From John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 28 February 1788
To Benjamin Rush
Lon[don] Feb. 28. 17881
My dear Friend
The Letter that accompanies this, is from a Character so respectable, that I beg leave to recommend it to your particular Attention.2The Correspondent will be found worthy of you.— I have taken Leave, and shall embark, as soon as the Equinoxial and its roughest Blusters are past.
The Emperors Declaration of War announces louder Storms in Europe: but I hope to escape them all in a peaceful Harbour at Braintree.
yours affectionately
John Adams
RC (private owner, 2011); addressed: “The Honourable / Benjamin Rush Esqr / Philadelphia”; internal address: “Dr Rush.”; endorsed: “J. Adams, enclosing a letter / from Revd Mr. Mithoff, german / chaplain to George the third / on the subject of a family that / had migrated from Germany / to America.—” Some loss of text where the seal was removed.
1. JA, who last wrote to Rush on 14 Sept. 1783, resumed here a lengthy and wide-ranging correspondence with the Adams family’s doctor and key political supporter (vol. 15:295–296).
2. The enclosure, not found, was from Johann Georg Friedrich Mithoff, who served as a Lutheran chaplain at the Chapel Royal, St. James’ Palace, from 1777 to 1788 (John Southerden Burn, The History of the French, Walloon, Dutch, and Other Foreign Protestant Refugees Settled in England, London, 1846, p. 236, 237). Rush replied to this request in his 2 July letter, below.