George Washington Papers

[Diary entry: 30 May 1787]

Wednesday 30th. Attended Convention.

Dined with Mr. Vaughan. Drank Tea, and spent the evening at a Wednesday evenings party at Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence’s.

Mr. Vaughan is probably Samuel Vaughan rather than one of his sons. The elder Vaughan was in Philadelphia until about Dec. 1787 when he sailed to visit his holdings in Jamaica. He returned to Philadelphia by 1789 but left again in 1790 to take up permanent residence in England (STETSON [3] description begins Sarah P. Stetson. “The Philadelphia Sojourn of Samuel Vaughan.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 73 (1949), 459-74. description ends , 472–74).

John Lawrence (1724–1799), who in the colonial period had been a mayor of Philadelphia and a judge of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, was proscribed a Tory during the Revolution. Mrs. Lawrence was Elizabeth Francis Lawrence (1733–1800), a sister of Tench Francis, Jr., whom GW visited twice this week, and an aunt of GW’s wartime aide Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman. In 1790 Lawrence lived on Chestnut Street below Sixth Street (Pa. Mag., 24 [1899], 403; HEADS OF FAMILIES, PA. description begins Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1790: Pennsylvania. 1908. Reprint. Baltimore, 1970. description ends , 225).

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