John Adams to Abigail Adams, 8 January 1795
John Adams to Abigail Adams
Philadelphia January 8. 1795
My Dearest Friend
I dined yesterday with Mr Hammond the British Minister who told me that Mr Dunlap1 had just received a Dublin Paper of the 25th of October, which he had Seen and read, in which was a Paragraph to this Effect, “Mr Adams appointed Minister Resident from the United States of America to the states General had arrived in London and contradicted the Report of a Battle between General Wayne and Governor Simcoe.”2 I hasten to give you this account, though I have not yet seen the Paper, knowing your own Anxiety by my own. I congratulate you upon this corroboration of the Account of Captain Joy of the Arrival of The Alfred at the Downs.
The Chevalier de Freire and his Lady are very well. He desires me to send you his Compliments— She is a very pretty and agreable Woman. I am to dine with them in Dr Franklins House where they live, on the 14th.
The Weather continues here as pleasant as May.
Adieu
RC (Adams Papers).
1. For Philadelphia printer John Dunlap, see , 3:212. In 1795 Dunlap published the American Daily Advertiser with his partner David C. Claypoole ().
2. John Graves Simcoe (1752–1806) was the strongly anti-American lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. During the summer of 1794, as Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne advanced American troops toward the U.S.—Canadian border, Simcoe urged British officials to declare war. A decision to avoid military action was made in July but took several months to arrive in Upper Canada and silence Simcoe (Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 15 vols. to date, Toronto, 1966–2005, 5:754–759; Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, N.Y., 2006, p. 268–269, 287).