On this day 250 years ago, Abigail Adams and her sister Mary Smith Cranch were doing their part for the Patriotic cause. On this day, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband’s associate William Tudor in Boston. Tudor would soon travel from Boston to Philadelphia to meet with John Adams. She gave Tudor a letter for delivery to her husband, but also added her own exhortation to the young man:

I wish you a prosperous journey and a safe return that you may distinguish yourself in these perilous Times by arouseing your Ambition and animating your attention, even to the “Bareing your Bold Breast, and pouring your generous Blood” in defence of the just claims of your much injured Country. In the foremost rank of her Heroes may you obtain that glory which your merrit deserves, and live to see those Halcion Days when Ancient fraud shall cease, and returning justice lift aloft her scale.

Tudor would join the Continental Army the next year, and end up serving as the Judge Advocate General of the Army with the rank of Lt. Colonel.

Also on this day in Boston, Abigail Smith Adams’s sister Mary Smith Cranch wrote to their cousin Isaac Smith Jr., who was a minister as well as a tutor at Harvard College:

Orthodoxy in Politicks is full as necessary a quallification for Settling a minister at the present Day as orthodoxy in divinity was formely, and tho you should preach like an angel if the People suppose you unfriendly to the country and constitution and a difender of the unjust, cruil and arbitary measures that have been taken by the ministry against us, you will be like to do very little good. I hope you do not deserve it but this is the oppinion that manny in this and the neighbouring towns have of you and the very People who a Twelvemonth ago heard you with admiration and talk’d of you with applause, will now leave the meeting-house when you inter it to preach. This my cousin has been the Case I have been told by several in two meetings houses in this town within these Six weeks. I have said every thing I could in your defence but cant remove the prejudice.

I fear you have been imprudent. You have no doubt a right to enjoy you own oppinion but I Query whether your Duty calls you to divulge your Sentiments curcomstanced as you are. While the spirit of the People runs so high, you cannot imagine what trouble these Storys have given me. I cannot bear to think that my cousins amiable disposition and great abillities should be effaced by arbitary principles. I had rather think that he understands Divinity better than Politicks. The management of our publick affairs is in very good hands, and all that is requir’d of you is your Prayers and exhortations for a general reformation. It is not my province to enter into politicks, but sure I am that it is not your Duty to do or say any thing that shall tend to distroy your usefulness. You will not only hurt your self but you will injure your father in his business, for it will be said and I know it has been said “If the son is a Tory the father is so to be sure.” You will grieve your mother beyond discription, and if I know you I think you would not willingly wound such tender parents.

Despite the urging of his Patriotic cousins, Isaac Smith remained a firm Loyalist and would depart Boston for London when the British Army evacuated Boston in 1776.

Sources: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%2215%20October%201774%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=2&sr=;

https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%2215%20October%201774%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=2&sr=

Also on this day in Maryland, the Peggy Stewart was docked in Annapolis Harbor with its cargo that included “seventeen packages, containing 2320 lb. of that detestable weed tea.” Despite handbills posted around town threatening him if he unloaded the tea, the ship’s owner Anthony Stewart made the decision to pay the tea tax and do just that. He would soon regret that decision.

Sources: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2012/12/16/annapolis-tea-party-1774; https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-mob-and-the-peggy-stewart.htm