Louisa Catherine Adams to John Quincy Adams, 18 October 1804
Louisa Catherine Adams to John Quincy Adams
Washington Octbr: 18. 1804.
Your letters Profiles & Money have arrived safe for which I return my thanks1 It is true I felt severely disappointed at not finding yours among them but I endeavour’d to console myself with the transporting idea of soon possessing the dear original and every regret vanished in the sweet anticipation of our approaching meeting—
I wrote you that you might possibly be at a Wedding in the course of the Winter2 this is not absolutely impossible but I find my suggestion of such a circumstance occurring so soon was erronious as it is fixed for the first week in June I still leave you to guess who it is the gentleman you are not acquainted with he is a good demo & a Virginian—
The City is so much improved you will be surprized on your arrival The Theatre is almost completed it is to be played in the first three Nights of the Races which begin the thirteenth of next Month the Philadelphia Company are engaged & Bernard is to be here There are likewise two large Hotels built for the accomodation of the Members one of them is completed the other will not be finished untill next year they have also been at work on the Capitol which has advanced considerably the President has had his House improved large drains have been made through his grounds down toward the river Cellars made & the large room has employed a great many hands during the Summer I thougth this Room was said to be totally unnecessary and not to be finished— I believe the library is fitted up for the Representatives I am informed they will be dreadfully cramp’d as it is very small.—3
General Wilkinson & his family are coming to reside in Mrs. Laws house on the Capitol Hill—4
This letter will find you at New York from whence I hope you will write me what time you expect to arrive at Baltimore if you are desirous that I should not join you there tell me so and I will give up relinquish the idea I do not intend to take the Children with me should this be your wish I will thank you to purchace the Children a Hat for they neither of them have one to their heads I will thank Mrs. Smith to procure me ten Yards of White Sattin rather slight to make a dress it is less expensive in New York or Philadelphia than it is here or in Baltimore
Poor Hellen has met with a loss of two thousand Dollars by the failure of a House in George Town Mrs. H. is very well & the Baby grows prodigiously large & strong I never saw a finer Child—
I am extremely sorry to learn that your mothers health is so indifferent I hope the cold weather will restore her strength and enable her soon to enjoy the society of her family pray make my best respects & love acceptable to Col. & Mrs Smith & believe me with the purest & tenderest affection / Your ever faithful wife
L C Adams
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “The Honble: / John Quincy Adams Esqr. / Senator of the United States / at / Col. W. S. Smiths / New York”; endorsed: “Louisa— 18. Octr: 1804. / 23. Octr: recd: in New-York. / 29. Octr: Ansd: in person at Washington.”
1. JQA’s letters to LCA of 30 Sept. and 7 Oct., both above.
2. The wedding of Catherine (Kitty) Walker Johnson and William Brent occurred in January rather than June 1805, for which see LCA’s letter to JQA of 1 Oct. 1804, and note 2, above.
3. The Washington Jockey Club held races on 13, 14, and 15 Nov., while the Washington Theatre, located at the northeast corner of Eleventh and C Streets NW opened on the 16th. The first performance featured “a GRAND MEDLEY of entertainments” performed by singers and comedians and concluded with “an ingenious piece of Machinery, displaying a Splendid Representation of A Sea Engagement.” John Bernard (1756–1828), a British actor who had been in the United States since 1797, was then engaged to appear at Boston’s Federal Street Theatre. William Woodward opened a new hotel in 1804 at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street NW on Capitol Hill. Daniel Carroll’s large hotel near the Capitol was completed in 1805, for which see LCA to JQA, 17 April 1804, and note 3, above.
Along with private development, progress on the city’s public buildings advanced as LCA described. In 1803 Benjamin Henry Latrobe was appointed architect to supervise work on the U.S. Capitol, including removal of the temporary structure known as “the Oven,” for which see JQA to TBA, 24 March, and note 1, above. Latrobe also oversaw the repair of a drainage system at the President’s House that did not have an adequate slope to discharge rainwater. As LCA noted, from Jan. 1802 to Dec. 1805, the Library of Congress was housed in the north wing of the Capitol in a room that was previously occupied by the House of Representatives (Washington, D.C., National Intelligencer, 2, 16 Nov. 1804; A. I. Mudd, “Early Theatres in Washington City,” , 5:68, 70–71 [1902]; ; Cynthia D. Earman, “A Census of Early Boardinghouses,” Washington History, 12:120 [Spring/Summer 2000]; William C. Allen, The United States Capitol: A Brief Architectural History, Washington, D.C., 1990, p. 5, 7; Robert J. Kapsch, Building Washington: Engineering and Construction of the New Federal City, 1790–1840, Baltimore, 2018, p. 178; William Dawson Johnson, History of the Library of Congress, Volume 1, 1800–1864, Washington, D.C., 1904, p. 34).
4. That is, Gen. James Wilkinson, his wife, Ann Biddle Wilkinson (d. 1807), and their sons James Biddle (ca. 1783–1813) and Joseph Biddle (ca. 1786–1865) (Ann Biddle Wilkinson, N. Wilkinson, and Thomas Robson Hay, “Letters of Mrs. Ann Biddle Wilkinson from Kentucky, 1788–1789,” , 56:35, 36 [1932]; New York Herald, 7 Dec. 1865).