Boston Lawyer Finds Abigail Adams Letter, Donates It to Historical Society

The Massachusetts Historical Society is adding to its collection a previously unknown letter written by Abigail Adams, the wife of the second president.

The letter was donated by Boston lawyer Lawrence Perera, who found it in the desk of his late mother, stashed in an old manila envelope of family documents, the Boston Globe reports. He’s not sure why it was there, but he suspects his father or an aunt bought it from an antiques dealer.

The letter was written in 1788 while Abigail Adams was in Europe, where her lawyer husband was serving as an ambassador before he became George Washington’s vice president. It was written to her uncle, and it complained that foreign leaders were not taking the new nation seriously. “Our Government should assume a New & more respectable form,” she wrote.

Hat tip to Pat’s Papers.