Louisa Catherine Adams to John Quincy Adams, 14 August 1804
Louisa Catherine Adams to John Quincy Adams
Washington Augst: 14th. 1804
I recieved your very kind letter of the 3d on Sunday evening & was inexpressibly shocked at the melancholy news it contain’d11 Poor Mrs: Sargent. I most sincerely sympathize with you my beloved friend in grief for her early death amiable & lovely as she was every ene who
has seen her must deplore her loss but you my best friend who have known her so long and once loved her so well must indeed mourn her untimely fate and bury her faults (if faults she had) in eternal oblivion I never saw her but twice but the last time I had that pleasure I was fully convinced that she still retain’d her affection for you which she could not conceal and I pitied her from my Soul convinced as I am she never ceased to lament the folly she was urged to commit and to deplore the blessing she had lost She is now translated to those realms of Bliss where no sorrow can intrude to happiness unchanging & eternal2
Our Sweet Boys are both perfectly well John has another large double tooth through indeed I was not the least angry about the vermillion therefore do not accuse me when there is really no necessity excuse my last letter I was so low spirited I scarcely know what I wrote it was prompted by the most anxious solicitude and an excess of tenderness which must be a plea for any absurdity of which I may have been guilty—
Adieu my dearest friend I unceasingly pray that some fortunate occurrence may hasten your return to the arms of your / Very affectionate Wife
L. C. Adams
RC (Adams Papers).
1. In his letter of 3 Aug. JQA reported the death of Mary Frazier Sargent. He also expressed his concern for JA2 and assured LCA that he had attempted to fulfill her request for goods from Boston. He reported that the “vermilion” cloth she wanted was not available and that he might not be able to send cheese via the schooner Alert because its itinerary was in question. JQA’s letter was in reply to one from LCA of 27 July, in which she reported JA2’s illness from teething and noted her disappointment that she had not yet received the requested items (both Adams Papers).
2. Mary Frazier Sargent of Newburyport, whom JQA had courted more than a decade earlier, was thirty years old when she died of consumption on 28 July. LCA learned of JQA and Sargent’s courtship while sailing to the United States in 1801, and the two women met during the summer of 1802 and again in early 1803, before and after Sargent’s Dec. 1802 marriage to Daniel Sargent (Vital Records of Newburyport, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849, 2 vols., Salem, Mass., 1911, 1:148; Boston Repertory, 31 July 1804; , 1:157, 172, 185). For more on JQA’s relationship with Sargent, see vol. 9:41–44 and 11:61–62, 195.