RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “[. . . .] / [Qu]incy”; docketed by JA: “E. Peabody to AA.” Some loss of text due to a torn manuscript.

The Middlesex Canal, from the Merrimack River to Medford, Mass., was begun in Sept. 1794 and completed in Dec. 1802, and transport of goods from the interior of New Hampshire to Boston began, utilizing the Mystic River for the final leg into the city. Even before completion, officials began implementing plans for the canal’s extension to Boston along the Mystic’s southern bank, which would eliminate dependence on the river’s erratic tidal flow. The extension was ultimately constructed on a route through the eighty-acre Medford farm that AA and Peabody inherited from their father (vols. 10:265, 298; 13:569, 571; Boston Columbian Centinel, 1 Dec.; Carl Seaburg, Alan Seaburg, and Thomas Dahill, The Incredible Ditch, Medford, Mass., 1997, p. 26, 45; CFA, Diary , 3:xix). For TBA’s negotiation of compensation for right-of-way over the land, see TBA to James Sullivan, 23 Oct. 1804, and note 1, below.

On 8 Feb. 1803 JQA was elected a U.S. senator from Massachusetts to replace Jonathan Mason. The Mass. house of representatives chose JQA on 3 Feb., after repeated ballots were taken in compliance with an informal arrangement by supporters of Timothy Pickering who agreed that if Pickering did not prevail in the early rounds they would throw their support to JQA. Seven candidates received votes in four ballots, JQA garnering 10, 6, and 56 votes on the first three before achieving the requisite majority of 86 on the fourth. On 8 Feb. the Mass. senate concurred by a vote of 19 to 7, electing JQA to a six-year term that began on 4 March. JQA completed his term in the state senate before taking his seat in the U.S. Senate on 21 Oct., four days after the first session of the 8th Congress convened. JQA wrote in his Diary that his election “will probably affect very materially my future situation in life,” while LCA recalled that the election meant “a change in our Situation tolerable in perspective but requiring great sacrifices of domestic comfort” (Boston Columbian Centinel, 5, 9 Feb.; A New Nation Votes; D/JQA/27, 3 Feb., 4 March, 31 Dec., APM Reel 30; U.S. Senate, Jour. , 8th Cong., 1st sess., p. 300; LCA, D&A , 1:184).

LCA was in the midst of a difficult pregnancy and recalled after JA2’s birth “constant faintings and violent attacks of illness short in their duration, … these attacks being incident to my situation and always alarming as to their results.” As Peabody implied, medical texts prescribed compresses of melon pulp and seeds as a remedy for distempers of the bladder and kidneys and “to provoke Urine, and to allay the Heat of the Reins” (LCA, D&A , 1:185, 187; Noel Chomel, Dictionaire Oeconomique; or, The Family Dictionary, 2d rev. edn., 2 vols., London, 1725).

Peabody offered further comment on the relationship between AHA and TBA in a 2 March letter to Mary Smith Cranch. Peabody reported that the couple “had long been struggling with a sincere attachment, founded upon a belief of each others virtue, & honour. I mentioned the affair to you, hoping you would do as prudence would direct.— Twenty times I thought I would relate the whole affair, for I have long been convinced if there were any meaning in language, that he was only endeavouring to establish himself in buisness, & get property, & Some independance that he might openly declare his intentions— I freely told her, that I thought the engagements had better be known. That to continue a correspondence of this nature, in a Clandestine way was what parents might consider undutiful— And that the affair had better be discreetly opened, let it turn as it would— And to let her friend know, that she could not consistent with her sentiments of delicacy, & prudence think it best to let things remain as they had done— It subjected her to 275 so many reflections, from every rank—Envy, & Curiosty being never asleep—” (DLC:Shaw Family Papers).

Sarah Sargeant (b. 1774), one of six daughters of Nathaniel Peaslee Sargeant and Rhoda Barnard Sargeant, of Haverhill, Mass., died on 4 March. In describing her death, Peabody evoked Hebe, the daughter of Hera and Zeus (Edwin Everett Sargent, Sargent Record, St. Johnsbury, Vt., 1899, p. 30; Oxford Classical Dicy. ).

Eunice Paine (b. 1733), sister of Robert Treat Paine and a friend of both AA and JA before their marriage, died in Boston on 2 February. Peabody quoted Hebrews, 6:12, in alluding to Paine’s long struggle with illness. An obituary in the New-England Palladium, 4 Feb., described an infirmity of fifty years’ duration and noted that in her last years she was “reduced to painful and helpless decripitude, till nature was exhausted with violent & incessant struggles, and she was released from her earthly prison” (vol. 5:388; Sarah Cushing Paine, Paine Ancestry, Boston, 1912, p. 24; The Papers of Robert Treat Paine, ed. Stephen T. Riley and Edward W. Hanson, Boston, 2005– , 2:175; JA, D&A , 1:123).