Adams Family Correspondence, volume 15
y:1802.
I have received three letters from you without making the proper returns—1 The occasion of which has been the continual occupation I have found in moving, repairing and furnishing my house, and entering upon my office—2 These things are now chiefly accomplish’d, and I hope in future to have more leisure for making communications to you.— I can however not promise much in that respect.— My time will probably for no inconsiderable period be almost engrossed by my private affairs— Whitcomb, who had got to be of little use to me, has now left me altogether; and I find myself burdened with the minutest and vilest details of our domestic economy.— Being so much of a novice in this calling, I perform its duties with proportionable aukwardness, and must wait for more practice to obtain facility and dispatch—3 Meanwhile I suffer a waste of time, which might else be more agreeably employed—
Seven years of total disuse have so far obliterated all my legal
ideas, that I return to the bar almost as ignorant how the law
is written as when I first commenced student— A certain degree of application
to gather up again the crumbs and fragments of my knowledge in past time, is
indispensible— This picking up of threads and stitches annihilates time again, to a
great amount—
Another circumstance which provides for the further consumption
of the same precious article time, though in a more pleasing manner, is that I have
accepted the invitation of a small Society of choice Spirits, who assemble once a week
for the purpose of reviving and improving their acquaintance with subjects of natural
and experimental philosophy— This institution is in its first infancy, consisting as
yet only of nine members, and limited by their rules to the number of ten— They are,
Judge Davis, and Messrs: Kirkland, Emerson, Popkin, Timy: Williams, N. Frazier, Quincy, Dr: Jackson, and last of all your humble servant—4 I promise myself much entertainment and
instruction from it
Now if you allow the possibility that some portion of my hours may be claimed by business of any kind, you will readily conceive that little will be left for writing upon literary or political topics, and I wish you to intimate as much to Dennie— At the same time he may depend upon me, as far as the leisure I can command will admit.
I propose to send him by the first vessel, or private hand the 159 translation of Bülow; and perhaps some parcels of Tacitus.—5 But as they are all so aukwardly done that I cannot read them my self without disgust, I apprehend he will find little use to make of them
I know not whether you have recollected your engagement to keep one of my files of the Port-Folio safely, as they come out— The other I now regularly receive— But both my sets now are incomplete, and Dennie promised me they should be completed.— Please to inform him therefore that I want from Number 38 to Number 47. both inclusive, of one set, and, from Number 19. to the present time, of the other, besides a prospectus and a Number 1. both of which I received, but lost, by lending them—6 I have no doubt but he will immediately furnish you with all these papers, and I will thank you to forward them, either by a private hand, or by some vessel to this place.
The numbers missing in your mothers set, which Dennie likewise promised to complete are 9, 12, 20, 28, 40, 43, and 44.
I shall duly attend to your request, for a copy of the Massachusetts laws, to be sent with your books in the Spring.7
With regard to the project concerning which I wrote you some time
since, it is but a project, and depending as I wrote you upon the event of my
experiment here—8 If I finally
determine upon it, my plan will be to make a settlement upon a scale as extensive as I
can accomplish, and take as many farming families with me, as I think adequate to the
object, and as shall be willing to follow me— The scheme I think may be ripened so as
to furnish employment and secure compensation both to yourself and me— But what the
particulars of your employment or my own would be, I cannot yet say; for I have
nothing yet but the out-line of the plan in my mind, and
must wait for further information, to fill up the detail— Let it remain in the
meantime between ourselves.
You intimate other communications which you may perhaps make to me should occasion offer— I would not sollicit any anticipation of your confidence, because confidence ought always to be free and voluntary— But whenever you shall think the occasion sufficient, you will find on my part, not only the feelings of a brother, but all the sympathies of the most cordial and affectionate friendship.
With them, I remain, ever your’s
I have kept the within letter untill this time, for the sake of
bringing it out here, and now find little or nothing to say in addition, 160 excepting that our parents and friends here are
well.— Boylston Adams was married last week—10 And by the way, speaking of marriages, by the
natural transition from cause to effect, I may tell you, that our friend Quincy has a
son—born about ten days ago—11 By way
of encouragement to you, and to confirm and establish your tottering virtue of patience, I shall add that after a month’s experience in my
office, I find no interruption whatsoever to my learned leisure; and find no perplexing calls for the obliterated
black-letter lore. N’importe— I have succeeded in filling
my whole time with employment, that I find none for
fretting, and never in my whole life felt more ease and contentment—
N. B. Please to call upon Mr: Ustick.
N. 79. North 3d: Street, and pay him for a sett of
Moshein’s Ecclesiastical History which he sent your father—let me know the amount, and
charge it to my account.12
RC partial (MHi:Adams Papers, All Generations); internal address: “T. B. Adams.”
RC partial (private owner, 2017); addressed: “Thomas Boylston Adams
Esqr / Philadelphia.”; endorsed: “J. Q. Adams Esqr: / 9 Jany 1802 / 25th. Do: / 3d: Feby Recd: / 12 Answd:”; notation by
JA: “J. Adams.”
The only extant letter from TBA to JQA of a recent date is that of 7 Dec. 1801, above.
For JQA’s lease of a law office on State Street in Boston, see Descriptive List of Illustrations, No. 1, above.
AA wrote to JQA on 30 Dec. (Adams Papers), advising him on servants who might be available for employment. She also indicated her concern for LCA’s health and noted that Weymouth housewright John Bates would soon travel to Boston to work on JQA and LCA’s 39 Hanover Street home.
JQA was referring to the December establishment of
the Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy, which convened weekly in members’
homes. Along with JQA, founding members were Judge John Davis; Rev. John
Thornton Kirkland (1770–1840), Harvard 1789; Rev. William Emerson (1769–1811), Harvard
1789; Rev. John Snelling Popkin (1771–1852), Harvard 1792; Timothy Williams (ca.
1765–1846), Harvard 1784; Nathan Frazier Jr. (d. 1802), Harvard 1784; Josiah Quincy
III; and James Jackson (ca. 1778–1867), Harvard 1796. Members were required to
subscribe to three shares costing $10 apiece and pay a semiannual assessment of $2.
JQA subscribed to ten shares on 15 Jan. 1802 and five more on 3
December. The society was later absorbed by the Boston Athenæum (vols. 8:172–173; 11:46; 14:573;
Harvard Quinquennial Cat.
;
Boston Weekly Messenger, 31 March 1852; Boston Evening Transcript, 23 Feb. 1846; Boston Herald, 29 Aug. 1867; Charles K. Bolton, “Social
Libraries in Boston,” Col. Soc. Mass., Pubns.
, 12:334; Linda K. Kerber, “Science in the
Early Republic: The Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy,”
WMQ
, 3d
ser., 29:265–268 [April 1972]; M/JQA/12, APM Reel 209; D/JQA/24, 7 Jan.
1802, APM Reel 27).
JQA did not send his translation of Baron Dietrich
Heinrich von Bülow’s Der Freistaat von Nordamerika in seinem
neuesten zustand, 2 vols., Berlin, 1797, until 15 April. The voluminous
translation was published in the Port Folio in
near-weekly installments between 8 May and 29 Jan. 1803. JQA’s
translation of Tacitus’ Histories
(M/JQA/30, APM Reel 225), which he worked on from July 1796 to 10 April 1797, was
apparently never published (vol. 13:468; M/JQA/32, APM Reel 227;
JQA to TBA, 11 April
1802, and note 2, below; Kerber and
Morris, “The Adams Family and the Port Folio,” p.
469).
Five volumes of Port Folio issues
from 1801 to 1805 with minor annotations by JQA are at MBAt (Kerber and Morris, “The Adams Family and the Port Folio,” p. 451).
The Perpetual Laws of the
Commonwealth
161
of Massachusetts, 3 vols., Boston, 1801, Shaw-Shoemaker, No. 895. See also
JQA to TBA, 11
April 1802, and note 2, below.
For JQA’s proposal that he and TBA relocate to upstate New York, see his letter to TBA of 28 Nov. 1801, above.
The remainder of the MS is held by a private owner.
On 21 Jan. 1802 Boylston Adams married his cousin Elizabeth Anne
Crosby (1782–1865). The bride was the orphaned daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth Soper
Crosby and had since age six lived under the care of Peter Boylston Adams (vol. 9:8; Sprague, Braintree
Families
).
Josiah Quincy IV (d. 1882), the second child of Josiah Quincy III
and Eliza Susan Morton Quincy, was born on 17 Jan. (James R. Cameron, The Public Service of Josiah Quincy, Jr. 1802–1882, Quincy,
[1964], p. 3; Salisbury, Family-Memorials
, 1:368).
Stephen Clegg Ustick (1773–1837) was a Philadelphia printer who
published Johann Lorenz Mosheim, An Ecclesiastical History,
Ancient and Modern, from the Birth of Christ, to the Beginning of the Present
Century, transl. Archibald Maclaine, 6 vols., Phila., 1797–1798.
TBA purchased a set for JA for $12.60, a charge recorded
by JQA on 26 March (The Missionary Jubilee: An
Account of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the American Baptist Missionary Union,
rev. edn., N.Y., 1869, p. 119–120; M/JQA/12, APM Reel 209).
JQA wrote again to TBA on 15 Jan., requesting that he sell $3,600 worth of his stock in the Bank of North America to finance the furnishing and renovation of his new home. TBA evidently followed JQA’s instructions. In a 3 Feb. letter JQA thanked him for sending a note of $1,900 after selling his bank stocks, but wrote that he had sold his bonds in Philadelphia’s Bank of the United States and requested that TBA refrain from selling additional stock (both Adams Papers).
Two months having elapsed since I made the proposal respecting the note of hand due from your brother Justus to me, and being still without an answer from him, I presume either that the proposal was not agreeable to him, or that some accident has delayed or misdirected his answer, and prevented its coming to hand.1
I have now settled once more in this town, and resumed the practice
of the law— But I have to maintain a family, necessarily expensive to a certain degree,
and I am burthened with the heavy charge of furnishing my house at a time when I am
without any income sufficient to meet it— I mention these circumstances solely for the
purpose of justifying the request that you yourself would pay that attention to this
debt which your sense of honour and of justice will dictate— When my late brother
Charles gave up the security upon which that very debt rested, I mean the mortgage, it
was, as he declared, not only for your accommodation, but
of essential benefit to you. I think therefore I may with some reason expect that you will provide at least for the punctual payment of the
interest— Indeed, if Coll: Smith will consider for a moment
his present situation and mine, the use which my money has
been of to him, and the manner in which it was obtained (I mean by Charles’s surrender
of the landed 162 security) I am confident that the generosity which
forms so distinguished a trait of his character will induce him to discharge the debt
itself— The sum being now, a trivial object to him, though it has become a very serious
one to me.
If you conclude to pay the note and interest, or the interest alone, please to let me have your answer, as soon as possible— As the convenience and even the comfort of my family depend in a considerable degree upon it.
I am, Dear Sir, with great regard and attachment your friend and
very humble servt:
P. S. The interest due on the note is now largely upon the third year— The two years in arrear amount to 280 dollars— I will send you either a receipt for that, or indorse over the note itself to you, according as shall be most agreeable to yourself.
LbC (Adams
Papers); internal address: “Coll: W. S. Smith.
New-York.”; APM Reel 135.
On 20 Nov. 1801 JQA wrote to WSS
(LbC, APM Reel 135) with a
proposal for his brother Justus Bosch Smith regarding the settlement of a 10 Sept.
1798 debt for $2,000, plus interest of $307.10, a loan that CA had drawn
from JQA’s funds without authorization. Although the loan was in Smith’s
name, it had been intended to provide financial assistance to WSS.
JQA suggested that instead of settling in cash, Smith could convey to
him lands that were “equivalent to the amount of his note and the interest due upon
it.” JQA asked WSS to ensure that Smith included a
topographical description of the land he chose to convey. Smith did not respond to
JQA’s offer, prompting JQA to write this letter to
WSS and then to Smith on 31 Oct. 1803, demanding that he “immediately settle the said note, or at least transmit to
me the four years interest.” Smith replied on 14 Nov., not found, proposing that he
repay the note in installments, to which JQA consented. In Jan. 1804 he
instructed Smith to deposit the first installment with AA2 so that he
could collect it when he traveled through New York. While Smith made the first
payment, he failed to adhere to the repayment plan, and JQA did not
receive full restitution until he settled the debt with Smith’s estate in Feb. 1820
(vols. 12:105; 13:294, 295; JQA to Smith,
31 Oct. 1803, 5 Dec., 17 Jan. 1804, 8 Jan. 1805, 27 Sept., all LbC’s,
APM Reel 135).