Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 4
Mr. Crosman Set out for Boston this after noon with the Chaise for you he expects to return with you1 I Should not Sent the Chaise till tomorrow but Mr. Crosman Chose to go to day. You write that things are very dear I hope not So dear as here. Coffe is 4 doll lb. & Sugar 3 & every things els is as dear. I hope you will be at home by monday night. I wish you would examine the Chaise wheels & have it mended their Some of the Spokes work which Should be mended. Our family are pretty well. Give my kind Love to Mr. Greenleafs family & tell them their web is not done yet but I hope it will be Soon & Shall take all the care that is needfull about it.
RTP noted in his diary for June 7: “Rode home in my chaise took out of the Almshouse at Boston a Boy named Willm. Dun. 7 yr. old last Jany.” Dunn had entered the almshouse at the age of two, “a Child of Eliza. Bennets,” on Aug. 31, 1774. He was indentured to RTP to learn husbandry and remained in the Paine household until 1790 when RTP sold the indenture following a runaway attempt (Lawrence Towner, “The Indentures of Boston’s Poor Apprentices, 1734–1805,” in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 43:456; Eric Nellis and Anne Decker Cecere, eds., The Eighteenth-Century Records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 69:252).