Newspaper Article

HISTORIC MASSACHUSETTS / Houses With Presidential Tales to Tell / John, and John Q, slept here: Quincy, of the Adams eras Sidebar: INFORMATION, PLEASE (see end of text)

Michael Schuman. Michael Schuman is a freelance writer. Michael Schuman

2001

Overview

Oak is abundant in the 14,000-volume library, while art is found in almost all of the dozen and a half-odd rooms. Numerous depictions of [John Quincy Adams] and Abigail Adams, John Quincy and Louisa Adams, their contemporaries and relations hang on the walls and depict them at various stages in their lives. Our guide told us that John Adams, subject to vanity and pride like the rest of us, placed the portrait that he felt least flattering in the butler's pantry, the darkest part of the house. Across town are the houses where both John and John Quincy Adams were born. The two saltbox homes that sit side by side were built in 1663 and 1681 and stand as the oldest U.S. presidential birthplaces. John Adams' father, also named John Adams, and his mother, Susanna Boylston Adams, had four children in one house in what was then the North Precinct of Braintree. The house next door was bequeathed to John, the future president, in his father's will, and it was there that on July 11, 1767, John and Abigail's second child and first son, John Quincy, was born.

• Publisher: Newsday LLC
• Subject: Adams, John Quincy (1767-1848) / Monroe, James (1758-1831)