5. A close French relative, as she says, of the Carrolls of Carrollton. She had been in touch with Charles Carroll, BF’s companion on the mission to Canada, as early as 1771, when she had written to ask him why he had not paid her the visit he had promised during his school days in France years before, and to inquire about the American branch of the family. His reply ascribed his not keeping the promise “to a certain giddiness incident to youth,” and gave her a detailed genealogy. J.G.D. Paul, “A Lost Letter-Book of Charles Carroll of Carrollton,” Md. Hist. Mag., XXXII (1937), 203–8. She had either kept up the correspondence since then or was renewing it with some vigor. On July 12 she wrote BF again from Paris, to regret that the enclosed letters were probably too late to go with the dispatches of which he had spoken; but she had recently written Mr. Carroll by Mr. “Mayland” (James Moylan, the commissioners’ agent at Lorient), “ce qui multiplira mes lettres.” She expressed her pleasure at meeting BF and her enthusiasm for his cause, and added regards from her husband, “un gentilhomme qui vit dans sa terre dont il est le seigneur et de sa paroisse.” They were leaving in a fortnight for their country estate; if letters came for her from Mr. Carroll, would he please forward them? University of Pa. Library.

6. The final digit could be read as a 7. But her husband referred in a letter of Jan. 21, 1780, to a meeting that he and his wife had had with BF in July, 1778, and she reminded BF of her visit in that year when she wrote him on Oct. 12, 1784. APS.