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John Adams

John Adams, Jr., the elder of two brothers, was born on October 30, 1735 (October 19, 1735 by the Old Style, Julian calendar), in Braintree, Massachusetts, to John and Susanna Boylston Adams. The location of Adams's birth, North Braintree, became the town of Quincy, Massachusetts in 1792 and is now part of Adams National Historical Park. His father, also named John (1690–1761), was a fourth-generation descendant of Henry Adams, who emigrated from Braintree, England to Massachusetts Bay Colony in about 1636. The town was named Braintree after the town from which they had emigrated. He is descended from a Welsh male line called Ap Adam.[1] His father was a farmer, a Congregationalist (that is, Puritan) deacon, a lieutenant in the militia and a selectman, or town councilman, who supervised schools and roads. His mother, Susanna Boylston Adams,[2] was a descendant of the Boylstons of Brookline.

Adams was born to a modest family, but he felt acutely the responsibility of living up to his family heritage: the founding generation of Puritans, who came to the American wilderness in the 1630s and established colonial presence in America. The Puritans of the great migration “believed they lived in the Bible. England under the Stuarts was Egypt; they were Israel fleeing …to establish a refuge for godliness, a city upon a hill.”[3] By the time of John Adams's birth in 1735, Puritan tenets such as predestination were no longer as widely accepted, and many of their stricter practices had mellowed with time, but John Adams “considered them bearers of freedom, a cause that still had a holy urgency.” It was a value system he believed in, and a heroic model he wished to live up to.[4]

Young Adams went to Harvard College at age sixteen (in 1751).[5] His father expected him to become a minister, but Adams had doubts. After graduating in 1755, he taught school for a few years in Worcester, allowing himself time to think about his career choice. After much reflection, he decided...