From JOHN ADAMS by DAVID MC CULLOUGH - ABIGAIL ADAMS on PARIS, FRANCE

pages 303-304

She (Abigail) though Paris far from appealing, for all the splendor of its public buildings. And if she had not seen all of it, she had "smelt it." Given its state of sanitation, the stench was more than she could bear...... Everything looked filthy to her. Even the handsomest buildings were black with soot. The people themselves were the "dirtiest creatures" she had ever laid eyes on, and the number of prostitutes was appalling. That any nation would condone, let alone license, such traffic, she found vile, just as she fond abhorrent the French practice of arranged marriages among the rich and titled of society...

"What idea, my dear madame, can you form of the manners of a nation, one city of which furnishes ... 52,000 unmarried females so lost to a sense of honor and shame as publicly to enroll their names in a notary office for the most abandoned purposes and to commit iniquity with impunity," she wrote in outrage to Mercy Warren. "Thousands of these miserable wretches perish annually with disease and poverty, whilst the most sacred of institutions is prostituted to unite titles and estates." (Marriage)

On a visit later to a Paris orphanage run by Catholic Sisters of Charity, she was shown a large room with a hundred cribs and perhaps as many infants. it was a sign both pleasing and painful - pleasing because all was so admirably clean, and the nuns especially attentive and kind, but painful because of the numbers of abandoned babies, .... In an average year 6000 children were delivered to the orphanage, she was told ...'

C 2001 David Mc Cullough Simon and Schuster Publishers

GERMAN ANCESTRY? Could it be from the HESSIAN SOLDIERS WHO CAME TO THE US TO FIGHT ON THE SIDE OF BRITAIN ?

From David McCullough's JOHN ADAMS.
Published 2001
Copyright the author,
pages 139-140


"The ships flying the Union Jack that arrived off New York at the end of June 1776 - the fleet from Halifax that one eyewitness described as looking like "all London afloat" - had been only the start of an overwhelming show of British might come to settle the fate of the new United States of America.

By July 3rd, 9,000 troops led by General William Howe had landed on Staten Island, where hundreds of Tories were on hand to welcome them. Howe himself had gone ashore on July 2, the very day that Congress had voted for Independence, and in the days following, up the Narrows between Staten island and Long Island, came ever more British sails, including an armada of 130 warships and transports from England under command of the General's brother, Admiral Richard Lord Howe. By mid-August 32,000 fully equipped, highly trained, thoroughly professional British and German (Hessian) soldiers - more that the entire population of Philadelphia were ashore on Staten Island, supported by ten ships-of-the-line and twenty frigates, making in all the largest, most costly British overseas deployment ever until that time.

By contrast , the American army faltered in defense of New York, digging in on Manhattan and Long Island, was optimistically thought to number 20,000 troops. These nearly all poorly equipped amateurs led by Washington, who in his year as commander-in-chief had yet to fight a battle.......

Did You Know THOMAS JEFFERSON and JOHN ADAMS BOTH DIED ON JULY 4th 1826 ?!?

Reading Pulitzer Prize winning David McCullough's JOHN ADAMS, a tome over 600 pages hardback published by Simon and Shuster, copyright the author in 2001. And it turns out that Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who had a life long friendship that went through many phases and who had a correspondence in their old age, died on the very same day, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence from Britain! YES!

These kinds of things make me think that so much is fate.

It's a great book and I highly recommend it to you!