HBO's "John Adams" turns national attention to a Quincy legend

3-28-08Critics have praised the latest HBO miniseries, "John Adams," for its real and rare insight into the life of this nation's second president.

Quincy, Mass., however, has always had an insight to the Adams legacy. Because for more than 100 years the Quincy Historical Society (QHS) and the Adams National Historical Park (ANHP) have preserved the Adams family's richly American tradition. And for 200 years before that, descendants of the Adams family held responsibility for its heritage.

"We try to focus on the story of the Adamses here and not so much on just the houses," Melissa Burnham a park ranger for the ANHP said.

The houses she is referring to are the birthplaces of John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, the nation's sixth president. Standing 75 feet apart on Franklin Street these houses "constituted part of the environment that molded the characters of two men who were to become leaders in our national life," H. Hobart Holly of the QHS wrote in a 1978 issue of Antiques Magazine.

On the house tours, which the ANHP will hold April 19-Nov. 10, the park rangers mention many pivotal moments in American history that happened within their wood-sheathed brick and clay cottage walls:


 John Adams drafted the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with the help of Sam Adams and James Bowdoin, in 1779 within the law office of the John Quincy Adams Birthplace. This document served as the prototype for the United States Constitution according to the ANHP.

 In this same law office, John Adams also prepared his case for the defense of the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre. John Adams, in his autobiography, called this action "one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I rendered my country."

 As an article in an 1896 issue of the Boston Journal said, "It was in this 'cottage' that Abigail Adams wrote those interesting and now highly treasured letters, in revolutionary times, to her husband [John Adams]." These letters are currently on display Mon. through Sat., 1 p.m.-4 p.m., at the Massachusetts Historical Society on 1154 Boylston St. until May 31.

 Burnham said, "One story we tell was when John was away at Congress. Some of the militia men were camped out on their lawn and Abigail let them stay in the home with her while they conducted drills." Abigail saw a lot of the Revolutionary War at this house, she said.

The Adams family story has also maintained throughout the years due to the legacy of John and Abigail's successors.

A National Park Service brochure says, "John F. Kennedy said in 1961 the successive Adamses' 'vitality' and 'devotion to public interest' run like a 'scarlet thread throughout the entire tapestry' of American history, and the record of their achievements 'intimidates us all.'"

In the same 1896 Boston Journal article, the Hon. John Quincy Adams wrote a letter to his brother, Judge Thomas Boylston Adams, saying "I concur with you in the opinion that the dwelling house at the foot of Penn's hill should be painted and made externally to resume a decent appearance, which I regreat much to see it had not last summer." The house upkeep helped the Adams family stay the prominent pillar of the American identity that it always was.

So the birthplaces stand today, as Holly wrote in Antiques Magazine, as they did in colonial times, simple farmhouses of the "salt box" type.

"The message of the little red houses is that the Adamses were not remote people, but people like their neighbors and like us; people whom greatness did not separate from their world," he wrote.

ANHP tours of the Adamses' houses are two hours long and cost $5 per person. Children 16 and under are free.

"John Adams," the miniseries, airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.