54130 Friday. (Adams Papers)
Still, foggy, damp Weather. Kept School and dined at Mr. Greenes.
54229 Thurdsday. (Adams Papers)
Still, cloudy Weather. Set out for Worcester, Drank Tea in Sutton, with my class mate, Wheeler and arrived at Worcester about 7 o clock. Supped with Major Chandler. Very miry Roads.
54328 Wednesday. (Adams Papers)
Ditto. Thick weather, and some rain.
54427 Tuesday (Adams Papers)
Att my Uncles. Rev. Nathan Webb (1705–1772) , who in 1731 had married Ruth, a younger sister of Deacon John Adams of Braintree. Webb, who graduated at Harvard in 1725, was settled as the first minister at Uxbridge, Mass., in the year of his marriage and enjoyed a pastorate there of over forty years ( Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates John Langdon Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical...
54526 Monday. (Adams Papers)
A sharp piercing Air. Sat out for Uxbridge, arrived 2’o clock.
54625 Sunday. (Adams Papers)
A cold Weather. Heard friend Thayer preach two ingenious discourses, from Jeremy 10th. 6. and 7. Supped att Coll. Chandlers.
54724 Saturday. (Adams Papers)
A very high west Wind. Warm and cloudy. P.M. warm and fair.
54823 Fryday. (Adams Papers)
A fair and agreable Day. Kept School. Drank Tea, at Coll. Chandler’s Jur., and spent the Evening at Major Gardiners.
54922 Thurdsday. (Adams Papers)
A fair morning. Fresh and lively Air. Drank Tea and supped at Mrs. Paine’s. Presumably Sarah (Chandler) Paine, daughter of Colonel or Judge John Chandler and wife of Timothy Paine (1730–1793) , currently a member of the General Court ( Stark, Loyalists of Mass . James H. Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution, Boston, 1910. , p. 382–385).
55021 Wednesday. (Adams Papers)
A very rainy day. Dined with Coll. Chandlers Jur. Spent the Eve at Mr. Maccarty’s. Kept school. Nothing more.
55120 Tuesday. (Adams Papers)
A fair, warm spring like Day. Drank Tea and supped at Mr. Greenes. For the first few months after he came to Worcester JA had “boarded with one Green at the Expence of the Town” ( JA , Autobiography), but since there were numerous Greens in Worcester at this period and since JA writes this name as “Green” and “Greene” interchangeably, none of those mentioned in the early Diary can be certainly...
55219 Monday. (Adams Papers)
A rainy Day.
55318 Sunday. (Adams Papers)
A fair morning. Heard Mr. Maccarty. Rev. Thaddeus Maccarty (1721–1784) , who at the preceding Harvard commencement had singled out JA to serve as schoolmaster in Worcester.
55417 Saturday. (Adams Papers)
A clowdy, dull, Day. Some snow about noon, and rain towards night. σπίζημαι, τα καθαρματα Ψυχησ. Plato. This passage remains a puzzle after examination by several authorities on Greek. It is not an accurate quotation from Plato, and nothing in the context gives a clue to what JA intended by the first word, which makes neither sense nor grammar as it stands. If we may read the first word as the...
55516 Fryday. (Adams Papers)
A fine morning. A large white frost upon the ground. Reading Hutcheson’s Introduction to moral Phylosophy. A beautiful Day and Evening. Din’d with Major Chandler. Francis Hutcheson, A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, in Three Books; Containing the Elements of Ethicks and the Law of Nature , Glasgow, 1747 , and later edns., was long a popular textbook in Scotland and America. A number of...
55615. (Adams Papers)
A fair morning and pretty warm. Kept school. Drank Tea at Mr. Swan’s, with Mr. Thayer.
557January the 14th. 1756. (Adams Papers)
At Worcester. A very rainy Day. Kept school in the forenoon; but not in the afternoon, because of the weather and my own indisposition. JA had come to Worcester “about three weeks after his commencement” at Harvard to keep a school. (Commencement in 1755 fell on 16 July.) The circumstances of his appointment are related in his Autobiography. The school he kept was the “Center School,” built in...
558[November 1755] (Adams Papers)
We had a severe Shock of an Earthquake. It continued near four minutes. I was then at my Fathers in Braintree, and awoke out of my sleep in the midst of it. The house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins about us. 7 Chimnies were shatter’d by it within one mile of my Fathers house. First entry in “Paper book No. 1” (D/JA/1), which is the first in the series of...
559November 18th. 1755. (Adams Papers)
We had a severe Shock of an Earthquake. It continued near four minutes. I was then at my Fathers in Braintree, and awoke out of my sleep in the midst of it. The house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins about us. 7 Chimnies were shatter’d by it within one mile of my Fathers house. First entry in “Paper book No. 1” (D/JA/1), which is the first in the series of...