The History Hare - April 22, 2010

“History Hidden In Plain Sight”

by footnoteMaven

“I have considered it a duty devolving upon me to erect a plain and modest monument to his memory. . ."

~ John Quincy Adams ~

It pays to go through those boxes. Those in which we store our family memorabilia. Who knows what we might have forgotten. Yes, it seems it would have behooved Quincy, Massachusetts, to have gone through the boxes of its most famous family as well, the Adams family. You’d think all the family letters would have been careful stored for posterity; but one languished in a box in the basement, forgotten. One from a president, discovered by accident.

Assistant City Solicitor Paul Hines was researching old records related to a lawsuit against the city. A dust-covered box in one of the 126-year-old building’s former jail cells was filled with old scrapbooks. He turned the page in one of those old scrapbooks and saw the letter, still attached to the page in the bound, yellowing volume.

The text of the letter has been published before, but it's unknown how long it’s been since anyone has seen the original. The Quincy Historical Society wasn't sure if the original had even survived.

In a handwritten message dated Sept. 8, 1826, then-President John Quincy Adams asked town officials to allow him to build a monument” to his father, President John Adams, beneath the “Stone Temple” that First Parish Church was planning to build in what is now Quincy Center.

“I have considered it a duty devolving upon me to erect a plain and modest monument to his memory: and my wish is that divested of all ostentation it may yet be as durable as the walls of the Temple to the erection of which he has contributed, and as the Rocks of his native Town which are to supply the materials for it,’’ Adams wrote."

He added: “I have many reasons for desiring that this may be undertaken without delay and . . .that both my parents may not remain for an indefinite time without a stone to tell where they lie."

John Quincy Adams sent the letter to the town’s Temple and School Fund supervisors at a difficult point in his life.

He was facing bitter Congressional opposition from Democrats loyal to Andrew Jackson. His father had died just two months earlier, on July 4, 1826; he had not learned of his father’s death for nearly a week.

Almost two centuries later, the basement crypt that John Quincy Adams sought in this letter has become one of Quincy’s most familiar tourist sites.

As the final resting place for the father-son presidents and their wives, the crypt draws thousands of visitors as a stop on Adams National Historical Park tours.

The First Parish’s granite church is known as the Church of the Presidents.

John Adams

Abigail Adams

John Adams created the Temple and School Fund from land sales in 1822, to pay for a new church and an academy, but by the time of his death little toward its creation had been accomplished.

By June 1827 – nine months after getting the Adams letter – the town and the Congregational Society had hired an architect and laid the church’s cornerstone. John and Abigail Adams’ remains were moved across the street from the Hancock Cemetery to the crypt on April 1, 1828. The church was dedicated in November 1828.

The Adams Crypt

An excellent lesson for all Graveyard Rabbits!