John Adams was the President of the United States. Join: US Presidents Project Discuss: presidents

Preceded by
George Washington

2nd President of the United States
1797 – 1801

Succeeded by
Thomas Jefferson

Preceded by
Office created March 4, 1789

1st Vice President of the United States
1789 - 1797

Succeeded by
Thomas Jefferson

Biography

John Adams is Notable.

President John Adams was a Founding Father in the American Revolution.

This profile is part of the Adams Name Study.

John Adams is a DAR Patriot Ancestor, A000585.

Family of John Adams

John Adams was born on 19 October 1735 (Julian Calendar) /30 October 1735 (Modern Calendar) in Braintree, Norfolk, Massachusetts ^[1] (now Quincy, Massachusetts) to the Puritan deacon John Adams and Susannah Boylston, ^[2] the daughter of a prominent family. While his father's name was John Adams Sr., the younger John Adams has never been referred to as John Adams Jr.^[3]

Adams married in 1764 to 20-year-old Abigail Quincy Smith in Weymouth.^[4]

They had five children in ten years, and one more, a stillborn daughter, in 1777. Their first son, John Quincy Adams, would become the sixth president of the United States.^{[3] [2][5]}

Adams' great-great grandfather, Henry Adams, emigrated circa 1636 from Braintree, England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Henry's 89 grandchildren earned him the modern nickname of "Founder of New England." In terms of contemporaries, John Adams was second cousin to the statesman and colonial leader Samuel Adams.

Adams was highly conscious of his heritage. He considered his Puritan ancestors "bearers of freedom." He also inherited a seal with the Boylston arms on it from his mother. This he loved and used frequently until his presidency, when he thought that the use of heraldry might remind the American public of monarchies.

Career of John Adams

As a young man, Adams attended Harvard College. His father expected him to become a minister. Instead, Adams graduated in 1755, taught for three years, and then began to study law under James Putnam. He had a talent for interpreting law and for recording observations of the court in action.

He became prominently involved in politics in 1765 as an opponent of the Stamp Act. In 1770, he won election to legislative office in the Massachusetts General Court. He later served as a Massachusetts representative to the First (1774) and the Second (1775-1778) Continental Congresses, as ambassador to Great Britain (1785-1788) and to the Netherlands (1782-1788), and as Vice President under George Washington from 1789 to 1797.

Adams found the role of Vice President to be frustrating. He wrote to wife Abigail that, "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." After George Washington stepped down, Americans narrowly elected John Adams, a Federalist, President over his Democratic-Republican opponent, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson became Adams's Vice President. In 1800, Jefferson finally won the presidential vote, and Adams retired to private life in 1801 when his term of office expired....

Retirement & Death

President John Adams retired to his farm in Quincy, Massachusetts. Here he penned his elaborate letters to Thomas Jefferson. Here on 04 July 1826, he whispered his last words: “Thomas Jefferson survives.” But Jefferson had died at Monticello a few hours earlier.^[6]

In 1820, he voted as elector of president and vice president; and, in the same year, at the advanced age of 85, he was a member of the convention of Massachusetts, assembled to revise the constitution of that commonwealth. Mr. Adams retained the faculties of his mind, in remarkable perfection, to the end of his long life. His unabated love of reading and contemplation, added to an interesting circle of friendship and affection, were sources of felicity in declining years, which seldom fall to lot of any one.^[7]

On 04 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Adams died at his home in Quincy, Massachusetts. Told that it was the Fourth, he answered clearly, "It is a great day. It is a good day." His last words have been reported as "Thomas Jefferson survives". His death left Charles Carroll of Carrollton as the last surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams died while his son John Quincy Adams was president.^[8]

"He saw around him that prosperity and general happiness, which had been the object of his public cares and labours. No man ever beheld more clearly, and for a longer time, the great and beneficial effects of the services rendered by himself to his country. That liberty, which he so early defended, that independence, of which he was so able an advocate and supporter, he saw, we trust, firmly and securely established. The population of the country thickened around him faster, and extended wider, than his own sanguine predictions had anticipated; and the wealth, respectability, and power of the nation, sprang up to a magnitude, which it is quite impossible he could have expected to witness, in his day. He lived, also, to behold those principles of civil freedom, which had been developed, established, and practically applied in America, attract attention, command respect, and awaken imitation, in other regions of the globe; and well might, and well did he exclaim, 'where will the consequences of the American revolution end!' "If any thing yet remains to fill this cup of happiness, let it be added, that he lived to see a great and intelligent people bestow the highest honor in their gift, where he had bestowed his own kindest parental affections, and lodged his fondest hopes. "At length the day approached when this eminent patriot was to be summoned to another world; and, as if to render that day forever memorable in the annals of American history, it was the day on which the illustrious Jefferson was himself, also to terminate his distinguished earthly career. That day was the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. "Until within a few days previous, Mr. Adams had exhibited no indications of rapid decline. The morning of the fourth of July, 1826, he was unable to rise from his bed. Neither to himself, or his friends, however, was his dissolution supposed to be so near. He was asked to suggest a toast, appropriate to the celebration of the day. His mind seemed to glance back to the hour in which, fifty years before, he had voted for the Declaration of Independence, and with the spirit with which he then raised his hand, he now exclaimed, 'Independence forever.' At four o'clock in the afternoon he expired. Mr. Jefferson had departed a few hours before him." -- Daniel Webster in section "Retirement and Death". p9, John Vinci, "Biography of John Adams,"

"They, (Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson,) departed cheered by the benediction of their country, to whom they left the inheritance of their fame, and the memory of their bright example. If we turn our thoughts to the condition of their country, in the contrast of the first and last day of that half century, how resplendent and sublime is the transition from gloom to glory! Then, glancing through the same lapse of time, in the condition of the individuals, we see the first day marked with fulness (sic) of vigor of youth, in the pledge of their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, to the cause of freedom and of mankind. And on the last, extended on the bed of death, with but sense and sensibility left to breathe a last aspiration to heaven of blessing upon their country; may we not humbly hope, that to them, too, it was a pledge of transition from gloom to glory; and that while their mortal vestments were sinking into the clod of the valley, their emancipated spirits were ascending to the bosom of their God!" -- son John Quincy Adams.^[7]

His crypt lies at United First Parish Church (also known as the Church of the Presidents) in Quincy, Massachusetts. Originally, he was buried in Hancock Cemetery, across the road from the Church. ^[9][10]

Legacy

Adams County, named to honor President John Adams, can be found in twelve U.S. states: Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington.

Images

• Tomb of John Adams & John Quincy Adams.
• American Genealogist, The (subscription) v21 p169. "Some Ancestral Lines of President John Quincy Adams"
• John Adams at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Citing: McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001; Ryerson, Richard Alan, ed., John Adams and the Founding of the Republic. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society (Northeastern University Press), 2001.
• Portrait & Bio. Album of Mahaska Co. IA (1887)

Sources

1. ↑ Records of Town of Braintree 1640 to 1793 (Edited by Samuel A. Bates)(Randolph, Mass.: Daniel H. Huxford, Publisher. 1886) (Free e-book Also available at Google Books) p. 772
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-8979-4WZH?cc=2061550&wc=Q4DH-RM6%3A353350501%2C353649501%2C353649801 : 20 May 2014), Norfolk > Braintree > Births, marriages, deaths 1640-1761 vol 1 > image 104 of 132; town clerk offices, Massachusetts. Vol. 1:202.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Family Search Tree with 109 sources
4. ↑ NEHGS, compiler, Vital Records of Weymouth, Massachusetts to the Year 1850 (Boston, MA: Stanhope Press, 1910), Vol. 2:11. "Adams, John [int. of Braintree] and [int. adds Mrs.] Abigail Smith, Oct. 25, 1764."
5. ↑ "Massachusetts Deaths and Burials, 1795-1910," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FHYZ-88S : 10 February 2018), John Adams, Late President U.S., 04 Jul 1826; citing Quincy, Norfolk, Massachusetts, reference p58; FHL microfilm 1,987,016.
6. ↑ Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey, "“The Presidents of the United States of America, John Adams, [1] White House Historical Association, Copyright 2006.
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1} John Vinci, "Biography of John Adams," http://colonialhall.com/adamsj/adamsj.php
8. ↑ Ferling, John Adams: A Life (2010) p444
9. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "John Adams," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. [2]
10. ↑ Find A Grave, database and images (accessed 07 May 2018), memorial page for John Adams (30 Oct 1735–4 Jul 1826), Find A Grave: Memorial #6, citing United First Parish Church, Quincy, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, USA ; Maintained by Find A Grave.