Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 8
1839-03-15
Clear and fine day. Time as usual. Evening at home.
I felt this morning a little the worse for the week’s dissipation and was glad to think that it was now probably at an end. At the Office where I was so engrossed with business matters that I was unable to touch my papers. I left it sooner than usual for the purpose of putting into the hands of Mr. Hosmer of the Council who is a lawyer the very abominable case of Conant’s trespass. A person who applied for the place came to me today and told me they were going on with a high hand there. This has reanimated my courage which had been wavering since Mr. Cheney’s declining the business. I hope it will now turn out for the best. But I dread the law.1
Walk round the South Cove. Philoctetes as usual. Afternoon, finish Crevier which is rather a lumbering book after all. MS, upon which I make gradual advances. I purpose to touch a little upon Gibbon and then devote my Afternoons for the remainder of the season to vigorous pursuit of it.
Quiet evening. My head felt so dull and achy that I had an insurmountable repugnance to taking up Burr, so I wrote an answer to my Mother’s letters received yesterday and today.2
Silas and Amory Conant had been tenants of JQA’s woodlot and farm in Weston since 1829. Under CFA’s direction they had seen to the necessary preliminaries to the periodic auctions of wood selected for cutting, collected from purchasers, and brought the proceeds, along with their own rents, to CFA with fair regularity (see vols. 3:17, 19–20, 74–75; 4:169, 294, 397–398; and indexes to vols. 3 and 4). The diary entries do not record a termination of their tenancy nor the nature of their trespass. Possibly it was to replace them in matters relating to the timber that CFA approached Alfred Cheney of Cheney and Spaulding’s woodwharf in Boston (
Boston Directory, 1839), but without success. His decision to seek redress at law led him to engage Rufus Hosmer, an attorney of neighboring Stow and a member of the Governor’s Council (
Mass. Register, 1839, p. 32, 78). The threat of legal action proved effective (see entry for 26 March, below).
LCA to CFA, 12, 13 March; CFA to LCA, 15 March; all in Adams Papers.