Browsing: Papers of John Adams, Volume 1

3. This was the smaller of Deacon John Adams' two adjacent farmsteads, each having a saltbox “cottage” upon it, separated by only a cartway. They remain in situ on Franklin Street in Quincy today, having been given by the Adams family to the city in 1940, open to the public and administered by the Quincy Historical Society. Deacon Adams acquired the older and more southerly of the two dwellings and the lesser acreage adjacent to it from John and Richard Billings of Boston by a deed dated 13 April 1744 which is now among the Adams Papers, Adams Office Files. At an undetermined date Deacon Adams gave JA half of this house and farm; in his will be bequeathed him the remainder; and here JA established his first law office and in 1764 brought his bride, Abigail (Smith) Adams (AA). All their children were born in the house today known as the John Quincy Adams Birthplace. See JA, Diary and Autobiography , passim, and especially editorial note at 1:15 and illustration facing p. 256; also early volumes of Adams Family Correspondence . A valuable illustrated account, now somewhat out of date, was published by HA2, The Birthplaces of John and John Quincy Adams, Quincy, 1936 (reprinted from Old-Time New England, 26:79–99 [Jan. 1936]); this carries the story into the 19th century. More up-to-date and containing both more early and recent information is Waldo C. Sprague, The President John Adams and President John Quincy Adams Birthplaces, Quincy, 1959.