Lot 169E email save

ADAMS, John Quincy. ALS W. B. Sprague. 1830.

Sign In to see what this sold for

Quincy [MA]: 31 October 1830. 5 pp., folded sheet with an additional leaf tipped onto the gutter edge (250 x 200 mm). Postscript below his signature on the final page. Written in Adam's characteristically shaky hand. Condition: usual folds. john quincy adams details his family's 17th century settlement of braintree and the relationship between signers john adams and samuel adams. Writing to the noted Presbyterian clergyman, who is best remembered as being the first person to assemble a complete set of autographs of the Signers of the Declaration and of American Presidents, John Quincy Adams begins this letter thanking the Reverend for sending copies of his pamphlets. The letter quickly turns to the history of his family's settlement in America, no doubt in response to an inquiry from Sprague. Adams writes, in part: "The Genealogy of my father from the time of the arrival of his Ancestors in this Country, now more than two centuries since, is chiefly recorded upon the Town Books of the Town of Braintree and upon the Church Books of the first Congregational Church of that Town ... In 1632 a number of Settlers from the town of Braintree and County of Essex in England embarked with their Pastor, the Revd Mr. Hooker at Ipswich & arrived in Boston in New England where two years before the Colony of Massachusetts Bay under Governor Winthrop had made their settlement. The company from Braintree upon their first arrival had some difficulty in fixing on a place for their abode, Boston itself had no room for them." The letter continues with an explanation of the newcomers settling in an area southward from Boston harbor called Mount Wollaston, an attempted removal in 1634 and the eventual establishment of the town of Braintree in 1640. The letter continues with a detailed genealogy of each successive generation's marriages, children and deaths, including the birth of John Adams: "...Of this marriage, John Adams, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the first issue born on the 19th of October 1735 old style, which day then correponded with the 30th and since the commencement of this century corresponds with the 31st of the same month..." A postscript to the letter discusses the relationship of patriot Samuel Adams: "John Adams, one of the sons of Joseph Adams Senior, had a son named Samuel, who was a merchant in Boston and father of Samuel Adams, also a Signer of the Declaration of Independence and some time Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The two Adams's Signers of the Declaration were second cousins."

View Bloomsbury Auctions next auction.

Similar lots up for auction