Adams Papers Digital Edition

Diary of John Quincy Adams, volume 1

Saturday 29th 1780.

Monday 31st of July 1780
Sunday 30th. JQA Sunday 30th. Adams, John Quincy
Sunday 30th.

This Morning Pappa went out and at about half after one came home with Mr. Jennings who dined here. After dinner we went to the parc. We walked there some time after which we went to the cathedral. We met Mr. Jennings's Nephew whose name is Bordly.1 We heard part of a sermon spoke in Flemish. We saw an alter the banisters of which were of Solid silver and cost 30000 Pound sterling. We heard some very good musick: after which we went to Mr. Lee's,2 a little after we got there Mrs. Izard, her son, and two daughters, came and a Miss Steed.3 We drank tea at 38Mr. Lee's, and stay'd there till about eight oclock P.M. when My Pappa, Mr. Lee, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Bordly, my Brother Charles and myself took a walk down the town and saw the canals; we walk'd along upon the ramparts which was a very agreable place: and at about half after nine we got home to our lodgings.

 1.

This is probably either Matthias or John, sons of John Beale Bordley, the agriculturist, a half-brother of Jenings ( DAB ; Mrs. Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, Biographical Sketches of the Bordley Family, of Maryland . . ., Phila., 1865, p. 21–26, 78–79).

 2.

William Lee, brother of Richard Henry and Arthur Lee, chosen by congress as commercial agent at Nantes in 1777 and made commissioner to the courts of Berlin and Vienna later in the year. Like Izard, however, Lee failed to gain recognition and was recalled in 1779. He decided to remain in Europe, making Brussels his residence until his return to Virginia in 1783 ( DAB ).

 3.

Mary Stead, sister of Elizabeth Stead Izard and sister-in-law of Ralph Izard Jr. (“Izard of South Carolina,” S.C. Hist. and Geneal. Mag., 2:236 [July 1901]; “South Carolina Gleanings in England,” same, 4:237 July [1903]).