John Adams - SA by David McCullough Page B
Authors: David McCullough
Tags: United States, General, Historical, History, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, 19th century, Presidents & Heads of State, Presidents - United States, Presidents, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), United States - Politics and Government - 1783-1809, Adams; John, United States - Politics and Government - 1775-1783
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Philosophical Society, “for the promoting of useful knowledge,” with the result that Philadelphia had become the recognized center of American thought and ideas. Other eminent members of the Philosophical Society included John Bartram, who west of town, on the banks of the Schuylkill River, had created the first botanical garden in America; Dr. Benjamin Rush, an enterprising young physician and champion of humanitarian reform; and David Rittenhouse, clockmaker, optician, instrument-maker and self-taught astronomer who, to study the transit of Venus in 1769, had erected an incongruous-looking observation platform that still stood on the grounds of the State House.
Topics of “consideration” at the Philosophical Society, as set forth in Franklin's initial proposal were, in the spirit of the age, all-embracing:
...all philosophical
[scientific]
experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life ... all new-discovered plants, herbs, trees, roots, and methods of propagating them.... New methods of curing or preventing diseases.... New mechanical inventions for saving labor.... All new arts, trades, manufacturers, etc. that may be proposed or thought of.
As it was, Philadelphia manufacturers and artisans produced more goods than in any city in America—boots, wigs, hardware, fancy carriages, Franklin stoves, mirror glass, and no end of bricks for a city where nearly everything was built of brick. Thomas Affleck produced furniture as fine as any made in the colonies, all in the fashionable style of the English cabinetmaker Chippendale. John Behrent on Third Street advertised what may have been the first piano made in America, “a just finished extraordinary instrument by the name of a pianoforte, made of mahogany, being of the nature of a harpsichord.”
With twenty-three printing establishments and, by 1776, seven newspapers—more newspapers even than in London—Philadelphia was the publishing capital of the colonies. It was not only that Franklin's immensely popular Poor Richard's Almanack emanated from Philadelphia, but political pamphlets of such far-reaching influence as John Dickinson's Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer , Thomas Jefferson's spirited Summary View of the Rights of British America , and now, Common Sense , which was selling faster than anything ever published in America.
Shops in nearly every street offered an array of goods and enticements such as most delegates to Congress could never find at home, everything from French brandy and Strasburg snuff to fancy chamber pots, artificial teeth, or ordinary pins of the kind John Adams purchased in “great heaps” to send home to Abigail. John Sparhawk, proprietor of the London Bookstore on Second Street, in addition to volumes on medicine and law, sold scientific instruments, swords, spurs, and backgammon tables.
There were as many as thirty bookshops and twice the number of taverns and coffeehouses, with names like Blue Anchor, Bunch of Grapes, Tun Tavern, Conestoga Wagon, Rising Sun, Half Moon, and each had its own clientele. The Free Masons convened at the staid old Indian King on Market Street. The London Coffee House, at the southwest corner of Front and Market, in the commercial center, was the favorite of the leading merchants and sea captains, indeed the place where much of the city's business was transacted, while the new, larger City Tavern on the west side of Second Street, between Walnut and Chestnut, had become the great gathering place for members of Congress. Adams, recording his first arrival in Philadelphia in August 1774, had written that “dirty, dusty, and fatigued as we were, we could not resist the importunity to go to the
[City]
Tavern,” which, he decided, must be the most genteel place of its kind in all the colonies. It was there, at the City Tavern, a few days later, that Adams had first met George Washington.
Distilleries
Topics of “consideration” at the Philosophical Society, as set forth in Franklin's initial proposal were, in the spirit of the age, all-embracing:
...all philosophical
[scientific]
experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life ... all new-discovered plants, herbs, trees, roots, and methods of propagating them.... New methods of curing or preventing diseases.... New mechanical inventions for saving labor.... All new arts, trades, manufacturers, etc. that may be proposed or thought of.
As it was, Philadelphia manufacturers and artisans produced more goods than in any city in America—boots, wigs, hardware, fancy carriages, Franklin stoves, mirror glass, and no end of bricks for a city where nearly everything was built of brick. Thomas Affleck produced furniture as fine as any made in the colonies, all in the fashionable style of the English cabinetmaker Chippendale. John Behrent on Third Street advertised what may have been the first piano made in America, “a just finished extraordinary instrument by the name of a pianoforte, made of mahogany, being of the nature of a harpsichord.”
With twenty-three printing establishments and, by 1776, seven newspapers—more newspapers even than in London—Philadelphia was the publishing capital of the colonies. It was not only that Franklin's immensely popular Poor Richard's Almanack emanated from Philadelphia, but political pamphlets of such far-reaching influence as John Dickinson's Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer , Thomas Jefferson's spirited Summary View of the Rights of British America , and now, Common Sense , which was selling faster than anything ever published in America.
Shops in nearly every street offered an array of goods and enticements such as most delegates to Congress could never find at home, everything from French brandy and Strasburg snuff to fancy chamber pots, artificial teeth, or ordinary pins of the kind John Adams purchased in “great heaps” to send home to Abigail. John Sparhawk, proprietor of the London Bookstore on Second Street, in addition to volumes on medicine and law, sold scientific instruments, swords, spurs, and backgammon tables.
There were as many as thirty bookshops and twice the number of taverns and coffeehouses, with names like Blue Anchor, Bunch of Grapes, Tun Tavern, Conestoga Wagon, Rising Sun, Half Moon, and each had its own clientele. The Free Masons convened at the staid old Indian King on Market Street. The London Coffee House, at the southwest corner of Front and Market, in the commercial center, was the favorite of the leading merchants and sea captains, indeed the place where much of the city's business was transacted, while the new, larger City Tavern on the west side of Second Street, between Walnut and Chestnut, had become the great gathering place for members of Congress. Adams, recording his first arrival in Philadelphia in August 1774, had written that “dirty, dusty, and fatigued as we were, we could not resist the importunity to go to the
[City]
Tavern,” which, he decided, must be the most genteel place of its kind in all the colonies. It was there, at the City Tavern, a few days later, that Adams had first met George Washington.
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