John Adams Facts | John Adams Presidency
US President: 1797-1801
US Vice President: Thomas Jefferson
Political Party: Federalist
Education: Harvard University
Born: October 30, 1735 at Braintree, Province of Massachusetts Bay, at Quincy, Massachusetts
Died: July 4, 1826 (aged 90) at Quincy, Massachusetts
Spouse: Abigail Smith (m. 1764 – 1818)
Offices held:
2nd President of the United States (1797 – 1801)
1st Vice President of the United States (1789 – 1797)
United States Minister to the Court of St. James’s (1785 – 1788)
United States Minister to the Netherlands (1782 – 1788)
United States Envoy to France (1778 – 1779)
Delegate to the Second Continental Congress from Massachusetts (1775 – 1778)
Delegate to the First Continental Congress from Massachusetts Bay (1774 – 1774)
First Family
First Ladies: Abigail Adams Smith
Children: Abigail, John Quincy, Susanna, Charles, Thomas, Caroline
White House – Abigail Smith Adams
U.S. Congress – Charles Adams Biography
John Adams Genealogy
John Adams Childhood
First, John Adams was born on October 30, 1735 (October 19, 1735 Old Style, Julian calendar), to John Adams Sr. (1691–1761) and Susanna Boylston (1708–1797). He had two younger brothers, Peter and Elihu. Adams’ birthplace was then in Braintree, Massachusetts (now Quincy, Massachusetts), and is preserved at Adams National Historical Park. Moreover, Adams’ mother was from a leading medical family of current Brookline, Massachusetts.
Additionally, his father was a Congregationalist deacon, a farmer, a cordwainer, and a lieutenant in the militia. As well as, he further served as a selectman (town councilman) and supervised the building of schools and roads.
As a matter of fact, Adams often praised his father and recalled their close relationship. Thus, his paternal great-grandfather David Adams was born and bred at “Fferm Penybanc”, Llanboidy, Carmarthenshire, North Wales. He emigrated from Wales in 1675 and sixty years later his great-grandson, John Adams, was born.
Adams Puritan Ancestors
Moreover, though raised in modest surroundings, Adams felt an acute responsibility to live up to his family’s heritage of reverence. Equally, he was a direct descendants of Puritans, who came to the American wilderness in the 1630s, established a colonial presence in America, and profoundly affected the culture, laws, and traditions of their region.
Then, journalist Richard Brookhiser wrote that Adams’ Puritan ancestors “believed they lived in the Bible. Comparatively, England under the Stuarts was Egypt; they were Israel fleeing … to establish a refuge for godliness, a city upon a hill.”
Therefore, by the time of John Adams’ birth in 1735, Puritan tenets such as predestination were no longer as widely accepted, and many of their stricter practices had moderated with time, but Adams “considered them bearers of freedom, a cause that still had a holy urgency.”
Thus, it was a value system he believed in and wished to live up to. Adams emphatically recalled that his parents, “held every Species of Libertinage in…Contempt and horror,” and portrayed “pictures of disgrace, or baseness and of Ruin” from any debauchery.
Adams as the Eldest Child
Adams, as the eldest child, was under a mandate from his parents to obtain a formal education. Then, this began at age six at a Dame school for boys and girls, which was conducted at a teacher’s home, and centered upon The New England Primer. Shortly thereafter, Adams attended Braintree Latin School under Joseph Cleverly, where studies included Latin, rhetoric, logic and arithmetic. Thus, Adams’ reflections on early education were in the negative mostly, including incidents of truancy, a dislike for his master and a desire to become a farmer.
Coupled with, all questions on the matter ended when his father commanded that he remain in school saying, “You shall comply with my desires.” Deacon Adams also retained a new school master, Joseph Marsh, and his son responded positively.
At age sixteen, Adams entered Harvard College in 1751. He took all his courses under the tutorship of Joseph Mayhew who administered his entrance exam. Additionally, he did not share his father’s expectation that he become a minister. Thus, after graduating in 1755 with an A.B. degree, he taught school for a few years in Worcester, Massachusetts while pondering his permanent vocation.
John Adams and His Reputation
In the next four years he discerned a passion for prestige, saying that he craved “Honour or Reputation” and “more defference from fellows”; and at age twenty-one he was determined to become “a great Man”. Therefore, he decided to become a lawyer to further those ends, writing his father that he found among lawyers “noble and gallant achievements” but among the clergy, the “pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces.” Doctrinal, he later became a Unitarian, and dropped belief in predestination, eternal damnation, the divinity of Christ and most other Calvinist beliefs of his Puritan ancestors.
Nevertheless, his remnant Puritanism frequently prompted reservations about his hunger for fame, which he once referred to as mere “trumpery”, and he questioned his not properly attending to the “happiness of fellow men.”
Moreover, the French and Indian War began in 1754 and Adams began to struggle with the issue of a young man’s responsibility in the conflict; contemporaries of his social position were largely spectators, while those who were less solvent joined the battle as a means to make some money. Adams later said, “I longed more ardently to be a Soldier than I ever did to be a Lawyer.” Not to mention, he was acutely aware that he was the first in his family that “degenerated from the virtues of the house so far as not to have been an officer in the militia.”
Where is John Adams buried?
Adams’ crypt lies at United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, with his wife Abigail and son John Quincy Adams.
How did John Adams die?
Uniquely, he died at his home in Quincy, at approximately 6:20 PM on July 4, 1826.
John Adams Biographies
Biography – John Adams Biography
US Senate – John Adams
Biographical Directory of US Senate – John Adams
Photos
John Adams Facts
In the first place, John was not a slaveholder. Adams died on the same day as Thomas Jefferson. As a matter of fact, when Adams died, his last words included an acknowledgement of his longtime friend and rival: “Thomas Jefferson survives”, though Adams was unaware that Jefferson had died several hours before.
Also, when Washington won the presidential election of 1789 with 69 votes in the electoral college, Adams came in second with 34 votes and became Vice President; in that capacity, he became under the Constitution the President of the United States Senate.
Thus, at the start of Washington’s administration, Adams became deeply involved in a month-long Senate controversy over the official title of the President.
Additionally, as president of the Senate, Adams cast a historic 31 tie-breaking votes. Adams’ two terms as Vice President were frustrating experiences for him. Likewise, he complained to his wife Abigail, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
Finally, in July 1798 Adams signed into law the Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen, which authorized the establishment of a government-operated marine hospital service. Similarly, historian George Herring argues that Adams was the most independent-minded of the founders.
John ADAMS Biography
ADAMS, John, (father of John Quincy Adams; grandfather of Charles Francis Adams; cousin of Samuel Adams; father-in-law of William Stephens Smith), a Delegate from Massachusetts and a Vice President and 2d President of the United States; born in Braintree, Mass., October 19, 1735; graduated from Harvard College in 1755; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1758 and commenced practice in Suffolk County;
Joined the Sons of Liberty and argued against the Stamp Act; was elected to represent Boston in the general court in 1768; Member of the Continental Congress 1774-1777; signed the Declaration of Independence and proposed George Washington, of Virginia, for General of the American Army; became a member of the Board of War, but resigned to accept appointment as commissioner to the Court of France; Minister Plenipotentiary to Holland 1782; first Minister to England 1785-1788;
Elected in 1788 as the first Vice President of the United States with George Washington as President; reelected in 1792 and served from April 21, 1789, to March 3, 1797; elected President of the United States and served from March 4, 1797, to March 3, 1801; delegate to the constitutional convention of Massachusetts 1820; died in Quincy, Mass., July 4, 1826; interment under the old First Congregational Church, now called the United First Parish Church.