Adams Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-20-02-0083

To John Adams from Roger Sherman, 16 August 1789

From Roger Sherman

Augt. 16th [1789]

Mr. Sherman returns his respectful compliments to the Vice-President, and would have done himself the honor of Waiting on him to Dine on Thursday next but he was previously engaged.1

RC (MHi:Adams-Hull Coll.); docketed by JA: “Card.”

1By early August, JA and AA had oriented themselves to the social responsibilities that came with the vice presidency. Owing to the city’s summer heat and a scarcity of cooks, AA waited until mid-August to set up weekly dinners for the social elite, which complemented Martha Washington’s Friday evening levees. On Thursdays the Adamses regularly hosted 24 guests, with congressmen, like Sherman, and their wives crowding into Richmond Hill’s single dining room. Between legislative sessions, making and receiving visits also consumed the Adamses’ time. AA recalled returning over sixty calls “in 3 or 4 afternoons” and hosting unplanned visitors who arrived at breakfast to meet with JA (AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963–. description ends , 8:397, 399, 406). Multiple dinner invitations dating from JA’s vice presidency, including loose notes accepting and declining, are in MHi:Adams-Hull Collection.

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