Jane Mecom to Catharine Greene, 1 June 1776: extract
Jane Mecom to Catharine Greene: Extract
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Philadelphia 1st June 1776
My Dear Brother and the whol worlds freind is Returned; the cause and Circumstances are maloncholy but thank God he is again saif hear. He suffered many Difeculties in going was taken sick in a Day or two after His arival and has never had a well Day since.1 The Raiseing the seige of Quebeck, the Ignorance of the Canadans, there Incapasity and Aversnes to have any thing to do in the war and his [?] Indisposition I beleve Affected His Spirets, but He seems [a] little chearfull this morning.2 All that He himself says about it, is, it is a time of Life with Him to Expect Infermities but Docr. Bond says He will soon git well.3 He has never layn by but won Day at Newyork in His Return to Rest. He Remembers His love to you all.
1. He was suffering, to judge by his later accounts, from boils, edema, and what appears to have been psoriasis: to Ingenhousz, Oct. 17, 1777 (Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek); Bigelow, Works, VII, 334. Almost as soon as he got home, gout incapacitated him. In the second and third weeks of June he was out of touch with what was going on in Philadelphia; he then left town for a friend’s house, presumably to recuperate, and did not return until the end of the month: below, to Washington, June 21; to Rush, June 26.
2. He arrived on May 30; see the note on BF to Carroll and Chase above, May 27, 1776.
3. Thomas Bond, an old friend of the family, had attended DF on her deathbed: above, XXI, 401.