Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
st:14
th.1804
I recieved your very kind letter of the 3d on Sunday evening & was inexpressibly shocked at the melancholy news it
contain’d11 Poor Mrs: Sargent. I most sincerely sympathize with you my beloved
friend in grief for her early death amiable & lovely as she was every ene who 419 has seen her must
deplore her loss but you my best friend who have known her so long and once loved her so
well must indeed mourn her untimely fate and bury her faults (if faults she had) in
eternal oblivion I never saw her but twice but the last time I had that pleasure I was
fully convinced that she still retain’d her affection for you which she could not
conceal and I pitied her from my Soul convinced as I am she never ceased to lament the
folly she was urged to commit and to deplore the blessing she had lost She is now
translated to those realms of Bliss where no sorrow can intrude to happiness unchanging
& eternal2
Our Sweet Boys are both perfectly well John has another large double tooth through indeed I was not the least angry about the vermillion therefore do not accuse me when there is really no necessity excuse my last letter I was so low spirited I scarcely know what I wrote it was prompted by the most anxious solicitude and an excess of tenderness which must be a plea for any absurdity of which I may have been guilty—
Adieu my dearest friend I unceasingly pray that some fortunate occurrence may hasten your return to the arms of your / Very affectionate Wife
RC (Adams Papers).
In his letter of 3 Aug. JQA reported the death of
Mary Frazier Sargent. He also expressed his concern for JA2 and assured
LCA that he had attempted to fulfill her request for goods from Boston.
He reported that the “vermilion” cloth she wanted was not available and that he might
not be able to send cheese via the schooner Alert because
its itinerary was in question. JQA’s letter was in reply to one from
LCA of 27 July, in which she reported JA2’s illness from
teething and noted her disappointment that she had not yet received the requested
items (both Adams Papers).
Mary Frazier Sargent of Newburyport, whom JQA had
courted more than a decade earlier, was thirty years old when she died of consumption
on 28 July. LCA learned of JQA and Sargent’s courtship while
sailing to the United States in 1801, and the two women met during the summer of 1802
and again in early 1803, before and after Sargent’s Dec. 1802 marriage to Daniel
Sargent (Vital Records of Newburyport, Massachusetts, to the
End of the Year 1849, 2 vols., Salem, Mass., 1911, 1:148; Boston Repertory, 31 July 1804; LCA, D&A
, 1:157, 172, 185). For more on JQA’s relationship with
Sargent, see vol. 9:41–44 and
11:61–62, 195.