[Marginal Note in Winthrop’s Lecture on Earthquakes.]1
March 12th. 1761. Another Earthquake happened which may perhaps enable us to determine, whereabouts these Earthquakes originate, and what Course they take, for as all Canada is now in English hands, we may have Accounts from Montreal, Quebeck, Oswego, and the several Places upon the River St. Lawrence, at what time this Earthquake happened, its Direction and Degree of Violence.
1. At foot of p. 16 in JA’s copy of John Winthrop’s Lecture of 1755 (in Boston Public Library; see other marginalia by JA in this copy, following the entry of 5? Dec. 1758, above). At this point in his lecture Winthrop was reporting such scanty data as were available on the direction of movement of earlier earthquakes in America. On the back of the titlepage of his copy JA recorded, in a separate note, that the earthquake of 12 March 1761 occurred about 2:30 A.M., “resembling ’tho not quite equalling that which gave Occasion to this Discourse, in Violence, or Duration.”