Adams Family Correspondence, volume 14
I have no line from you, Since the 13th at Brookfield. There has been So much rainy
Weather as to have made travelling impracticable for you, some part of the
time, and the roads disagreable at all times.— If your health fails not,
Patience will bear the rest.
We went to the Presbyterian Church Yesterday and heard
Mr Grant a young calvinistical Presbyterian
of a good style and fair hopes. Armstrong is Sick confined with the
Rheumatism as usual. Hunter and his Wife Mrs
Rush’s sister were at Church, I know not why, as his Church is but 4 miles
off, a Parish in this town.1
If this Day or Tomorrow does not bring me news of you, I
shall begin to be in the horrors. If the Mumps are not uncommonly long lived
on Brislers Children, he will be along immediately. it is high time.— Untill
I turned over I knew not that the Sheet was mutilated.—2 But still it will answer my End.
The People with you are all Lazy. Louisa is as lazy as a Nun.— Mr Otis is not much better. If you had People of
ordinary Alacrity about you, some One might write to me or William every
day. You are generally as industrious as you ought to be.
It is very fortunate however that you have Mr Otis in Company. 23 that family, besides his protecting
care, will render the Journey much less tedious. You can have no Ennui with
the little folks and the great folk about you.
Not one Word have you or any one else, Said to me of my farm Since I left it.— Not one hint of my Buildings Walls, Harvest Cyder or Manure &c &c &c.
I want to know how the fence against Mr Black went on—how the Buildings proceeded and
whether the Hill was Spread. I must have an Agricultural Correspondent.
Mean time / I am, most affectionately / yrs
RC (Adams Papers); internal address:
“Mrs A.”
Rev. Ebenezer Grant (1773–1821), Princeton M.A. 1796,
began a pastorate at the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury, N.J., in
November. Rev. James Francis Armstrong (1750–1816), Princeton A.M. 1781,
had been pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Trenton, N.J., since
1787 but suffered bouts of temporary paralysis due to a rheumatic
disorder contracted during the Revolutionary War. Several area clergymen
filled his pulpit in 1799, including Rev. Andrew Hunter Jr. (ca.
1750–1823), Princeton A.M. 1775, who in 1797 had retired to a Trenton
farm from parishes in Gloucester and Woodbury, N.J. Hunter’s wife was
Mary Stockton Hunter, sister of Julia Stockton Rush (Thomas Little,
“Biographies of Pastors and Stated Supplies, of the Presbyterian Church
of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, 1734–1914,” Journal
of the Presbyterian Historical Society, 8:60–61 [June 1915];
Princetonians
, 2:225, 227, 229,
263, 264–265; John Hall, History of the
Presbyterian Church in Trenton, N.J., N.Y., 1859, p. 339–341,
453).
The mutilated portion of the MS is no longer attached to the undamaged single quarto sheet used for the letter.