Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 3
Im. in a poor state of mind to write to you. I’ve seen & heard much of the world since I saw you, having been more then seven weeks roving about, can find but few very few willing to contribute to the oppressed so much as to pay their due. I left your hospitable roof hoping to find some way to ease the burden of my whole familys wintering with your family but every scheme at present fails except for our son who Continues at Providence and writes us he may tarry the winter if nothing better presents he clears two dollars a week. Publick affairs are still so intricate that I know not what I would do. I find a kind friend in Major Fuller & wife where we have our living this way. I purpose to set out for Taunton on thursday the weather growing cold & my cloathing thin. It has been very sickly in all parts of the Country. Many are gone to their long home. I suppose you have heard that Mrs. Smith of Weymouth1 is among the number. Taunton has been highly favor’d. It has not been so sickly there as most other places. The affair of D—C—h has been very surprizing to us. I want to know how she bears it. I hear his parents are much depres’d. We have been to 103newbury port. The roads are very pleasant the town populous. Mr. Peck is building works and carrying on Salt peter making very briskly has produc’d very good.
I’ve chat’d on strangly, but must relieve you from the task of reading, being oblig’d to go out on business pray excuse this writen paper. The times afford but little here.
As soon as I arrive at Taunton I determine to write very particular accounts of all matters in my knowlege at present. Pray consider me among your best friends and oblig’d Sister,
Elizabeth (Quincy) Smith, the wife of Rev. William Smith and mother of Abigail Adams, died Oct. 6 (New-England Chronicle: or, Essex Gazette, Oct. 19, 1775). Abigail Adams’s letter to her husband concerning the “fevers of various kinds” and deaths in the family appears in
Adams Family Correspondence
, 1:296–298.