10th.
In the forenoon I went, and sat about an hour with Mr. King. Mr. Gerry was sitting at the grand Committee of Congress in the City Hall. I left 50 french louis d’ors, which Mr. Gerry wishes to have for bank Bills on Boston. Dined at the Presidents in a large Company, Mr. van Berkel, Mr. Jay, Mr. Paine,1 Dr. Gordon,2 Dr. Witherspoon, &c. After Dinner young Mr. van Berkel, and Major L’Enfant, went out to drink tea with the Miss Bayard’s. Mr. Harrison went and introduced me to the two Miss Kortright’s, who I find, are the Sisters of Mrs. Heiliger, whom I was well acquainted with in Copenhagen, and to whose Husband I was under many obligations, while I was there. These young Ladies are very agreeable, and the youngest (Eliza)3 is beautiful. I afterwards left Mr. Harrison, and pass’d the evening in Company with the officers of the Packet and Mr. Fontfreyde, who intends to leave town to-morrow at noon, for Albany where he is settled.
1. Thomas Paine, who was living in Bordentown, N.J., and New York until his return to Europe in 1787 ().
2. William Gordon, historian of the Revolution, who had left England in 1770 out of sympathy for the American cause and returned there in 1786 ().
3. Elizabeth Kortright, daughter of New York merchant Lawrence Kortright, married James Monroe in Feb. 1786 (Edward T. James and others, eds., Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols., Cambridge, 1971).