Jonathan Loring Austin, one-time secret agent for Franklin in England and secretary for JA at Passy, had come back to Europe in a vain endeavor to secure a loan for Massachusetts from Dutch, French, and Spanish authorities (Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates, 16:303–308; Adams Family Correspondence, 3:262–263).

John Appleton, son of Nathaniel Appleton, the commissioner of the Continental Loan Office and Boston merchant, was in Paris on mercantile business and later followed the Adams' party to Holland, carrying letters for JA (Francis Dana to JA, 31 July, Adams Papers; Adams Family Correspondence, 3:390, where the date of Dana's letter is incorrectly given as 31 Aug.).

George Fox, an American traveler in Europe, portrayed as a man of “fortune and genius,” sympathetic to the promotion of agriculture, natural history, and the arts in America (Anne H. Cresson, “Biographical Sketch of Joseph Fox, Esq., of Philadelphia,” PMHB , 32:196 [April 1908]; Cal. Franklin Papers, A.P.S., 2:243).

Dr. John Foulke, described in Benjamin Rush's letter of introduction for him to JA as “a young gentleman of a respectable Quaker family who goes to France to finish his Studies in Medicine” (Benjamin Rush to JA, 28 April, Adams Papers).

Maria Theresa (1717–1780), Archduchess of Austria and Empress of the Hapsburg dominions which included the Austrian Netherlands (Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel ).

Edmund Jenings, Maryland-born, English-educated lawyer and commercial agent who moved from England to Brussels, where he proved helpful to JA in placing pro-American articles in the British press. For a more thorough account of Jenings' connection with JA and his other activities and subsequent disappointments, see JA, Diary and Autobiography , 2:355–356.

Mrs. Alice Izard, a De Lancey from New York, was the wife of Ralph, a wealthy South Carolina plantation owner and U.S. commissioner to the court of Tuscany in 1777. He was just returning to America, recalled by the congress. The government of Tuscany had never received Izard as commissioner. Consequently, he had remained in France, where he and Franklin quarreled bitterly over his prerogatives (Correspondence of Mr. Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, from the Year 1774 to 1804; with a Short Memoir. Volume I., ed. Anne Izard Deas, N.Y., 1844, p. v–vi). The Izards' numerous offspring, several of whom JQA mentions in the following day's entry, cannot be specifically identified, but they are listed in Langdon Cheves, “Izard of South Carolina,” S.C. Hist, and Geneal. Mag., 2:205–240 (July 1901).