Adams Papers

Thursday 27th.

Thursday 27th.

Stevens went to the lewtenants of the Police for a passport to go out of the kingdom. He could not get it till 10 o clock. At twelve o clock we dined. Mr. Austin,1 Mr. Appleton,2 Mr. Dana, Mr. Thaxter Mr. Fox3 Captn. Robinson and Dr. Foulk4 took leave of us and at about 1 o clock we sot out. We passed over the boulevards and out of the porte St. Martin and left Paris. We had very good roads passed over some land very well cultivated and at about ten o clock at night we arrived at Compiègne which is a small city and a very old one. We came 9 Posts and a half which is 57 Miles to day.

1Jonathan Loring Austin, one-time secret agent for Franklin in England and secretary for JA at Passy, had come back to Europe in a vain endeavor to secure a loan for Massachusetts from Dutch, French, and Spanish authorities (Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates, description begins John Langdon Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Boston, 1873- . description ends 16:303–308; Adams Family Correspondence, description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1963- . description ends 3:262–263).

2John Appleton, son of Nathaniel Appleton, the commissioner of the Continental Loan Office and Boston merchant, was in Paris on mercantile business and later followed the Adams’ party to Holland, carrying letters for JA (Francis Dana to JA, 31 July, Adams Papers; Adams Family Correspondence, description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1963- . description ends 3:390, where the date of Dana’s letter is incorrectly given as 31 Aug.).

3George Fox, an American traveler in Europe, portrayed as a man of “fortune and genius,” sympathetic to the promotion of agriculture, natural history, and the arts in America (Anne H. Cresson, “Biographical Sketch of Joseph Fox, Esq., of Philadelphia,” PMHB description begins Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. description ends , 32:196 [April 1908]; Cal. Franklin Papers, A.P.S., description begins I. Minis Hays, comp., Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in the Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1908; 5 vols. description ends 2:243).

4Dr. John Foulke, described in Benjamin Rush’s letter of introduction for him to JA as “a young gentleman of a respectable Quaker family who goes to France to finish his Studies in Medicine” (Benjamin Rush to JA, 28 April, Adams Papers).

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