Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 1

1. Benjamin Hallowell (1725–1799), comptroller of the customs in Boston, had married Mary, a sister of Nicholas and Thomas Boylston and a first cousin of JA’s mother. The Hallowells’ son Ward (1747–1828), who in 1770 took the name Ward Nicholas Boylston upon the promise of a large inheritance from his uncle, was to be closely associated with two generations of the Adams family. (Robert Hallowell Gardiner, Early Recollections, Hallowell, Me., 1936, p. 4–11; Sabin, Loyalists , under Benjamin Hallowell and W. N. Boylston respectively; Francis E. Blake, History of the Town of Princeton, Princeton, Mass., 1915, 1:278–280; 2:28.)