Adams Papers

From John Adams to Jeremy Belknap, 16 January 1795

To Jeremy Belknap

Seperate and Secret

Philadelphia January 16. 1795

Dear sir

I thank you for your Seperate and Secret Letter. As the farm is So near to me, it would well accommodate me, and I should like to purchase it, at a Price within my reach and not beyond its value.—1 But it is so much a matter of indifference to me, that I would not give more than its real Value according to my own Judgment. I have Land enough already to Spend all the Money I can command upon and I have no Child to Settle in that Town.

I should extreamly regret the Loss of Mr. B. as a Neighbour, for a better I neither expect nor desire. But I always knew he would soon sell the farm and he will undoubtedly get as much for it as it will fetch. There are so many Persons now who have accumulated Cash in various Ways which have not been permitted to me, that ten thousand dollars for a fancy or a Whim would be nothing to them. I know the farm will never pay three Per Cent at Ten thousand Dollars— I am therefore determined to think no more of it—indeed this has been my resolution for many years, knowing the Price would be too high for me.

I am my dear sir yours

RC (MHi:Jeremy Belknap Papers); endorsed: “John Adams VP”; docketed by Belknap: “John Adams VP.”

1Not found. Belknap may have referred to the Adamses’ consideration of purchasing Quincy farmland from John Bright, a Boston upholsterer, roughly one month later (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 , 10:399, 400).

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