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Note on the text:

The letter about his journey to which JQA refers was probably lost at sea. The ship carrying it may have sunk; however, another explanation is that when a British ship approached a vessel bound for North America, mail was often thrown overboard because it might contain incriminating information.
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John Quincy Adams to Abigail Adams

Paris august ye 11 1778

Hond. Mamma

you will pardon me if I do not write to you very often for you know how I used to teaze you to write a copy of a letter for me but now I do not have you to write and my Pappa being always a doing publick affaires or a writing to you cannot do it for me, so that I am obliged to think myself, sometimes I think of a few words to write but you know I am no great hand at letter writing for if I was I should write much oftener though I have wrote several times[.] I wrote a long letter by captain Barnes with an account of my voyage

I am your dutiful son

John Quincy Adams

Adams, John Quincy. Letter to Abigail Adams, August 11, 1778. Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Published in Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 3: April 1778 - September 1780 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973). Page 73.