Adams Family Correspondence, volume 12
I arrived here this Evening with your Mother and Cozen all in good health, and was Sorry to hear that you went from hence on Monday unwell. I hope you are better.
If I go into Town in Ceremony I Should be glad of your Company with me in my Carriage.1
My Letters will, Some of them be directed to your Care, I Shall be glad to receive them as soon as possible. Can you Send them out by the Stage to Guions, or by private hands.2 Any News or Newspapers will be acceptable.
I hope Mrs Adams and the little Miss are well.
I must depend upon you and Mr Malcom to make all necessary Preparations for me. I feel the honour that is done me by the City of New York and pray you to Signify my respectful Attention to it, upon all proper Occasions.
It seems to me the Arrangements had better be conditional—on such a day and hour if the Weather is fair—otherwise the next fair day. However this is only Suggestion. I shall conform in all Things to whatever is determined on. The Thought was Suggested to me, by a drenching in a Soaking Rain of Governer Sumner, General 259 Hull and seven thousand Militia in compleat Uniform the other day at Concord in Massachusetts.3
I am your affectionate Father
RC (MHi:Seymour Coll.); internal address: “Charles Adams Esq.”
For JA’s reception upon his arrival in New York City, see AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 13 Oct., and note 1, below.
Charles Guion had owned an inn in Eastchester, N.Y., since the Revolutionary War. Situated on the Boston Post Road, the inn served as one of the coach stops along the route from New York to Boston (Valentine’s Manual of Old New York, 10 vols., 1919–1928, 3:241; Susanne Stone, “Some Historic Houses of Westchester County,” Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association, 9:294 [1910]).
On 26 Sept. Gen. William Hull, for whom see vol. 7:343, led a review of the Massachusetts militia at Concord that was attended by Gov. Increase Sumner. The Boston Columbian Centinel, 27 Sept., noted the inclement weather at the event: “The troops had no sooner formed than a severe equinoxial storm commenced” during which “the whole of them were drenched to the skin. The troops nevertheless, went through the usual manoeuvres and evolutions with veteran exactness.”