this room, more than any political gathering that had taken place here, that would forever change the direction of John Adams's young life.
Lemuel Briant, a young minister in the nearby Quincy church, had embraced the liberal religious ideals of the Great Awakening. In doing so, he had angered many in his more conservative congregation. An ecclesiastical council meeting had been called to examine his worthiness to continue in his position. As Adams had listened to the acrimonious give and take, he quickly realized that his own temperament would never be suited to having to amend his ideals to please the opinions of a church congregation. Very soon thereafter, he had altered the course of his studies toward the law rather than theology, and, upon passing the bar, he set up his first law office in the second front room of the home, his mother's parlor or “Best Room" as she had called it.
I find it both meaningful and illuminating that John Adams, even after his parents had passed on, had chosen to keep this original house intact as a part of his estate. There is a powerful reverence for one's roots implicit in that decision. Also an impressive humility. This very plain structure with its rudimental floors and unornamented utilitarian rooms bespoke a modest origin and a rather obscure heritage that many successful people might have wished to have put behind them rather than retain. John Adams, an admired lawyer and defender of rights, even those of the British soldiers involved in the so-called “Boston Massacre"; John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence; John Adams, a key member of the Second Continental Congress, a minister to three foreign governments (France, Holland, and Great Britain), a Vice President to George Washington, and himself the second President of the United States after Washington's two terms of office had been completed; this remarkable man, John Adams, appears to have been completely at peace in acknowledging his connection to his humble roots.
Our next stop was just a few steps away: the home where, in 1764, John and Abigail had begun their married life together. Here they would ultimately have five children including, in 1767, their first son, John Quincy. And here Abigail and her young family would weather the storm of the Revolution as her husband labored to gain the essential European aid that would help insure a victory for the colonies.
Of the three homes we would visit here, this one seemed the most tinkered with and, as a result, in a strange way, the least genuine. We entered to the rear of the house into a distinctly lighter and airier room than any we had seen in the John Adams Birthplace house. The interior rooms had been quite consciously cleared to make room for tourists, and the pristine, newly—it felt—plastered walls gave this home a sense of having been emptied of its Adams memorabilia (which, of course, it HAD been when the Adams themselves had moved to “The Old House" at Peace field). Its lack of decoration made it hard to conceive of John and Abigail living and working here while their family and their country grew noisier and more aggressively active around them. This house's proximity to the road, however, was a most apt development for John Adams. It would have been impossible to feel very isolated here, as the bustle of wagons and passersby occurred literally just outside the front windows and doors of this pleasant home. Although this structure, in terms of space and size, was very similar to the John Adams Birthplace house, it was significantly newer and, for the Adams family I'm sure, was invested with the additional happiness of being theirs alone.
The one key alteration in this second home's saltbox design, aside from the cream-colored siding that made this structure visibly more attractive from the outside than had been the John Adams Birthplace house, was an exterior door cut in the side wall of the bottom left front room. I had read about this structural decision as Adams had established his law practice and had used this front room as his office. This door, so convenient to any street traffic, had enabled him to consult with clients who could enter and exit the home without disturbing the family. Clearly Adams had desired to keep his home—and the activities that characterized it—separate from the necessities of his active legal practice. This additional street side door had been his solution to the dual demands of career and home life. It was a simple and practical answer. Very Adams-like, I thought.
It also deserves mention that, in addition to being his law office, this front room had been the setting for one of John Adams's most lasting political legacies. Here, having been delegated to the task by his firebrand cousin, Samuel Adams, and James Bowdoin, President of the state constitutional convention, John had drafted the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, “the oldest functioning written constitution in the world," David McCullough notes in his definitive biography (225).
After our brief tour, we boarded another tram that had pulled up outside the second Adams home and were shuttled off for a somewhat longer drive toward our final destination: the Old House at Peace field. This last Adams home, however, had the extraordinary advantage of having been kept in precisely the same state and condition the Adams family had left it in when they ceded the property to the National Park Service in 1946. Included in this munificent gift were all the home's original furnishings. And this would be the setting where the reality of this extraordinary family, including two of our nation's Presidents, would come most thrillingly to life.
“When the 1731 front door to the Old House opens, one is immediately immersed in the world of the Adamses," reads the Adams National Historical Park guidebook on sale at the Visitor's Center. That is an understatement. I found myself reminded of the moment when, as a freshman in high school, I had first stood before Westminster Abbey in London, thinking, “William Shakespeare could have stood on the very spot where I'm standing, looking at the same cathedral." The Old House at Peace field is like that: history is everywhere.
Even the rather ornate knocker on the entryway door, our site docent, Bob, informed us, was a historic relic, dating from John Adams's days in Philadelphia when he was serving as Vice President in the Washington administration. During one of his daily walks around town Adams had noticed the distinctive design of this doorknocker. He had stopped to inquire of the owner if the knocker was for sale and, learning that it was, he had purchased it and brought it here to his home in Quincy. Pausing a moment to gaze at it, we then moved into the original hallway of the Old House. It was like entering a treasure trove of American history.
Once inside, our tour's first stop was the famous “Paneled Room." This elegantly wood-paneled chamber, looking like a scholar's study, had been John and Abigail's whitewashed dining room. Here President James Monroe, Commodore Perry, and General Lafayette had, on separate occasions, dined with John and Abigail Adams. And here, years later, in the room then serving as a parlor, John Quincy Adams would meet with Ellis Gray Loring and Lewis Tappan of the Amistad committee as they urged the ex-President to use his considerable legal skills to argue for the defense in the case of the imprisoned Mendi people who were facing extradition to Cuba and from there into slavery.
The dining room (although it had originally served as John and Abigail's living room) was our next stop. This area felt low and rather dark, though the Edward Savage portraits of George and Martha Washington on the west wall and the Gilbert Stuart portrait of the aged John Adams on the east wall gave this setting a special importance.
Passing through the dining area, we stepped carefully down into the first major addition the Adamses had commissioned here at the Old House and crossed a hallway into the Long Room. Once again, we were to be presented with a cornucopia of historical moments.
This room, creating the only large gathering place on the first floor, had been added at Abigail's request, as she knew such an expansive area would serve an important function in the public lives she and her husband would be leading here. And how right she had been. In this room General Lafayette would stand before the fireplace, “saluting the ladies" of Quincy. Here, John and Abigail would entertain both President Monroe and the famous Transcendentalist writer and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, each of whom had come to congratulate the ex-President on the election of John Quincy to the nation's highest office.
Throughout
