Adams Papers

From John Adams to Samuel Tucker, 27 January 1791

To Samuel Tucker

Philadelphia Jan. 27. 1791

Sir

I have received your Several Letters and Should have been glad of the opportunity to have Served you as far as might have been in my Power: but before the receipt of your first Letter the Place you Solicited had been filled by the President of the United States.1

I have represented your Character in the most favourable light to the Secretary at War, and if you think of any other Way, or any particular affair in which I can befriend you please to let me know it. The Ships Journal of our Voyage, I wish you would Send to my son John Quincy Adams in Boston, who will preserve it for, sir / your humble servt

John Adams

RC (MH-H:Tucker Papers); internal address: “Captain Tucker.”

1. Capt. Samuel Tucker (1747–1833), who commanded the Boston, a 24-gun Continental frigate, wrote to JA on 1 Oct. 1790, 10 Nov., and 30 Dec. (all Adams Papers), seeking a federal appointment to the Massachusetts revenue cutter. Tucker was not successful despite his long personal acquaintance with the vice president and his family, which stretched back to the Revolutionary War. JA and JQA secretly embarked for France in Feb. 1778 via the Boston. Tucker kept a 62-page log of the voyage, titled “An Abstract of a Journal,” which he sent to JQA at an unknown date (M/Non-Adams/13, APM Reel 342; AFC description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Richard Alan Ryerson, Margaret A. Hogan, Sara Martin, Hobson Woodward, and others, Cambridge, 1963–. description ends , 1:xv–xvi; 2:389).

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    Source Project
    Adams Papers
    Title
    From John Adams to Samuel Tucker, 27 January 1791
    Author
    Adams, John
    Recipient
    Tucker, Samuel
    Date
    27 January 1791

    Reference

    Cite as
    “From John Adams to Samuel Tucker, 27 January 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-20-02-0286. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 20, June 1789–February 1791, ed. Sara Georgini, Sara Martin, R. M. Barlow, Gwen Fries, Amanda M. Norton, Neal E. Millikan, and Hobson Woodward. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020, p. 468.]

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