Adams Family Correspondence, volume 10
After a journey without any accident, I arrived here, in good health, the Friday night after I left you, and went into lodgings, which I did not find convenient, and the next morning removed to Francis’s hotel, where I have good accommodations, with company enough.
I forgot to thank you for your kind present of patriotic manufacture; but I own I am not, at my age, so great an enthusiast, as to wear with much pride, these coarse homely fabrics. I was once proud of an homespun camblet cloak, and used to go to meeting in it, at Dr. Cooper’s tasty Society; but I own I was not sorry when a thief, by stealing it, furnished me with an excuse for wearing it no more.1 Those times were very different from these. My Hartford present of Connecticut broadcloth, I could not long endure;2 and the New-York cotton is not yet made up. I am not the less obliged to you, however.
I have not yet heard whether your brother has returned from his visit to Steuben.
Colonel Smith is well. My love to William and John—give them a kiss for me, and present them with the blessing of their / Affectionate grandfather,
Your mamma, on the 10th of November, went to Haverhill, on a visit to your unfortunate and afflicted aunt.
MS not found. Printed from AA2, Jour. and Corr.,
2:135–136; internal address: “To Mrs. Smith.”
That is, when the Adamses attended Rev. Samuel Cooper’s Brattle Street Church in the early 1770s (vol. 1:157).
For JA’s gift of broadcloth from the merchants of Hartford, Conn., see vol. 8:332–333.