John Adams - Quincy, Massachusetts

Oct 17
Saturday
,

With the Appalachian Trail over I was now on my own schedule again, which is to say without a schedule. No need to be anywhere at a certain time. The best way to travel. 

Over the last few months I had visited all my Midwest and East coast cousins with one to go, Mary Ellen in Virginia.

We had not seen each other for 25 years 

and had a lot of catching up to do.

Her husband, Ron, fixed a really good beef stew for lunch.

He uses spicy V8 in the sauce which he says is good for more than 

just Bloody Marys. Yum!

And a really good apple dessert.

The radio said western New York state was expecting snow the next day so I did a marathon drive of 8 hours to Massachusettes, passing the skyline of NYC  on my right with a nod to it saying I would be back soon. 

Turkeys in the rv park the next morning near Foxboro, Mass. woke me up with their loud gobbling.

I was back in Massachusettes to see the John Adams homes in Quincy and to see Cape Cod.

It was a brisk 42 degrees so I bundled up and took the trolley to the Adams homes for the tour.

No photos inside. Darn.

The birthplaces of John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams are both in Quincy, Mass, and stand on their original foundations about 75 feet apart from each other. They are the nation's oldest presidential birthplaces.  John Adams was born in 1735 in the home above, which was on the 160 acre farm his Deacon father owned.

After he graduated from Harvard and passed the Massachusetts bar he married Abigail in 1764,

 

Together they moved into this house next door to his parents where their first son, John Quincy Adams was born.

About this time the American Revolution was heating up and John was busy in Philadelphia and Boston tending to the business of starting a new country so Abigail became the head of the farm doing the many tasks necessary to keep it going with the help of their four children.

The Adams families were the only founding family that did not own slaves.

John Adams served as Vice President under George Washington and as second President of the US.

He and Abigail also spent time in France and England and had grown accustomed to a very genteel lifestyle in Europe. 

The "little cottage" was no longer good enough.

After years abroad as a diplomat, they returned home in 1788 and bought a retirement home on 75 acres just over a mile from the humble farmhouse.

John called it "Peace field" in commemoration of the peace he assisted in making in 1783.

Their son, John Quincy Adams, was the 6th President of the US.

 Altho comfortable, he was not wealthy enough to build a library for his huge collection of books. 

But his son, Charles Francis Adams, had become quite wealthy the old fashioned way. He had married  a  Boston socialite whose father was the wealthiest man in town at the time. Charles built a library next to the home in 1870 to house the 12,000 volumes of four generations of Adams.

This was the first Presidential Library.

Wish I could show you the inside of this beautiful old library.
  You can find the Adam's Library on the Internet I'm sure. While looking at the room, our guide directed our attention to the old original tile floor.  I was surprised to see the tiles set in the Ohio Star quilt pattern in brown and blue. The guide verified this, saying there was even a "humility square" which Charles had built into the design of the quilt blocks. Quilters put a deliberate mistake in their quilts, believing only God is perfect. But why the Ohio Star? Wasn't there a Massachusetts quilt pattern? Researching this important bit of info, I found there is indeed a Massachusetts quilt pattern and it is a variation of the Ohio Star!  Who knew Charles Adams knew his quilt blocks.

Adams family descendants lived in the house and set up the Adams Memorial Foundation, made up of the living descendants of John and Abigail to manage the property.

In 1946 the Foundation gave the estate to the National Park Service to be open to the public.