Adams Family Correspondence, volume 5
1784-02-28
I inclose to you my sons Letters,2 which you will be so kind as to return safe to me again; as they are very valuable to me. For a Lad of Sixteen they do credit to him. This you; who are a parent will permit me to say to you, nor charge upon me more than a maternal partiality in the observation.
Mr. Green Spoke to me yesterday upon an affair in which Mr. Adams he says was formerly engaged. I did not fully comprehend what he wanted, if you will be kind enough to desire him to state in 306writing what he wishes to have done I will endeavour that he Shall have all the intelligence in my power to give him.3
Accept the inclosed4 as a Small token of our ancient Friendship, and be assured I shall in all countries and climates which the vicissitudes of fortune may place me in, always remember with pleasure and affection the early and lasting Friendship of Caliope for her
This is AA's first known letter to her girlhood friend since 1764. Hannah Storer, sister of Ebenezer Storer, married Joshua Green in 1762. AA had corresponded with Hannah since at least 1761; Hannah's last known letter to AA prior to this was in 1775 (vol. 1:10, and note 1, 273–274).
Not identified further; JQA wrote to AA on 23 and 30 July, and on 4 and 10 Sept. 1783, all above.
With her reply of 12 March (Adams Papers), in which she returned JQA's letters to AA, accompanied with high praise and word that “a number of our friends have partook of the pleasure” of reading or hearing them read, Hannah Green enclosed some account of her husband's business. But this enclosure has not been found, and the subject remains obscure.
Not identified. Green's reply (see note 3) makes it clear that AA was not referring to JQA's letters.
AA used this name frequently in her courtship letters to JA in 1763–1764, but she abandoned it upon her marriage in favor of her first name, or initial, followed by “Adams,” or simply “AA.” Beginning in May 1775, AA signed “Portia” in correspondence with JA, and she soon extended the use of this signature to her closest non-family correspondents, James Lovell, Elbridge Gerry, and Mercy Warren. She continued to use “Diana,” however, when writing to her old friend “Caliope,” a pseudonym that Hannah Storer Green used since the early 1760s. See vol. 1:4–8, 10, 16–51 passim, 193.
1784-03-14
NB This is not performing the promise of writing to one another every week. I know you can write if you have a mind to for you have as much enough time to write. I have just done getting my mornings lesson, began at the verbs in ao eo oo at the indicative mood have got the active voice out.1 Have I not been spry. Had I began Virgil when you went away. Oh yes well I have got the second Georgic out allmost; fifty lines is my common lesson. Ben Willes2 is very well only has got his nose broke by a brother. Oh William how careless I am. My letter is nothing but scrols
3 but I hope you will find it out because I expect it will give you a great deal of pleasure. Since you went away4 We have got to keeping doves and we have got the bell up boy and we are fine folks here. Now do you mind and write a good long letter to me pretty soon.
CA refers to the Greek contract verbs, e.g. τιμαω, φιλεω, , and δηλοω, in which the vowel that ends the stem of the verb—α, ε, and ο—is dropped or altered in the present and imperfect tenses.
On Benjamin Willis Jr., who was about fifteen or sixteen at this time, see JQA, Diary
, 1:368–369.
CA's handwriting is certainly informal and the editors have supplied much of the punctuation in this text. CA's penmanship contrasts sharply with that of JQA at the same, or indeed at a much younger age.
Cranch had just left the tutelage of his uncle John Shaw to enter Harvard College at the winter break, half a year before the usual beginning date. He graduated in 1787, in the same class with JQA, who entered in March 1786, with advanced standing. CA entered Harvard, as a freshman, in Aug. 1785, and graduated in 1789. See AA to JQA,
This is the earliest extant letter written by CA.