Adams Papers
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John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 15 October 1803

John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams

Frankford. Saturday Evening
15. October 1803.

My dear Brother.

I presume you had not left Bristol two hours before we arrived there— Your advice to us to stop at the Fox-Chace, we could not follow— For we should not have known how to get forward— Neither can we go into the City, because, if we did they would exclude us from Baltimore.— We are now at Dover’s—The Rising Sun—Close by the Bridge—1 We shall stop here to-morrow, and proceed on Monday— We hope you will be well enough to come out and see us tomorrow— But I write you now more particularly, to request you would engage of Hardy, an EASY Carriage and four horses to take us on to Baltimore—2 He must come out and take us up here, early on Monday morning— Make the bargain as favourable to us as you can.— We must have a private Carriage; for my wife cannot possibly travel night and day as we must do if we were to take the Stage— And we must have four horses for we have much baggage, and are four, besides the two children.

Do come out and see us to-morrow if you possibly can— And let us know what bargain you have made for us with Hardy.

Your’s affectionately

John Q. Adams.

RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “Thomas B. Adams Esqr / N: 113. Walnut Street. / Philadelphia.”; internal address: “Thomas B. Adams Esqr.”; endorsed: “John Q Adams Esqr: / 15 Oct. 1803 / 16th: Recd:.”

1TBA’s letter has not been found, but JQA wrote his brother from Elizabethtown, N.J., on 13 Oct. (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York) to alert him that they were delayed in their travels. The Adamses did not venture into Philadelphia because Baltimore officials subjected anyone arriving from Philadelphia or New York to a fifteen-day quarantine. Skirting Philadelphia brought the Adamses into the vicinity of the Fox Chase Inn, near the intersection of the Old York and Germantown Roads. JQA and his family instead stayed at John Dover’s Rising Sun Inn in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia, just across the Frankford Creek from Frankford, Penn. (vol. 10:451; Boston Gazetteer, 24 Sept.; Providence Gazette, 24 Sept.; Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 17 Sept.; D/JQA/27, 15 Oct., APM Reel 30; Townsend Ward, “The Germantown Road and Its Associations,” PMHB description begins Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. description ends , 5:16–18 [1881]; W. A. Newman Dorland, “The Second Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry,” PMHB description begins Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. description ends , 45:285–286 [1921]; 52:380 [1928]; Philadelphia American Daily Advertiser, 17 June).

2Joseph Hardy leased horses and carriages in Philadelphia from a livery stable associated with his Market Street inn (Jasper Yeates, Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 4 vols., Phila., 1817–1819, 2:347; Philadelphia Directory, 1803, p. 111, Shaw-Shoemaker description begins Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801–1819, New York, 1958–1966; 22 vols.; supplemental edn., Early American Imprints, www.readex.com. description ends , No. 4858; Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, 12 Oct. 1804).

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