[Extract]

The committee of Congress arrived here last Sunday [October 15]. Colonel [Benjamin] Harrison went through the town without my seeing him. Doctor [Benjamin] Franklin and Mr. [Thomas] Lynch stop'd at Davis. I waited on them, and they came over and drank coffee with us. The next day I dined with them all at Head quarters, and yesterday they and the general officers, and the gentlemen of character from the southward on a visit here, were entertained by the House at [Nathaniel] Coolidge's, on the best dinner we could get for them, turtle, codfish, etc. Every kind of civility and mark of respect is shewn them here, and if they don't leave us better satisfied than they came to us, it will not be our faults. From the little conversation I have had with them, which has been as much as could be got in a crowd, I presume they will. I am much pleased with them. Doctor Franklin, who[m] I never saw before, appears venerable in the characters of a gentleman, a physician, and statesman. I think Mr. Lynch very sensible and judicious, and all of them firmly attached to the good cause, and I flatter myself their zeal will not be abated by this visit . . .

Several armed vessels are fixing by the General, and we have passed a bill to encourage individuals to fix out others. We have just received an account that they have been cannonading Falmouth, Casco Bay, and that Wallace, the pirate at Newport, has insisted on the removal of the troops from Rhode Island, or he will destroy Newport, and shewn instructions to the Committee there to destroy four towns, among which are Plymouth and Machias. The others I can't learn. This account the Governour, Cooke, has just received.