Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
dSepr 1801
In our absence from home, you was so obliging as to address a
line to Mrs Gerry, which she has desired me to
acknowledge, & to inform you, that in leiu of the first volume of Wraxall, that of
Volneys travels was by mistake enclosed to her. this is sent to Mr Smiths, & if the volume of Wraxall should be sent
there, or at Mrs Catharine Davis’ in tremont Street, I
will order my servant to call for it.1
please to present our best respects to the President, accept them
yourself, & be assured I remain dear Madam With the highest esteem your friend,
& / very huml sert
at N. York we had the pleasure of frequently seeing Colo & Mrs Smith: whose absence
the day before we left it prevented our receiving their orders for their friends
here—
RC (Adams
Papers); internal address: “Mrs Adams—”; endorsed:
“Mr Gerrys / Rect Sepbr 3d.”
AA’s letter to Ann Thompson Gerry has not been found
but was intended to accompany the first volume of Nathaniel William Wraxall’s Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw, and
Vienna, 2 vols., London, 1799, rather than one of Constantin François Volney’s
Travels through Egypt and Syria, 2 vols., N.Y., 1798,
Evans, No. 34949, a copy of which
is in JA’s library at MB.
Boston shopkeeper Catharine Davis (1742–1805) was a distant cousin of
AA’s through the Quincy family. She was also connected to the Gerry
family through marriage (
Catalogue of JA’s Library
;
Boston
Directory
, 1800, p. 36, Evans, No. 37024; New-England Palladium, 17
July; Barrett Wendell, “A Gentlewoman of Boston, 1742–1805,” Amer. Antiq. Soc., Procs.
,
29:242, 243, 248 [Oct. 1919]).