Adams Family Correspondence, volume 12
The Congress have passed the Law allowing 14,000 d to purchase
furniture. The State Legislature have done nothing about their new House: so that I
shall take the House the President is in, at a 1000£ or 2700
dollars rent, nothing better can be done.1
Mr Jefferson arrived Yesterday and came
to visit me in the Evening.
Tomorrow will be a worse day than the 8th. of Feb. was. We are to take the oaths. and P. Washington Says he will be there.
8I shall purchase little furniture, before you come or give directions. All the World are of opinion that it is best for you not to come till next fall. I will go to you as Soon as I can but that is uncertain.
We shall be put to great difficulty to live and that in not one third the Style of Washington.
Mr Malcom Charles’s Clerk is with me as
a private Secretary.
Oh how I long to go and see you I am with everduring and never ending affection your
RC (Adams
Papers); internal address: “Mrs A.”
In 1791 the Pennsylvania legislature, in an attempt to keep the
federal capital in Philadelphia, authorized the construction of a presidential
mansion. Located on Ninth Street between Chestnut and Market Streets, the building was
completed by the spring of 1797, and after the legislature failed to pass a bill
offering the property to Congress, Gov. Thomas Mifflin wrote to JA on 3
March (Adams Papers) offering the house at
a rent “for which you might obtain any other suitable House in Philadelphia.” Replying
the same day (PHi: Ferdinand J. Dreer
Autograph Coll.), JA declined the offer, citing “great doubts whether by
a candid Construction of the Constitution of the United States, I am at Liberty, to
Accept it without the Intervention and Authority of Congress.” Mifflin submitted this
correspondence to the legislature on 8 March recommending it “designate some other use
to which the building may be applied.” It was also published in the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 10 March. Ultimately, the
state senate authorized the sale of the property, and it was purchased in 1800 by the
University of Pennsylvania (Dennis C. Kurjack, “The ‘President’s House’ in
Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania History, 20:380, 382, 384,
389–390, 393–394 [Oct. 1953]; Journal of the Senate of the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Commencing on Tuesday, the Sixth Day of December, in
the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and
Ninety-Six, Phila., 1796, p. 141, 145, 186–187, 229, Evans, No. 32653; Journal of the
First Session of the Seventh House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, which Commenced at Philadelphia, on Tuesday, the Sixth Day of
December, in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-Six,
Phila., 1797, p. 224, 233–234, 238, 240, 246, 281–282, Evans, No. 32651).