is thought very little off. The Spanish Ambassodor Count d'Aranda
has no less than Seventy 50 of whom are Livery and the British minister the Duke of
Dorset who was invited to dine here to day, but was prevented by our inviting him
upon one of the days in which he gives publick dinners: he has a train of 50 servants
25 of which are in Livery and lives in every other respect answerable to that Retinue,
and So does every other foreign minister who resides here.3 It would be vastly more to my taste, and much more to my satisfaction to return to
my own Country and live in that social Friendship and that Simplicity in which I formerly
rejoiced. I take no pleasure in a life of ceremony and parade. I had rather dine in
my little room at Braintree with your family and a set of chosen o[ld] Friends, than with the Marquisses Counts and countesses Abbes and Great folks who
dine with us to day.4 Madam de la Fayette, I will however except. I should always take pleasure in her
company. She is a good and amiable Lady, exceedingly fond of her Children and attentive
to their education, passionatly attached to her Husband!!! A French Lady and fond
of her Husband!!!
Remember me to all my Dear Friends in America. Tell Cousin Betsy, that I have procured
of our gardner a parcel of Beautifull flower seeds for her, which I design sending
her by her cousin, and that she must new Name them, calling them after our family.
It is a fine season now a little too dry, but I have got some pots of flowers with
which the gardner has presented me, now flourishing in my Chamber, and the peach blossoms
are just shewing themselves. They complain here that it is very cold for the season.
We are all well. Pray is Mrs. Otis a Mother yet? I want to hear; has Mr. Cranch forgot
us that we see not his hand writing? Regards to Mr. Tyler. I hope he is very buisy
and to great purpose.5 My paper calls upon me to close. Most affectionately and tenderly Yours
[signed] Abigail Adams
1. The body of this letter may have been written, or at least drafted, on 14 April; see
note 4.
2. Jacques Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont (later known in America, where he lived after
1800, as James Le Ray) was the son of the owner of the house in Passy in which Benjamin
Franklin lived, rent-free, for nine years, { 85 } and which JA shared with Franklin in 1778–1779. JA and JQA had known young Chaumont since 1778; AA met him on 17 March 1785, if not earlier, at Franklin's. Chaumont left Paris for
Lorient and the New York packet on 14 April. JQA would travel with Chaumont from New York to Boston in August, and would correspond
irregularly with him to 1821. See JQA, Diary, 1:236, and note 2, 249, 298–318 passim.
On 14 April, JA wrote letters of introduction for Chaumont to Samuel Adams (NN), Thomas Cushing, John Hancock, Samuel Allyne Otis (all LbC, Adams Papers), and William Tudor (MHi).
3. In February, JQA had commented on the servants, equippage, and other trappings of wealth and power
displayed by the Conde d'Aranda, and had recorded the Duke of Dorset's expression
of disgust at the ceremony of court life (Diary, 1:224, 225–226). AA2 made similar observations on Aranda's and Dorset's households in April (Jour. and Corr., 1:71).
4. AA may be referring to the dinner which the Adamses gave on 14 April, for the Lafayettes,
the Count and Countess Doradour, the abbés Chalût and Arnoux, Daniel Hailes, the secretary
of the British embassy, and Count Sarsfield (JQA, Diary, 1:249).
5. Royall Tyler was in Braintree, maintaining his social ties with the Cranches, and
by mail with the Shaws and the young Adamses in Haverhill. On 20 March, Elizabeth
Shaw reported to Mary Cranch (DLC: Shaw Family Papers) that the previous week they had received a letter from Tyler,
“accompanied by a genteel Present, of a Morocca Pocket-Book to Mr. Charles, and an
elegant Set of Geographical Cards for Mr. Thomas; informing us at the same time that
he had made several attempts to make us a Visit, but that all had proved ineffectual,
and must therefore give it up for the Present. I hope however when the soft Season is further advanced, and the roads are become good, both Mr. Tyler, and my Cousins
will be more fortunate. It would have given me pleasure to have seen them here.”
Cite web page as: Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2016.
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/