Boston Saturday Morng. after 7 aClok Jan. 22, 1748/9 Dear Brother,

Your repeated favours this week has Laid me under a nesesity of rising Sooner than my usual time to make some returns to you. If you knew how much Satisfactions the hearing from you so often has given me you wou'd Continue, in some degree the Corispondence you have begun. The pleasure which you have given me is heithen'd by my fears for you. I hear'd that your Society is visited with a very bad 43distemper which prevails much (I mean the itch1) my fears Least you shou'd be a sharer in it has been very great but I Since hear that it is none but Gridley who has it. Pray be Careful to shun all dangerous Company at present for your having Such a distemper now wou'd effect your Constitution very much.2

I Like your proposal of refering the begining of our year to the time that affords us a return of our birth day for to me it Seems the most proper, between friends, for Certainly a Consideration of the favours we have reciv'd Since we first began our Mortal race much affords Some agreable Contemplations, with pleasure I shall Remember to gratifie in hopes of a return of the same kind.

With thesse Lines I design to Send you Some Linnin to Supply you for the present but beg it may not hinder your coming down assoon as your business will permit for hearing from you is but a half injoyment of a friend and Serves to Encrease our desire for a more perfect one. Sisster has begun to write you. We are all well Mr. Cranch3 wonders you dont let him hear from you, he often Enquires after your welfare, in haste I Remain your Oblidg'd Sisster & hmble Servt.,

ABIGAIL PAINE

PS I intended to have Sent Asa with your things, but Father Cant Spare him & therefore I only Send a Small Quantity by Cousin Willard.4

RC ; addressed: "To Mr. Robert Treat Paine att Cambridge"; endorsed: "Abigail Paine Janr. 22. 1749."

1.

Scabies.

2.

On Jan. 10, 1749, RTP notes in his diary, in shorthand: "A cry in college about the Itch, many scholars being taken with it." Benjamin Gridley (1731/2–before 1800) must have been an unhappy victim. He graduated in 1751, became a lawyer in Boston, and was appointed judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1775. An active loyalist, he served in Timothy Ruggles's Loyalist Corps and later became a refugee (Sibley's Harvard Graduates, 13:90–94).

3.

Richard Cranch (1726–1811), a longtime friend of RTP, arrived in Boston from England in 1746. At this time he was engaged in the business of wool-card making. He later started a glass manufactory with his brother-in-law Joseph Palmer in Germantown, now part of Quincy. Another brother-in-law was Pres. John Adams. Cranch was active in many pursuits, was made a justice of the court of common pleas in 1779, sat in the Massachusetts senate, was an original member of the Massachusetts Charitable Society, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was given an honoracy M.A. by Harvard in 1780 (Sibley's Harvard Graduates, 11:370–376).

4.

Probably John Willard.