Adams Family Correspondence, volume 14
o.1799
I am sorry that I did not know the President’s wishes,
before the Receit of your Letter, to be a Purchaser of Thompson’s
Island.1 One half of it
only is owned by me, the other half by mr &
mrs. Oliver of Salem.2 I had determined to part with my
half; and two Persons have Appeared to make an Agreement for it. my Price is
two thousand dollars for my part. One of the two persons is to give me an
Answer to day or Tomorrow. if he does not take it; the other appears
disposed to give the Price & is to see me on the Subject either Thursday
or Friday. if he comes up to the Price and can make the Payment I have given
my word to him that he shall have it. perhaps he also may fail of coming at
the Time and I shall then be free from my Engagements. and I need not say
that it will be particularly agreeble to me that it shoud become the
Property of the President— mr & mrs. Oliver are not as yet willing to dispose of
their half, but there will be no difficulty in that, as they will let their
half continue at the present Rent to whomoever Shall be the Purchaser of my
part, and at their death, Which probably is an Event at no great distance
being both of them very infirm, it will undoubtedly be sold, and the owner
of my part may assure himself of becoming the Proprietor of the Whole. with
every Sentiment of Esteem & Respect I am / Madam / Your most obedt. / & very Hume
Servt.
P.S. I am mortified that I had not the pleasure of paying my respects once more to the President before he left Quincy which I had fully contemplated either the last of this Week or the begining of the next.3
If the Price & the other Circumstances above mentioned will be agreable to you, & you will do me the honor of a Line to be left at my 2 house Tomorrow I will under the Possibility of the first Person’s failure endeavour to place you in his Stead. I shall probably be at Salem but shall be happy to meet your Wishes on my return—
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “Madam Adams / Quincy”; endorsed: “Dr Walter.”
Not found.
Thompson’s Island in Boston Harbor had been owned by
the Lynde family since 1666. In 1781 it was inherited jointly by the
sisters Lydia Lynde Walter (d. 1798), wife of Dr. Rev. William Walter,
and Mary Lynde Oliver (d. 1807), wife of Andrew Oliver Jr. (1731–1799),
Harvard 1749, a former Essex County judge of Common Pleas. In 1800
William Walter sold his wife’s share for $2,000 to Nathaniel Minot of
Dorchester, and the Oliver portion was later sold to Ignatius Sargent
(Charles Henry Bradley, Thompson’s Island: A
Brief History of the Island and of the Farm and Trades School,
Boston, 1909, p. 42, 46;
Sibley’s Harvard
Graduates
, 6:256; 12:455, 461; 14:120).
JA departed Quincy on 30 Sept. 1799 for
Trenton, N.J., and arrived there on 10 October. From late August to the
end of October, U.S. government offices operated in Trenton owing to
yellow fever in Philadelphia (vol. 13:551;
JA to AA, 12, 30 Oct., both
below; Philadelphia Universal Gazette, 29
Aug.; Philadelphia Gazette, 29 Oct.).