Elizabeth Ellery Dana to Abigail Adams, 17 September 1799
Elizabeth Ellery Dana to Abigail Adams
Cambridge Sept 17 1799
Dear Madam
It was fully my intention to have called upon you before I went with Mr Dana on the Western Circuit, either the last week or before next Friday, when he will set off for Northhampton, but I have been much afflicted with a cold which has confined me to my house and will prevent my visit. I flatter myself to have the pleasure of seeing you at Quincy upon our return—
Having understood that the President wished to have some persons of education enter the navy as Midshipmen and having been applied to by the friend of a young man of this Town, who from the inability of his Mother to continue him at College, has been obliged to take up his connections at the end of the second year of his course, and whom I beleive to be a young man of good character, I have presumed to mention him to you— His name is John Goodwin, a nephew to Capt— Goodwin who sails out of Boston and Son of our late Gaoler—1 He is desirous of going in Capt Seaver, because he expects our Son as well as two of his Classmates goes with him, to whom he is known— If it might be done, I should be glad to know of it before my departure that he might be preparing to go when Capt Seaver shall be ready, which I understand will be in the beginning of next Month—2 I am dear Madam with respect / your friend
Eliza. Dana
RC (Adams Papers).
1. John Goodwin IV (b. 1779) was the nephew of Capt. Nathaniel Goodwin (1744–1817) and the son of Esther Bradish and the late Cambridge jailer John Goodwin III (1742–1798) (Vital Records of Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, 2 vols., Boston, 1914–1915, 1:296; Vital Records of Charlestown, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, 2 vols., Boston 1984–1995, 1:353, 362 392–393; Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Boston, 1877, p. 497; An Historic Guide to Cambridge, 2d rev. edn., Cambridge, 1907, p. 32; Boston Columbian Centinel, 12 May 1798, 26 Feb. 1817).
2. On 8 April 1799 JA wrote to Benjamin Stoddert (LbC, APM Reel 119) authorizing a commission for Dana’s son Edmund Trowbridge Dana as a midshipman on the frigate Congress, Capt. James Sever. Goodwin appears to have entered service as a midshipman the following May, and Dana’s Harvard College classmates James Allen and John Harris may also have served aboard the Congress. The outfitting of the vessel at the Charlestown Navy Yard was completed in December, and it embarked on its first voyage from Newport, R.I., on 6 Jan. 1800 (, 5:14, 16, 19; ; Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Early American Republic, 1783–1812, 3 vols., Santa Barbara, Calif., 2014, 1:120–121). For the service on the frigates Constitution and Boston of other members of Harvard’s class of 1799, see AA to JQA, 30 July, and note 6, above.