James Lovell, a fellow Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress with John Adams, enclosed this manuscript copy of a map to Abigail Adams in his letter of 29 August 1777 from Philadelphia with the following explanation: “It is probable that Genl. Howe xiiwill waste the fall of this year between Chesapeak Bay and Delaware River. I send you a copied sketch of part of the country to which the Gazettes will frequently refer” (p. 333, below). Lovell's letter containing this thoughtful gift gave its recipient a terrible fright before she opened it; see her letters of 17 September to her husband and to Lovell (p. 343–344, below). Although Lovell's printed or manuscript source has not been identified, he perhaps made his copy from the “excellent Chart of the Schuylkill, Chester River, the Brandywine, and this whole Country, among the Pensilvania Files” that John Adams mentioned having seen on 15 September 1777 ( Diary and Autobiography , 2:262). In any event Mrs. Adams must have found it useful, as the editors of The Adams Papers have, in tracing the movements of the opposing armies in the country lying between Philadelphia, Delaware Bay, Baltimore, York, and Lancaster.