Diary of John Adams, volume 2
1777-02-21
Dined Yesterday at Mr. Samuel Purveyances. Mr. Robert his Brother and Lady, the President and Lady, the two Coll. Lees and their Ladies, Mr. Page and his Lady, Coll. Whipple, Mrs. K. Quincy, a young Gentleman and a young Lady made the Company.1 A great Feast. The Virginia Ladies had Ornaments about their Wrists, which I dont remember to have seen before. These Ornaments were like Miniature Pictures, bound round the Arms with some Chains.
This Morning received a long Card from Mr. H. expressing great Resentment about fixing the Magazine at Brookfield, against the Book binder and the General.2 The Complaisance to me and the Jealousy for the Massachusetts in this Message, indicate to me, the same Passion and the same design, with the Journey to B
Samuel and Robert Purviance were prominent merchants who had come to Baltimore from Ireland via Philadelphia in the 1760's and were now engaged in supplying the Continental forces; correspondence on their business activities and especially on Samuel Purviance's leading role in the Baltimore Committee of Correspondence, is printed in Robert Purviance, A Narrative of Events Which Occurred in Baltimore Town during the Revolutionary War, Baltimore, 1849, which is in some sense a family memoir. Among the other guests were Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee and Mann Page Jr., all delegates in Congress from Virginia; and “Mrs.” (i.e. Mistress, actually Miss) Katherine Quincy, sister of Mrs. President Hancock.
Hancock's “long Card” to JA has not been found; “the Book binder” was Henry Knox, recently commissioned brigadier general (
DAB
). On the controversy over locating the Continental magazines, see Hancock to Washington, 29 Jan. 1777, in Burnett, ed., Letters of Members
, 2:226, and references there.