Abigail Adams to Hannah Storer Green, 28 February 1784
Abigail Adams to Hannah Storer Green
Febry 28. 1784
Dear Mis Green1
I inclose to you my sons Letters,2 which you will be so kind as to return safe to me again; as they are very valuable to me. For a Lad of Sixteen they do credit to him. This you; who are a parent will permit me to say to you, nor charge upon me more than a maternal partiality in the observation.
Mr. Green Spoke to me yesterday upon an affair in which Mr. Adams he says was formerly engaged. I did not fully comprehend what he wanted, if you will be kind enough to desire him to state in writing what he wishes to have done I will endeavour that he Shall have all the intelligence in my power to give him.3
Accept the inclosed4 as a Small token of our ancient Friendship, and be assured I shall in all countries and climates which the vicissitudes of fortune may place me in, always remember with pleasure and affection the early and lasting Friendship of Caliope for her
Diana5
RC (MHi: S. A. Green Papers).
1. This is AA’s first known letter to her girlhood friend since 1764. Hannah Storer, sister of Ebenezer Storer, married Joshua Green in 1762. AA had corresponded with Hannah since at least 1761; Hannah’s last known letter to AA prior to this was in 1775 (vol. 1:10, and note 1, 273–274).
2. Not identified further; JQA wrote to AA on 23 and 30 July, and on 4 and 10 Sept. 1783, all above.
3. With her reply of 12 March (Adams Papers), in which she returned JQA’s letters to AA, accompanied with high praise and word that “a number of our friends have partook of the pleasure” of reading or hearing them read, Hannah Green enclosed some account of her husband’s business. But this enclosure has not been found, and the subject remains obscure.
4. Not identified. Green’s reply (see note 3) makes it clear that AA was not referring to JQA’s letters.
5. AA used this name frequently in her courtship letters to JA in 1763–1764, but she abandoned it upon her marriage in favor of her first name, or initial, followed by “Adams,” or simply “AA.” Beginning in May 1775, AA signed “Portia” in correspondence with JA, and she soon extended the use of this signature to her closest non-family correspondents, James Lovell, Elbridge Gerry, and Mercy Warren. She continued to use “Diana,” however, when writing to her old friend “Caliope,” a pseudonym that Hannah Storer Green used since the early 1760s. See vol. 1:4–8, 10, 16–51 passim, 193.