Adams Papers

1781. Feb 24 [i.e. 23]. Fryday.
[from the Diary of John Adams]

1781. Feb 24 [i.e. 23]. Fryday.

Went to the Hague, in the Trecht Schuit.1 At Leyden I have seen Mr. Vander Kemp,2 and Mr.   and Mr.  I also visited two large Manufactures, one of Cloth, another of Camblet.

1Canal boat or tow-boat. “... partly by the Trech Schuits, that is the Barks which ply in this Country in the Canals” (JA to Huntington, 6 April 1781, LbC, Adams Papers). JA spells the word in a multitude of ways.

2Francois Adriaan van der Kemp (1752–1829), Mennonite clergyman, author, and political radical, was a disciple of J. D. van der Capellen’s. He suffered imprisonment for his anti-Orangist activities and after the collapse of the Patriot movement fled the Netherlands and emigrated to the United States, 1788. He settled in upper New York State and lived a scholarly life in bucolic surroundings for many years. See Nieuw Ned. Biog. Woordenboek description begins P. C. Molhuysen and others, eds., Nieuw Nederlandsche Biografisch Woordenboek, Leyden, 1911–1937; 10 vols. description ends , 8:953–958, and Van der Kemp’s Autobiography, ed. Helen L. Fairchild, N.Y., 1903, a charming book containing selections from Van der Kemp’s extensive correspondence with JA and others, and much information on the Dutch Patriots, with numerous portraits.

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