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Browsing: Diary of John Quincy Adams, Volume 1


Docno: ADMS-03-01-02-0007-0011-0020

Author: Adams, John Quincy
Date: 1785-09-20

20th.

Mr. Tyler was again taken up the whole day. In the afternoon I went with my Cousins, over to Weymouth to see Mrs. Tufts1 who is recovering from a long and dangerous illness. We spent about an hour and drank tea there. I saw at a distance the solitary house which was my Grandfather's:2 but had no inclination. Whence arises this antipathy, to places where those who are dear to us have died? Why does the involuntary tear, start from the eye, at the sight of them? It surely must arise from a { 327 } good principle, for although these feelings are painful, yet I would not be free from them.
While we were gone, Miss Lucy Apthorp, with her future husband Mr. Nash,3 came in to pay a visit to my Cousins. They afterwards set off together for Boston, where they are next Saturday, to be united. The family will go to-morrow.
1. Lucy Quincy Tufts (1729–1785), wife of Dr. Cotton Tufts Sr., and JQA's great-aunt; she died after a lingering illness on 30 Oct.
2. Rev. William Smith (1707–1783), father of AA, had been minister of the First Church of Weymouth.
3. Lucy Ann Apthorp, daughter of James Apthorp, of Braintree, married Richard Nash of Cornwall, England, an officer in the British navy, four days later (entry for 24 Sept., below; John Wentworth, The Wentworth Genealogy, 2 vols., Boston, 1870, 1:306; Boston Gazette, 26 Sept.).
Cite web page as: Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2018.
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/