On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:

 I am informed that you were about taking the Small Pox, with all the Children. . . . It is not possible for me to describe, nor for you to conceive my Feelings upon this Occasion. Nothing, but the critical State of our Affairs should prevent me from flying to Boston, to your Assistance.

. . .

I can do no more than wish and pray for your Health, and that of the Children. Never—Never in my whole Life, had I so many Cares upon my Mind at once. . . . I shall feel like a Savage to be here, while my whole Family is sick at Boston. But it cannot be avoided. I cannot leave this Place, without more Injury to the public now, than I ever could at any other Time, being in the Midst of scaenes of Business, which must not stop for any Thing.

Source: “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 16 July 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0028-0001. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 2, June 1776 – March 1778, ed. L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 50–51.]

Also on that day in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Richard Henry Lee in Virginia:

 I am sorry the Convention of Virginia did not accept of my resignation here. The state of Mrs. Jefferson’s health obliges me to persist in it. I hope you will be here before the 11th. of August when I propose going: otherwise the colony will be unrepresented. Indeed I wish you would come immediately. The confederation is just brought in and the plan of alliances will be reported to-day. The former is in every interesting point the reverse of what our country would wish. You can never be absent at a time so interesting to your country. I make no doubt it will be long in it’s passage through the1 Committee so that you may be here in time to attack it in the house from Alpha to Omega.

Source: “Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, 16 July 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0546. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 15, 27 March 1789 – 30 November 1789, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958, p. 577.]

On this day 250 years ago in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, 300 British troops on St. George’s Island, and a specially designed row galley designed to protect soldiers in the channel between the island and the mainland, exchanged fire with several hundred Maryland militia under the command of Cols. Jeremiah Jordan and Richard Barnes. One British soldier was mortally wounded and Capt. Rezin Beall of the Maryland militia was badly wounded but survived. The fighting would continue for the next three days in the largest engagement of the War in Maryland.

Sources: Wrike at 89-91; https://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/maryland-largest-battle-revolution.html