John Adams first encountered the Gardoquis, a mercantile firm at Bilbao in Spain that had strong connections with the Cabots, Tracys, and other merchant shippers of the North Shore ports of Massachusetts Bay, in January 1780, after his rugged overland journey from La Coruña. Upon hearing of his arrival, the Gardoquis called on Adams, and next day, 16 January, he recorded: “Dined, with the two Messrs. Gardoquis and a Nephew of theirs,” who thereafter showed the traveling Americans such sights as the city offered (Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:431). From Paris, Adams wrote his wife that he had been “treated by them with the Magnificence of a Prince,” and that they would “be very glad to be Usefull to you in any Thing they can do” (letter of 16 February 1780, below).

Since there were several American ships in the harbor at the time, Adams had an opportunity to send a substantial present home. The invoice reproduced is a record of what he ordered sent. The original was enclosed in Gardoqui & Sons to John Adams, 19 February 1780 (Adams Papers), which stated that the goods were to be shipped in the Phoenix, Captain Babson. Babson reached Beverly before the end of March.

The contents of the “Case” and “Barrell,” namely glassware, china, tea, cutlery, linens, and handkerchiefs, were typical enough of the kinds of goods furnished to Mrs. Adams not only by the Gardoquis but by French and Dutch merchants during the last years of the war, when finished goods from Europe were exceedingly scarce in America, and hard cash, for which they could be sold, xvwas even scarcer. See letters and other invoices from (among others) the Gardoquis and the Neufvilles in the present volumes and the brief discussion of Abigail Adams' activity as an importer in the Introduction.