Although Adams enjoyed Trenton the town in 1777, it was a very different place from the brilliant city he found there twenty-one years later. The close of the eighteenth century was one of the notable periods in its history, especially its social history. Among the families then most prominent were the Howells, Brearleys, Furmans, Morrises, Clymers, Cadwaladers, Merediths, Covenhovens, Rutherfords, Dagworthys, Spencers, Bainbridges, Greens, Beattys, De Klyns, Wilcoxes, Erskines, and Reeds. In the fall of 1798, when the yellow-fever was most virulent in the capital near by, all the government's officials removed to Trenton with their families. The city soon became overcrowded, and it was almost impossible to obtain any kind of lodging. President Adams arrived October 10, and was greeted on State Street with fireworks and cheers; and an old chronicler informs us that later a round of elegant and fashionable entertainments was planned in his honor.

October days of 1798 were bright ones for Trenton, and the rooms of the Hermitage were always taxed with large gatherings of the first company of the republic. Lucy Pintard, a member of the famous Pintard family of New York City and later of the Jerseys, spent that month and the preceding ones in Trenton. One of her letters written from London in the following year, and still preserved by her descendants, contains a pleasing reference to the fashionables of the former place. She writes:

The sprigs of the Peerage I have met with so far at Mrs. Rives do not equal in their fineness of attire our own ladies and gentlemen of New Jersey, to be found in the capital city. Ours have the innocence of a new formed society and government. Gaming is all the rage here and they keep it up at every house. . . . 'Tis said a woman of quality has got herself into serious trouble by her gaming table and is threatened with the pillory."

English carriages became quite the rage in the city about this time, and the Hermitage stable possessed a beautiful and expensive example used by the second Mrs. Dickinson, pretty Rebecca Cadwalader, a sister of the general's first wife.

Strange as it may seem, Trenton in those days was not a city for dances. The dance-loving members of the elect had to take the Philadelphia coaches for the Assemblies when they wished to enjoy the pleasure of dancing in a large company. Many South Jersey names are on the subscription lists of those noted affairs, and most likely the inhabitants of Trenton often attended them.

The whispering-room of the Hermitage is one of the most famous rooms in the social history of New Jersey. There Madame Moreau, " the beautiful Parisian," displayed her wonderful pearls and played on the harp for select audiences. In its dim recesses Louis Philippe, a future king, paid graceful compliments to the ladies of the Dickinson household. When Alexander Hamilton journeyed to Philadelphia on government business, with his fair daughter Angelica for a companion, they stopped in Trenton and visited General Dickinson. Perhaps that fair girl's tender heart, so soon to be stilled forever, beat faster in the whispering-room, for there was a handsome young Joseph Dickinson by her side, and no doubt he was an adept in the art of whispering the sweet nothings of that sentimental age. Many a tale could most likely be told of the old room as fascinating as the romantic Trenton Tavern elopement of Frances Rutherford and Colonel Fortesque of the British army, but its eighteenth-century frequenters are all sleeping, – a number of its most devoted ones in the Friends' Burying-Ground, about their genial host of the long ago.