Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 1
According to my promise I have done my best to perswade father to Consent to your going, but he is so averse't to it that it is in vain to Say any more and his reasons I think, are good so that I had nothing to urge but your health. He says you may ride as much as you please at home or go out of town in a Suitable manner but not into a town among your friends with one so much beneath them.1
I pray that you wou'd dismiss the thoughts and when you hear all the reasons I doubt not but you will be Convince'd that it is best. Freeman Came home Last night and Asa2 has brought up Stirgis's horse. Aunt Eunice3 Came home yesterday & Longs to see you. I Expect to see you next week. Remain in great haste your Loving Sis,
RTP was in Boston on holiday from May 26 to June 2. He gives no hint in his diary of the proposed excursion.
Asa Soper was in the Paine household from 1747 and was formally apprenticed to Thomas Paine by the Overseers of the Poor of Boston on Sept. 7, 1749, to learn the trade of shopkeeping. He was to be "set free" Oct. 22, 1755 (Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 43[1966]: 440).
Eunice Willard (1695–1751), sister of RTP's grandmother, apparently lived alternately with the Paine family and with her brother, Province Secretary Josiah Willard, who lived nearby (Paine, Paine Ancestry, 18). RTP notes her death on July 25, 1751, in his diary.