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7 
 
 7^-^ Colonel JOHN QUINCY 
 
 OF 
 
 MOUNT WOLLASTON 
 
 1689-1767 
 
 A Public Character 
 
 of 
 
 New England's Provincial Period 
 
 GEO. H. ELLIS CO. 
 BOSTON 
 
 1909 
 
^ 
 
 JOHN QUINCY 
 
 [Only extant Portrait] 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 MASTER OF MOUNT WOLLASTON; PROVINCIAL STATESMAN; COLONEL 
 OF THE SUFFOLK REGIMENT; SPEAKER OF THE MASSACHU- 
 SETTS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES; MEMBER 
 OF HIS MAJESTY'S COUNCIL 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 Delivered Sunday, February 2J, igo8 
 
 UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 
 
 Q.UINCY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 BY 
 
 DANIEL MUNRO WILSON 
 
 PREPARED IN COLLABORATION WITH 
 
 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis Co., Printers, 272 Congress Street 
 
 i<^09 
 

 GHft 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 (\^ 
 
 ./ v^ 
 
 i^' 
 
117 ry/ COMPLIMENTS OF 
 
 Charles Francis Adams, 
 
 84 State Street, Boston. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The address printed in the following pages was deliv- 
 ered at a celebration held in honor of John Quincy 
 in the house of worship of First Church, Quincy, Mass., 
 Februar}' 23, 1908. Owing to its length, a part of it only 
 was then made use of. While this service, the first formal 
 recognition of the eminently useful career, both public 
 and private, of John Quincy, was held in view, it was 
 contemplated to perpetuate his memory still further by 
 some suitable publication. Thus the address naturally 
 developed into what closely resembles a memoir, in the 
 preparation of which I have had the pleasure of being 
 practically a collaborator with Charles F. Adams, second 
 of the name. Indeed, such rescue from oblivion of one 
 who, in his day, "was as much esteemed as any man in 
 the province," is another of the things done by Mr. Adams 
 to honor his fathers and perpetuate in memory what is 
 both veracious and noble in the traditions of Old Brain- 
 tree and Quincy. A large, if not the larger, part of what 
 is here set down is distinctly from his pen. In Larned's 
 *' Literature of American History" it is stated that "no 
 more trustworthy delineation of a New England town 
 has ever been written than that to be found in the ' Three 
 Episodes of Massachusetts History.'" The story of a 
 
 s 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 typical Massachusetts community, with the Puritan Com- 
 monwealth for a background, it furnished a succinct 
 account of Colonel Quincy, and a wise estimate of his 
 character and influence. All this I took bodily from Mr. 
 Adams's narrative; and, when additional facts had been 
 elsewhere exhumed, the whole was submitted to Mr. 
 Adams. Not only did he then subject the material to 
 a thorough revision, but he gave to it an historical setting 
 by means of which the chief figure is brought into scenic 
 relations with the men and movements of his period. 
 This has, in my judgment, greatly enhanced the value 
 of the production, making of it, I venture to hope, a not 
 unworthy interpretation of the terse inscriptions on mural 
 tablet and cemetery monument. 
 
 Daniel Munro Wilson. 
 
 July, 1908. 
 
QUINCY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 President. 
 Brooks Adams. 
 
 Vice-President. 
 Fred B. Rice. 
 
 Secretary. 
 Emery L. Crane. 
 
 Treasurer. 
 James L. Edwards. 
 
 Librarian. 
 H. Houghton Schumacher. 
 
 Curators. 
 Brooks Adams. Rev. E. N. Hardy, Ph.D. 
 
 Emery L. Crane. George W. Morton. 
 
 James L. Edwards. AYilliam G. Pattee. 
 
 Fred B. Rice. 
 
 Ushers chosen for the John Quincy Memorial Celebration : Thomas 
 Fenno, Charles A. Price, Charles II. Johnson, James L. 
 Edwards, H. Houghton Schumacher, Emery L. Crane. 
 
 5 
 
QUINCY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 MEETING TO COMMEMORATE THE LIFE AND SERVICES OF 
 
 COLONEL JOHN QONCY 
 
 Who died in 1767, and whose Name was given to this Town when it was set ojf from 
 Braintree, February 22, 1792. 
 
 I. Organ Voluntary. 
 
 n. Reading of Scriptures, Rev. Ellery Channing Butler. 
 
 in. Prayer, Rev. Edwin Noah Hardy. 
 
 rV. Hymn, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 We love the venerable house From humble tenements around 
 Our fathers built to God; Came up the pensive train. 
 
 In heaven are kept their grateful vows. And in the church a blessing found, 
 Their dust endears the sod. Which filled their homes again. 
 
 Here holy thoughts a light have shed 
 
 From many a radiant face. 
 And prayers of tender hope have spread 
 
 A perfume through the place. 
 
 They live with God, their homes are dust; 
 
 But here their children pray. 
 And, in this fleeting lifetime, trust 
 
 To find the narrow way. 
 
 V. Introductory Remarks, Brooks Adams, Esq. 
 VI. Historical Address, Rev. Daniel Munro Wilson. 
 YU. Hymn, by William Parsons Lunt. 
 When driven by oppression's rod, The altar and the school still stand. 
 
 Our fathers fled beyond the sea, 
 Their care was first to honor God, 
 And next to leave their children free. 
 
 Above the forest's gloomy shade 
 The altar and the school appeared: 
 On that, the gifts of faitli were laid; 
 In this, their precious hojjes were reared. 
 
 The sacred pillars of our trust; 
 
 And freedom's sons shall fill the land 
 
 When we are sleeping in the dust. 
 
 Before thine altar, Lord, we bend, 
 With grateful song and fervent prayer; 
 For thou, who wast our fathers' friend, 
 Wilt make our offspring still thy care. 
 
QUINCY HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 VIII. Historical Address, Charles Francis Adams, Esq. 
 
 IX. Hymn, Old Hundred. 
 
 From all that dwell below the skies, Eternal are thy mercies, Lord; 
 
 Let the Creator's praise arise; Eternal truth attends thy word; 
 
 Let the Redeemer's name be sung Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore. 
 
 Through every land, by every tongue. Till suns shall rise and set no more. 
 
 X. Benediction, Rev. EUery Charming Butler. 
 
 FIRST CONGREGATION.Uj CHURCH 
 
 QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 3 P.M., 8UND.\Y, FEBRUARY 23, 1908. 
 
u 
 g 
 
 B 
 a 
 
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 I—. 
 
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THE COMMEMORATIVE EXERCISES. 
 
 On the day following the anniversary of the birth of 
 Washington, Sunday, February 23, the exercises in 
 commemoration of Colonel John Quincy were celebrated 
 in the commodious house of worship of the ancient First 
 Church of Christ, with which society that personage 
 was closely connected throughout his career. The 
 edifice was well filled at the hour appointed, three o'clock 
 in the afternoon, by residents of Quincy and by many 
 from neighboring towns. The invited guests included 
 the present mayor of the city, the Hon. William T. Shea, 
 and all his predecessors in that ofl&ce, every one of them, 
 from the first incumbent, Col. Charles H. Porter, happily 
 still living. There were also invited the selectmen of the 
 towns which, with Quincy, formed the original township 
 of Braintree, the wide-spread community so long rep- 
 resented by Colonel Quincy: Randolph, Holbrook, 
 and the part still distinctively known as Braintree. 
 The Historical Society of the adjoining town of Wey- 
 mouth responded with a generous delegation of its mem- 
 bers to the invitation sent them; as did the Massachu- 
 setts Society of Colonial Dames, the Adams Chapter 
 of the Daughters of the Revolution, and similar or- 
 ganizations. The direct descendants of Colonel John 
 Quincy, and their connections in the Adams and Quincy 
 and other families, were well represented. His Honor* 
 the Mayor, unable to attend, sent a letter of regrets, but 
 
 9 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 the President of the Council, Ralph W. Hobbs, and other 
 members of the city government were present. 
 
 After the organ voluntary by the organist, Miss Alice 
 B. Haskell, appropriate passages of Scripture were read 
 by the pastor of First Church, the Rev. Ellery Channing 
 Butler. Among these selections were the following: — 
 
 "Let us call to remembrance the great and the good 
 through whom the Lord hath wrought glory and honor; 
 such as were leaders of the people, men renowned for 
 power, for counsel, for understanding and foresight; 
 wise and eloquent in their teachings, and by their knowl- 
 edge made fit helpers of their fellow-men. 
 
 "They were honored in their generations, and were the 
 glory of their times. 
 
 "And though some have left no memorial behind 
 them, yet their righteousness is not lost, and the blessed 
 results of their goodness cannot be blotted out. Their 
 bodies are buried in peace; but their work lives on for- 
 ever. 
 
 "The people will tell of their wisdom, and after-times 
 will show forth their praise. For the memorial of virtue 
 is immortal, because it is known with God and with 
 men. When it is present, men take example of it; and 
 when it is gone, they earnestly desire it. It weareth a 
 crown forever, having gotten the victory, striving for 
 undefiled rewards." 
 
 10 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 PRAYER BY THE REV. EDWIN N. HARDY, Ph.D. 
 
 Almighty God, our heavenly Parent, we thy children 
 love and revere thee, God of our fathers. Thou art the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in thee we 
 live, move, and have our being. The heavens declare 
 thy glory, and the firmament sheweth thy handiwork. 
 All that is has come forth from thee, and all things are 
 upheld and energized by thee. Thy beneficent purpose 
 shapes and controls all things. Thou hast created man 
 but a little lower than the angels, and thou madest him 
 to have dominion over all the works of thy hands. We 
 thank thee that thou hast given unto man the privilege 
 of sharing with thee the advancement of the kingdom of 
 righteousness, and w^e recognize with gratitude our in- 
 debtedness not only to thee, but to those who have lived 
 before us. In the present we enjoy the rich heritage of 
 the past, and would not be unmindful of our obligations 
 to those who, through sacrifice, heroism, and devotion, 
 made possible our larger life. We thank thee for the 
 stimulating and enriching influences which ever flow from 
 great and noble lives. We thank thee for the great 
 leaders of men, the makers and moulders of public 
 opinion, the champions of righteousness who have lived 
 and wrought here in other days. Help us to keep green 
 in memory these noble men and women, that we may 
 perpetuate their deeds and emulate their virtues. We 
 praise thee for our homes, schools, churches, and free 
 
 11 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 institutions, and would not forget those who founded 
 them and made them possible. Enable us, we entreat 
 thee, to link the best things of the past to the present 
 that we may be strengthened to meet our responsibilities, 
 obligations, and opportunities with such noble purpose, 
 consecrated energy, and sane insight that righteousness 
 may everywhere prevail and thy kingdom speedily come. 
 Give to this generation a correct vision of the past, that 
 we may intelligently discern the sign of the present times, 
 and so live and act that those who follow us may have oc- 
 casion for rejoicing. Grant us a true and large vision 
 of the future, and enable us to make real our best ideals. 
 
 Bless this ancient church and its pastor and all who 
 here minister in thy name. Bless all our churches and 
 free institutions, and especially this organization under 
 whose auspices we to-day meet. Bless the city and make 
 it worthy of the great and valuable heritage of the past, 
 and may it ever hold in loving remembrance its noble 
 benefactors, and, stimulated by the past, may it wisely 
 build in the present for the welfare of the future. 
 
 We ask all these favors in the name of the Christ, the 
 revealer of thy love and wisdom and the interpreter of 
 life. Amen. 
 
 The hymn, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, was 
 announced by the pastor. The entire congregation 
 joined in the singing, led by the choir of First Church, 
 consisting of the following-named persons: Miss Marion 
 Spinney, Mrs. Philip Hayes, Mr. William A. Sweet, and 
 Mr. C. Pol Plancon. 
 
 12 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY 
 BROOKS ADAMS. 
 
 My Fclloiv-citizcns of Quincy, — You know that we meet 
 to honor him for whom our town is named. Of John 
 Quincy I shall say nothing. That task is committed to 
 abler hands than mine. But it may not be unbecoming 
 in me to draw your attention to one aspect of this cere- 
 mony which, I apprehend, is of moment to us all. 
 
 When just entering on old age, John Quincy's great- 
 grandson, John Quincy Adams, thus communed with him- 
 self, as he one day wrote in his diary: "Democracy has 
 no forefathers, it looks to no posterity. It is swallowed 
 up in the present, and thinks of nothing but itself. This 
 is the vice of democracy, and it is incurable. Democracy 
 has no monuments. It strikes no medals. It bears the 
 head of no man upon a coin. Its very essence is icono- 
 clastic." 
 
 Since my grandfather thus philosophized, three-quarters 
 of a century have elapsed, and, if we modern democrats 
 have lost something of the elastic confidence of youth, 
 we have at least learned something of due reverence for 
 age. We strive to save our famous buildings, we some- 
 times erect tablets to the dead, we begin to honor the 
 past. 
 
 From the banishment of our pastor, John Wheelwright, 
 downward, this town has contributed its share to those 
 labors which have made our Commonwealth renowned; 
 
 13 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 but among all our ancestors perhaps not one has deserved 
 better at the hands of his posterity than John Quincy, 
 of whom we know but little more than that he has left 
 to us his name. At length this reproach is to be lifted 
 from us. One of his descendants has raised to his mem- 
 ory the monument which we now dedicate, and to-day the 
 story of his life shall be told. I have the honor to intro- 
 duce to you the Rev. Daniel Munro Wilson. 
 
 14 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 ADDRESS BY THE 
 REV. DANIEL MUNRO WILSON. 
 
 I need hardly say, Mr. President, and ladies and 
 gentlemen, that it is with the deepest emotions I stand 
 once more in this sacred place, and, stirred by the thoughts 
 of the occasion, face so large a congregation of the resi- 
 dents of Quincy, and others, the guests of our Historical 
 Society. The spirit of the time, as well as of the locality, 
 seems to uplift us, — ^his spirit whom we delight to honor 
 as the father of our country. Revived by yesterday's 
 observances, may that spirit possess us all the more 
 to-day, as we dwell upon the character and achievements 
 of the eminent leader of men w ho is peculiarly our own. 
 
 Separated by exactly sixty years, the birthday of Wash- 
 ington, 1732, and the birthday of the town of Quincy, 
 1792, fall upon the same date in February; and for us 
 who reside here, or who, residing elsewhere, have lived 
 in this place and still retain loving recollections of it, the 
 coincidence is auspicious, one pleasant to dwell upon. 
 Indeed, so completely in harmony is it with the traditions 
 of this community that it would seem to indicate delib- 
 erate purpose on the part of our fellow-townsman. Gov- 
 ernor Hancock, that he should thus, on the birthday of 
 him who was then President of the young republic, have 
 signed the act incorporating the town in which was the 
 residence of its Vice-President. If so, it was only another 
 among the fortunate happenings which seem, by a sort 
 
 15 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 of moral gravitation, to be drawn to a locality in which 
 there was an unusual concentration, not only of men and 
 women of mark, but also of ideas around which a new 
 world crystallized. 
 
 It is, moreover, to be noted that Washington's name 
 was a household word among your forebears here to a 
 greater degree and in a more intimate sense than fell 
 to the lot of all save a very few of our New England 
 towns. Indeed, the friendly relations which existed 
 between him and the eminent persons of this community 
 seem to have been extended to the degree of being almost 
 a common possession. The inhabitants as a whole felt, 
 in a way, included in that circle of leading patriots. It 
 was their neighbor, John Adams, who in the Continental 
 Congress of 1775 spoke the decisive word which, coming 
 from Massachusetts, summoned Colonel Washington to 
 the command of the Continental Army. And these two, 
 Washington and Adams, were joined in the first Chief 
 Magistracy, when at last this republic was launched on 
 its appointed course. Their fellow-townsman by birth, 
 John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, 
 also held close relations, not only official, but social, with 
 the Father of his Country. For was it not Hancock and 
 his wife Dorothy, born Quincy, who welcomed General 
 Washington to their Philadelphia home, and afterwards 
 President Washington to their Boston mansion.? More- 
 over, there was that other eminent neighbor and sturdy 
 patriot, Josiah Quincy, who, from his seat at North 
 Braintree, "The Farms," as that portion of Quincy now 
 known as Wollaston was called, maintained a constant 
 
 16 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 correspondence with Washington throughout the siege of 
 Boston, and delighted in a friendship which, beginning 
 then, was never broken. Nor can I refrain from remind- 
 ing you of the fact that it w^as President Washington who 
 first called John Quincy Adams into what proved a 
 public career of more than half a century, — a fact the 
 memory of which is cherished by his fellow-townspeople, 
 although Mr. Adams during fifty years of his long life 
 was so continuously absent from the beloved place of his 
 birth as to seem hardly of it. I know not whether 
 Washington ever trod on Quincy soil. To the invitations 
 pressed upon him to visit friends here, he returned cor- 
 dial assurance of his desire so to do, and tradition even 
 aflSrms that he carried the wish into act. Be that as it 
 may, none the less are we justified in saying that Wash- 
 ington also, in a certain, perhaps ideal, sense, is a tutelary 
 of our city. 
 
 What, however, I would especially emphasize in this 
 auspicious natal coincidence in our civic anniversary is 
 the fortunate linking of the birth of a heroic figure with 
 the birth of a New England town. The three prevailing 
 forces in the development of this nation are thus in a way 
 conspicuously united, — the fit leader, the self-reliant 
 people, the town government. Of these, each has played 
 an essential part in the advancement of liberty and a 
 gradual development of our civic principles. Their 
 united and close interaction made America. Not a town 
 of Massachusetts, however insignificant, but was in itself 
 a republic. There, to quote from the "Three Episodes," 
 was "bred the essence, moral and social, of a civilization 
 
 17 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 instinct with stubborn independence and self-reliance." 
 So, whenever here or elsewhere, the born leader arose, he 
 found aligned with him a host of followers, kindred 
 spirits, daringly responsive to his high appeals. So, too, 
 when the people passionately aspired to the attainment of 
 their civic ideals or the maintenance of their political 
 rights, the able man, never lacking, stepped forth from 
 among them, and then, in the old Teutonic fashion, 
 lifted high on the shield of their confidence, he voiced 
 their demands or led, foremost of all, their battle front. 
 In the mother land and at a later day Carlyle labored 
 vainly with forceful eloquence to evoke some leader from 
 the ranks of a titled aristocracy to bring the "hordes of 
 outcast, captainless," want-stricken wretches "under due 
 captaincy," the one wise man "to take command of the 
 innumerable foolish." Our deliverance was wrought in 
 another way. The self-reliant, self-respecting men of 
 the town meeting, — tillers of the soil and fishers of the 
 sea, — whenever the issue was fairly joined and their 
 rights invaded, saved themselves. So, "fearing God and 
 knowing no other fear," they voted with "obscure" Sam 
 Adams in Faneuil Hall, and stood with Captain John 
 Parker, their farmer neighbor, on the green before the 
 Lexington meeting-house. Beyond any other instance in 
 history we can now recall, people and leaders were, in 
 New England, all hewn from the same block. At the 
 breaking out of the Revolutionary troubles, John Adams 
 looked anxiously around among the patriots for those 
 qualified to lead, — for the pre-eminent commanders of 
 men. He found not one. "We have not men fit for 
 
 18 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 the times," he lamented. *'We are deficient in genius, 
 in education, in travel, in fortune, in everything." Simply 
 unconscious of his own powers, it never occurred to him 
 to distinguish himself from his neighbors; and, falling 
 back upon the conviction that the colonies would have 
 to put up with such as they had, he, for his part, threw 
 himself with entire devotion into the cause of liberty. 
 Strong in a strength which redoubled at emergent de- 
 mands, "he lifted the Continental Congress in his arms, 
 and hurled it over the irrevocable line of independence." 
 Then, and later as he fronted the Court of St. James in 
 defence of the new nation, the provincial Massachusetts 
 lawyer stood level with kings in the dignity and force of 
 his manhood. 
 
 The leaders who in these United States, first and last, 
 have thus, as occasion called, risen above their fellows, 
 have not been few, nor is it too much to claim that they 
 compare even more than favorably with the great of any 
 other lands and ages. In this respect democracy, de- 
 scribed by its detractors as a desert of mediocrities, has 
 assuredly suffered no defeat. In statesmanship, it may 
 be, we have yet to produce our Burke and Pitt with their 
 philosophic depth of reflection and their splendor of 
 oratory; but in every crisis which has arisen we have 
 been favored with men fit for the occasion, — able men, 
 men broadly intelligent and noble of purpose, rich in 
 saving common sense, and, above all, endowed with 
 wisdom born of high moral character. Them we love 
 and venerate. They are part of a priceless heritage, a 
 heritage which includes leaders in all lines of high human 
 
 19 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 endeavor, — in literature, in law, in morals, in science, in 
 art, in religion. That they created for us the plastic 
 framework of a free constitution is much, for it stimulates 
 the full expression of our individuality. But, above that 
 even, America is incarnate in her great citizens, and, 
 though long dead, they yet abide, a living power of lofty 
 souls, thrilling us with ideal visions of freedom, with its 
 deep moral obligation. Washington and Lincoln, Lowell, 
 Emerson, and a thousand others, lift and inspire even 
 when the sense of constitutional principles may fail. 
 Ever a rebuke to all cheap and canting patriotism, they, 
 in the words of Washington, "raise a standard to which 
 the wise and honest can repair." The light from them 
 falls upon us, and, as it descends, we also glow with a 
 passion for truth, for justice, for God and our native 
 land. 
 
 " We find in our dull road their shining track; 
 
 In every nobler mood 
 
 We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 
 
 Part of our life's unalterable good, 
 
 Of all our saintlier aspiration." 
 
 Here in New England, where the town meeting has been 
 developed in its perfection, an unusually large proportion 
 of distinguished Americans have been born. George 
 William Curtis tells us that at the centennial anniversary 
 of the surrender of Burgoyne, "Governor Horatio Sey- 
 mour said to me that New England had done wisely in 
 always carefully celebrating her great events and com- 
 memorating her great men. I could not," he added, 
 "help replying that New England was fortunate in pro- 
 
 20 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 ducing great men, who naturally did great deeds worthy 
 of commemoration." 
 
 This, your city of Quincy, from the first settlement till 
 now, has in that respect been signally favored, inasmuch 
 as, from the beginning, not one generation has failed to 
 furnish some eminent person, man or woman, who did 
 notable deeds, or spoke timely words, measurably effec- 
 tive in shaping the destinies of the American people. 
 
 " From sire to son was stored the sacred seed. 
 Age piled on age to meet a nation's need." 
 
 The memorj'^ of the most distinguished of these Quincy 
 has not been forgetful to celebrate; but so numerous are 
 her sons and daughters of more or less renown that enough 
 of them have been forgotten, even here at home, to make 
 famous, if judiciously distributed, several other communi- 
 ties. Colonel John Quincy, of Mt. Wollaston, is an in- 
 stance. In his day he was one of the most trusted and 
 influential public characters of the Province; but, for a 
 hundred years or more, he has now been buried in ob- 
 livion. The present generation in Quincy hardly know 
 that such a man ever existed. For example, I once 
 mentioned John Quincy to a lifelong resident, a man of 
 affairs and influence in the town. The response was: 
 "John Quincy .P — John Quincy.^ — I never heard of him 
 before!" Another in the group then exclaimed: "Oh, 
 yes, you have. We have all heard a great deal about 
 John Quincy. You mean John Quincy Adams, don't 
 you .^" That frank avowal of ignorance, and the respon- 
 sive words which so darkened counsel, not unfairly ex- 
 
 21 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 press what might be termed, in language none too strong, 
 the reprehensible absence of all knowledge in this com- 
 munity of a representative man, who through a long 
 life loyally devoted himself to the welfare of his town and 
 the Province, and whom in that now remote period it 
 was the delight of his fellow-citizens to honor. A very 
 few especially interested in the annals of the town, like 
 Edwin W. Marsh — the loss of whom still weighs heavily 
 on us — knew a date or so, and retained the tradition of 
 one or two events in John Quincy's life; but even to them 
 he was little more than a name. To the rest he is " name- 
 less in dark oblivion." 
 
 Nor, after all, is this oblivion, under the special cir- 
 cumstances of the case and when fairly considered, 
 altogether occasion for special wonder. Not only did 
 John Quincy die as far back as 1767, an old man, even 
 then long retired from active participation in affairs, but 
 he died on the very verge of a cataclysm, both political 
 and social. The Stamp Act was passed in 1765. The 
 duty on tea had been imposed by Act of Parliament of 
 June 14, 1767, less than one month before John Quincy 
 passed away. The following year saw the British regi- 
 ments landed in Boston. The events of the quarter of 
 the eighteenth century which then ensued, before Quincy 
 was set off from Braintree, do not need to be referred to. 
 Those years were replete with incident. During them 
 the old order of things came to an end. With it those 
 who played a part therein passed off the stage, and a 
 generation which knew them not entered upon it. That 
 such periods of rapid change should wipe out the memory 
 
 22 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 of both men and traditions is in the nature of tliin<:js. 
 It was so in 1780. It was so again in 1870. The War 
 of Secession, like the War of Independence, obliterated 
 names and reputations and usages much as the flooding 
 tide of an equinoctial gale obliterates footprints on the 
 seashore. John Quincy's last recorded appearance at a 
 Braintree town meeting was in September, 1758, probably 
 a hundred and twenty years before the conversation to 
 which I have referred took place; and the intervening cen- 
 tury and a fifth witnessed two deluges. That under these 
 circumstances the footprints of any but the most consid- 
 erable of personages should have disappeared either from 
 the sands of time or the memory of Quincy people, is 
 not unnatural. 
 
 But at last, some fifteen years ago, a gleam of light 
 was projected back into the darkness. In the pages of 
 the "Three Episodes" the mental and moral stature of 
 John Quincy loomed vaguely up, the extent of his public 
 services grew dimly visible. The ground for John 
 Adams's statement that in his day Colonel John Quincy 
 "was as much esteemed as any man in the Province'* 
 began to become apparent. Yet little enough light was 
 then or, for that matter, is even now available. The 
 reason is made obvious by the statement " that not a 
 letter or paper of his, or even a book known to belong to 
 him, now remains in the possession of his descendants." 
 In some house-cleaning cataclysm subsequent to his deatli 
 all was swept away, — letters innumerable, multitudinous 
 public documents, account books, journals not a few, a 
 diary perhaps, — all vanished in an age incurious. For 
 
 28 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 any possible biographer in a succeeding age next to noth- 
 ing was left. And so it has come about that of John 
 Quincy, second to none in the Province of Massachusetts 
 Bay in his generation, "nothing now remains except a 
 name and a few dates." His case resembles closely one 
 lately made public concerning that English Earl of 
 Leicester, the friend of America during the Revolutionary 
 period. It was he who moved in Parliament that Ameri- 
 can independence be recognized, and his name was a 
 household word in both continents. But the materials 
 for his biography became strangely lost; and thus he, too, 
 passed from world-wide fame to complete oblivion. 
 Patriotic services, though treasured in a few grateful 
 minds, are remembered no more when those minds cease 
 to work. Even tradition fades away. The printed 
 record alone remains. That outlasts the very granite of 
 your hills. 
 
 Our all-but-forgotten worthy. Colonel John Quincy, 
 of Mt. Wollaston, he who for three or more generations 
 has lingered a mere shadow in the minds of the best- 
 informed in this community, and who is hardly more 
 than a name on the meagre pages of its annals, is none 
 the less the civic father of your city. To use a learned 
 word, he is your eponym, your name ancestor. Most 
 so-called eponymous heroes — those whose names glorify 
 clan, tribe or city — are mythical. They belong to the 
 Romulus and Remus type, and John Quincy, certainly, 
 has not escaped this phase of legendary obscurity. There 
 was doubt even about the day of his birth, — ^yes, and the 
 place of it, — till Mr. Adams, through his researches 
 
 24 
 
JOHN QUINCV MONUMENT 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 brought the recorded facts to light and set them down in 
 his "Three Episodes," that work of love, let me interject 
 here, and not least among his gifts to the people of Quincy. 
 Indeed, no one in this generation knew where John 
 Quincy was buried till, after several vain efforts to find 
 the spot, I was rew^arded by stumbling, one day in 1903, 
 upon a fragment of a tombstone which marked his place 
 of interment in the old burying-ground. It has since 
 been made conspicuous by the erection of a memorial 
 stone by the Quincy Historical Society, under whose 
 auspices these services are held. To men now living, 
 John Quincy himself may be unknown; but the genera- 
 tion succeeding his exalted itself and him by giving the 
 name of Quincy to the North Precinct of Braintree, 
 when at last, by the Act of February 22, 1792, it was set 
 off as a separate town. 
 
 It is a fair inference from the proceedings which marked 
 the naming of the town then called into existence, that 
 a generation after his death John Quincy, in the esteem 
 of his townsman, rivalled John Hancock, son of Brain- 
 tree though he was, and, as chief executive of the Com- 
 monwealth, at the crowning period of his fame and popu- 
 larity. When, after much contention with the South 
 Precinct, the new towm w^as about to be incorporated, the 
 minister of the North Precinct Church, the Rev. Anthony 
 Wibird, was requested to propose a name. This was the 
 old-fashioned deference to the cloth, but that " inanimate 
 old bachelor," as Abigail Adams had designated him, 
 somewhat irreverently, twenty years before, manifestly 
 not equal to the occasion, timidly shirked the responsi- 
 
 25 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 bility. Possibly it was a case of the embarrassment of 
 riches. Having so many famous men born into his 
 parish, how was he to discriminate among them ? So 
 the proposition was passed on to the Hon. Richard 
 Cranch. His response was, — "Call it Quincy, in honor 
 of John Quincy!" 
 
 Later a number of aggressively independent citizens 
 wondered if in this matter they had been sufficiently 
 considered. Was this, indeed, their choice.? Might not 
 Richard Cranch and many of the other elders be unduly 
 attached to the memory of John Quincy.? 
 
 " Some to the fascination of a name 
 Surrender judgment hoodwinked." 
 
 Why not honor a living man — one with a name as 
 widely known.? Such was John Hancock, governor at 
 the time, the first Governor of Massachusetts as a com- 
 munity of Freemen. Let that fact not be forgotten. 
 Then at the summit of his popularity, John Hancock 
 had signed the act incorporating Quincy; and the affix- 
 ing his name to it must have renewed in his mind, and 
 in the minds of others, thoughts of his own intimate 
 relations with the ancient town in which he was born, 
 and from which he had taken to wife Dorothy Quincy. 
 So a town meeting was called for May 14, 1792, at which 
 the opposition name was proposed, — Hancock, a name 
 to conjure with. The records show that the discussion 
 which ensued was long and exciting,— at times, as one 
 may guess, electric even. With two such names to 
 choose between, great must have been the stimulus to 
 
 26 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 town-meeting eloquence. Speak them, they may sound 
 equally well to him in whose heart the familiar syllables 
 of the one have not become as music. I frankly con- 
 fess, as a judo;e in that controversy I am incapacitated. 
 Either name, however, is nobly su(]jgestive. At the close 
 of the debate the motion to petition the legislature for 
 an alteration of name was defeated. The original 
 appellation was thus confirmed. 
 
 Nearly four generations of those here born and here 
 dying have since passed on; and, were this community 
 once more called upon now, as in May of 1792, to con- 
 firm the name, it may confidently be asserted that its 
 action would be unanimous. The title itself, has it not 
 a distinctive character, and is it not pleasant to the ear.? 
 and our name ancestor, the more he is scrutinized, is 
 he not the more exalted ? Quincy, in truth, seems the 
 one name congenial to the spirit and history of this local- 
 ity. Deep-rooted in chivalrous Norman life, trans- 
 planted here with the first settlers, associated with so 
 much that is fine and high in those who bore it, and in 
 utterance full and dignified, it tastes of the soil : it seems 
 almost the natural product of environment, and not a 
 title fixed by formal vote. Honored at home, abroad 
 revered, it is a distinction to be called of Quincy. In- 
 deed, some occult but prophetic fate appears to have 
 intervened to stamp that name upon this place; for in 
 a map published in England in 1775, seventeen years 
 before the town was incorporated, the one word "Quin- 
 zey," and that word alone, covers the territory included 
 within your municipal bounds. 
 
 27 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 Braintree, — old "Brantry," written in the town records 
 as it was pronounced, — has, nevertheless, not faded from 
 the memory of those of Quincy whose ancestors planted 
 it here. Anglo-Saxon in its origin, the name Braintree 
 links this American home with that England whence 
 our fathers came. Still, the word Quincy throbs with 
 a personal element. It carries us back to him and to 
 those others who so long and honorably bore it, and 
 whose virtues, we trust, as well as the name, have be- 
 come "part of our life's unalterable good." What a 
 power of enchantment the sound of it exercises over us 
 at times, holding us in meditation upon the past we our- 
 selves have known! — the lingering village life, almost 
 ideal in its New England quaintness and culture, the 
 homes of the dear and the intimate, the loved faces and 
 forms long since vanished. Like a lamp, it lights that 
 sacred past, and by its beams flung forward we seem to 
 discern that larger city of the future which shall not un- 
 worthily fulfil the promise of its origin. 
 
 It is, perhaps, a trifle disconcerting that John Quincy 
 should not have been a native of the place which is hon- 
 ored by his name. It had long been conceived, and 
 even stated by one of the earlier town historians, that he 
 was born in the North Precinct of Braintree, on the 
 estate originally granted to his ancestors. But it so 
 chanced that he was really born in Boston; for in the 
 records of that city we read, under the date 1689, the 
 following: "John of Daniel and Anna Quinsie born 
 July 21." This event had followed apparently soon 
 upon the removal of his parents to the principal town of 
 
 28 
 
JOHN QriNCY 
 
 Massachusetts Bay, where the father entered upon the 
 business of gold and silver smith, the nearest approach 
 to a banker known to those days. We may, however, 
 rest assured that the Boston-born John Quincy belonged 
 indubitably to the stock identified from the beginning 
 with our community. His father, Daniel Quincy, first 
 drew breath in the old Quincy homestead, still standing. 
 The parents of Daniel were Colonel Edmund Quincy, 
 who with his first wife, Joanna Hoar, began their house- 
 keeping in that same homestead immediately upon their 
 marriage. Husband and wife both were notable per- 
 sons; for Joanna was the daughter of another Joanna, 
 the widow of Sheriff Hoar, of Gloucester, England. 
 When her husband died, this elder Joanna emigrated to 
 these shores with her five children, and settled in a home 
 not far from where the present edifice of the original 
 First Church now stands. Her last resting-place is in 
 the old burying-ground, where, on a monument which 
 marks the site, the virtues of "a Great Mother" are 
 extolled in rude verse. She was distinguished then; she 
 has become more distinguished since as "the common 
 origin of an offspring at once numerous and notable." 
 Besides the direct male line which issued in Senator 
 Hoar and his brother Judge E. Rockwood Hoar, lines 
 not less famous under other names have inherited, ap- 
 parently, distinctive traits of a character nobly dominant. 
 Such through his father Daniel (and nothing is here 
 said of the Quincy line itself up to Edmund, the immi- 
 grant) was the ancestry of John Quincy. Were his 
 ancestry traced on his mother's side, it would be found 
 
 29 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 hardly less distinguished, for she was daughter of the 
 Rev. Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge. I cannot pause 
 to give even a meagre list of the worthies this con- 
 nection includes, but it is especially interesting to us to 
 know that the wife of the Rev. Mr. Shepard was the 
 daughter of Captain W. Tyng, Boston's richest merchant 
 in that day, and the purchaser of Mt. Wollaston and 
 other lands of the exile William Coddington. It was this 
 purchase which eventually attracted John Quincy to Brain- 
 tree; for, when his grandmother Shepard died, in 1709, 
 he inherited Mt. Wollaston. 
 
 Early possession of the broad acres of Mt. Wollaston, 
 or Merry Mount, fruitful in themselves and beautiful for 
 situation, together with an ancestry fairly high in social 
 life, afforded in those days, more than now would be 
 the case, vantage-ground of no slight potency from which 
 to front the world. A merely ordinary man, so favored, 
 not infrequently then commanded office and a degree of 
 influence. But John Quincy, from the outset, developed 
 power. He moved easily from one position to another, 
 as though "half his strength he put not forth," until at 
 last, before attaining more than middle life, he had served 
 in about all the public offices to which a provincial might 
 aspire. Everything he did seems to have been hand- 
 somely done. As one observes him through his career, 
 the thought will suggest itself that, on a wider field and 
 under the stimulus of stronger forces, the response aroused 
 in him would have been conspicuous, perhaps historic. 
 "The narrow circle narrows, too, the mind. 
 And man grows greater as his ends are great." 
 30 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 "He belon<Ted to the class," writes the present C. F. 
 Adams, "which in EnoLand produced John Ham})den, — 
 the educated country gentlemen, the owners of the broad 
 acres on which they dwelt. Following no profession, but 
 going up to Parliament year after year, they were the 
 loyal, ingrained representatives of the communities of 
 which they were a part. Of these men, Washington was 
 a Virginia offshoot. He represented them in their highest 
 phase of development under Southern surroundings, — 
 plain, true, straightforward, self-respecting, gifted with 
 that perfectly balanced common-sense which in its way is 
 a sort of genius. Favorable circumstances, always availed 
 of, brought Washington to the front, and have made 
 of him an American immortality. Yet in America, at 
 that time, as in the Stoke-Poges churchyard, there w^ere, 
 doubtless, many men who contained within themselves 
 the possibilities of a Hampden, a Milton, or a Cromwell. 
 That John Quincy contained those elements cannot be 
 asserted," concludes Mr. Adams, "for of him nothing 
 now^ remains except a name and a few dates." Even 
 wdien we include such facts as may have been brought to 
 light since Mr. Adams wrote these words, reflecting the 
 personality of John Quincy, little enough truly abides. 
 But from the things done in his day, when he was the 
 chief figure in the legislature; from the measures wdiich 
 promoted the rights of the Provinces, we may not unsafely 
 infer that here was a masterful leader, one to be counted 
 among the men of distinct mark in the Province. It was 
 he and men of his type who created and fostered the con- 
 ditions which favored in later days the growth of the tree 
 
 31 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 of liberty. One is tempted to say, " No John Quincy and 
 his compatriots, then no James Otis, and no Sam Adams ; 
 no Lexington, Concord or Bunker Hill." Be it always 
 borne in mind that subsequent revolutions called glo- 
 rious are virtually fought out in the undramatic and 
 forgotten days before the far-flung battle line claims the 
 final, the supreme sacrifice. The spirit which resisted 
 the Stamp Act, and which blazed out in a flame of fire 
 in 1775, was alight and glimmered steadily through 
 the long years which saw the inflexible safeguard- 
 ing of provincial privilege by men of the John Quincy 
 
 type. 
 
 So far as it can be discerned, it is well, therefore, to 
 trace the growth and career of this stanch provincial 
 patriot "insistent for freedom." His father, Daniel 
 Quincy, died when John, his only son, was hardly more 
 than a year old. A daughter, Anna, had been born 
 some time before; but where the widow, with her two 
 children, now made her home, we have no means of 
 knowing. Not improbably she went back to her mother 
 in Cambridge. Later she may have gone to Braintree 
 at the solicitation of her husband's kindred, to be house- 
 keeper to the Rev. Moses Fiske, the second settled min- 
 ister of this First Church. His wife had died in 1692 
 after bearing him fourteen children. A housekeeper, 
 past doubt, was a crying need. At all events, she and 
 the minister were married in the tenth year of her widow- 
 hood; and the marriage took place in Braintree, which 
 bears out the supposition that Mrs. Quincy was a resident 
 of that town. The record of it is as follows: "The Rev. 
 
 32 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 Moses Fiske, & Mrs. Anna Quinsey were married ye 7th 
 January 1700 by Saml Sewall Esqr." 
 
 This, then, is probably the date at which John Quincy, 
 now eleven years old, became earliest identified with the 
 town which subsequently he served through a long life. 
 With the introduction there could have gone little that 
 was exhilarating. In the piously ordered home of the 
 minister John Quincy was numbered with the four boys 
 and two or three girls who remained of the fourteen 
 children born of one mother in less than twenty years. 
 Mistress Anna Quincy-Fiske added two more, and the 
 house of the minister was small. The property of Charles 
 H. Spear, it is still to be seen on Franklin Street, and it 
 is otherwise celebrated for the "highly respectable school 
 kept in it for many years by Mr. Joseph Marsh, in which 
 John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., were prepared for 
 college." To exchange this home for Harvard College 
 could surely have been no small relief to the young John 
 Quincy. He entered the college about three years after 
 his mother's marriage, and was graduated in 1708. The 
 same year, on July 24, his mother died. Thus in a 
 measure cast loose from Braintree, he might well have 
 settled with the Shepards, his mother's people, in Cam- 
 bridge; but, at this critical moment, the cast of fortune 
 decided him to remain in his father's native town, for 
 the next year, 1709, he fell heir to Mt. Wollaston. 
 Soon he went to live there, his older sister going with 
 him, perhaps; for a letter written in 1712, by Edmund 
 Quincy, speaks of " John a man grown and living in our 
 town.'* It is in the same year that a pew is built for him 
 
 33 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 in the meeting-house. By this time, or a little later, he 
 must have erected the dwelling of Colonial type in which 
 he continued to live until his death. Afterwards occupied 
 by his son Norton, it stood on the Hough's Neck and 
 Germantown road till 1852. Marriage followed in 1715, 
 when Elizabeth Norton, daughter of the Rev. John 
 Norton, third pastor of the old church in Hingham, 
 became his wife. The date of Colonel Quincy's mar- 
 riage I have not been able to ascertain, but there is on 
 record, in Hingham, the following notice of the publica- 
 tion of the banns: "Col. John Quincy of Braintree and 
 Elizabeth Norton of Hingham int of Marriage Sept. 3d 
 1715"; and this, "Elizabeth Norton Pub. Sep 3d 1715 
 Col John Quincy of Braintree." As was then the custom, 
 the marriage probably took place two or three days after 
 the notices were published. On Tuesday, October 4, 
 of that year. Judge Sewall records that he gave John 
 Quincy a "Psalm-book covered with Turkey-Leather for 
 his Mistress." 
 
 As early as his twenty-sixth year, we thus see, John 
 Quincy is called "colonel," — a first dignity conferred 
 apparently by popular brevet, for, actually, he ranked 
 only as major in that Suffolk regiment of which his uncle, 
 Edmund Quincy, was lieutenant-colonel. But the early 
 bestowal of the grade of major was highly complimentary, 
 and meant social distinction and political advancement, 
 as was illustrated in the case of John Hull, the thriving 
 Boston merchant, who, chosen corporal in the same 
 regiment, praised God "for giving him acceptance and 
 favor in the eyes of the people, and as a fruit thereof 
 
 34 
 
LINDKNS PLANTED HV JOHN (^IINCN TO 
 I-RONT HIS HDMK 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 advancement above his deserts." In the case of Major 
 John Quincy promotion in other lines followed rapidly; 
 and on Aug. 3, 1716, "The inhabitants of Braintree 
 regularly assembled then chose Major John Quincy 
 moderator for that day." Already he was treading in 
 the footsteps of his uncle, eminent in many lines and 
 later called "the judge." For eleven years "the judge" 
 had been moderator and representative; but the nephew 
 was now to surpass him, and all others of his name, in 
 length of public service. Early appointed a justice of 
 the peace, he was next commissioned as special justice; 
 then a justice of the quorum; and, finally, a justice through 
 the Province. In 1717, a year after he was first chosen 
 moderator, he was elected to represent Braintree in the 
 General Court. Again elected in 1719, his fellow-citizens 
 having now had an opportunity to judge of his quality, 
 he was launched on his unparalleled career both as per- 
 manent representative and as moderator. For twenty- 
 one successive years — that is, from 1719 to 1740 — he was 
 returned to the House of Representatives with unfailing 
 regularity; and during even a longer period he was 
 chosen moderator of town meetings with almost equal 
 regularity. Still higher honors were accorded to him. His 
 personality, his character and judgment, and his sturdy })ro- 
 vincial patriotism so impressed his fellow-representatives 
 that they elected him speaker of the House from 1727 to 
 1741, a period of fourteen years. A tribute from town 
 and Province which stamps him as no common man. 
 
 The selection of a member of the Great and General 
 Court to the important position of speaker was then no 
 
 35 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 mere matter of compliment. The representatives of 
 the Province of Massachusetts Bay had a battle to fight. 
 Their ancient chartered liberties, their rights as freemen, 
 were at stake. They required in their speaker a saga- 
 cious, an intrepid, and a masterful leader. Their spokes- 
 man had to be a representative New England man, — one 
 of a people among whom *'a fierce spirit of liberty had 
 sprung up." It may, therefore, safely be assumed that 
 John Quincy presided with firmness and dignity, that 
 he had those qualities which Richard H. Dana said were 
 sought for in the speaker of the House of Commons, — a 
 man recognized by common consent as a gentleman, 
 "and of such manners and sentiments that on any ques- 
 tion of decorum or of personal rights or obligation in 
 the House his word would be law." That is much, and 
 may suflfice to distinguish a man as speaker in the rou- 
 tine of ordinary times; but such qualities alone did not 
 raise a man to the level of the exigencies of that turbu- 
 lent period of which Governor Thomas Hutchinson, in 
 his contemporary history, declared that more perilous 
 contentions and confusions had not existed since the 
 Antinomian Controversy, when Sir Harry Vane was de- 
 feated and abandoned the Colony, and our townsmen, 
 Wheelwright and Coddington, were driven into exile. 
 Hot with smouldering passions, the atmosphere threat- 
 ened at any moment to blaze into fire. On the floor of 
 the legislature the contest for human rights was being 
 fought out. 
 
 The colonial charter and the system which it expressed 
 had now become a thing of the long past, but the colo- 
 
 36 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 nists, though inhabitants of a Province, as it was called, 
 continued to regard their relations to the mother country 
 as those prescribed in the charter of King Charles; and, 
 if their "rights as Englishmen" were obstructed, they, in 
 strict accordance w^ith British constitutional theories, 
 attributed their wrongs to over-zealous exercise of the 
 king's prerogative by Tory placemen. As a matter of 
 fact, however, through a century of self-reliant town 
 government, the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay had 
 grown beyond that stage in which subordination to a 
 distant authority, disposed to exploit them for its own 
 benefit, was longer tolerable. They felt competent to 
 govern themselves. The royal governors with their 
 power of veto were an intrusion. The English Board of 
 Trade, with its monopolistic navigation and trade laws, 
 hampered natural development. The situation was thus 
 prolific of misunderstandings. The documents of that 
 forgotten time reveal royal governors genuinely aston- 
 ished, as they found themselves baflfled by what they re- 
 garded as the stubborn contentiousness of the colonists. 
 On the other hand, these last were in a state of con- 
 stant indignation and resentment over what they con- 
 sidered unwarrantable invasions of rights and privileges. 
 Altogether, the crisis was one which called for a clear- 
 minded and well-balanced mediator and leader; and 
 such John Quincy proved. As a contemporary wrote, 
 the speaker "had a high sense of his accountableness to 
 the Supreme Governor of the world for the trusts imposed 
 in him, and studiously avoided an ensnaring dependency 
 on any man, and whatever that should tend to lay him 
 
 37 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 under any disadvantage in the discharge of his duty." 
 Thus furnished, John Quincy responded fully to the 
 exigencies of the hour. With an open mind, he appre- 
 ciated the right intentions of the royal governors when 
 they acted within the terms of their instructions. He 
 saw what we in the clear light of this day now see, — that 
 their faults were mainly due to "unconscious ignorance 
 and not conscious malice." This explains why not one 
 of the governors who came and went while he was 
 speaker vetoed his election. Indeed, on one occasion 
 when the House, carried off its feet by a paper money 
 delusion, undertook to elect another man its speaker. 
 Governor Belcher would not be content till Colonel 
 Quincy was put back in his old place. At the same time, 
 unaffected by the geniality of a provincial court life, with 
 its "far-off splendors of the throne," he remained the 
 strong, simple New England man, "ever approving him- 
 self," to quote once more our contemporary writer, "a 
 true friend to the interest and the prosperity of the prov- 
 ince, a zealous advocate for, and vigorous defender of, 
 its liberties and privileges." 
 
 From the very year that John Quincy entered upon his 
 duties as speaker, the conflict between the crown and 
 the colonies deepened. The king and his council then 
 began the ominous work of strengthening their colonial 
 policy; and, as Hutchinson observes, the House on its 
 side discovered a disposition to "amplify their jurisdic- 
 tion." The ultimate dispute was over the granting of 
 a fixed salary to the governors during the years of their 
 administration. To us the issue bears a trivial, a sordid 
 
 38 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 aspect; but, in fact, the money consideration was of 
 comparatively little moment. The representatives were 
 convinced that, if they voted a salary fixed in amount 
 and for a certain time, the governor would be independent 
 of them, and look solely to England for instructions and 
 support. He would be encouraged to regard them as 
 a dependent people, and to appoint judges, customs offi- 
 cers, justices of the peace, and other officials with the one 
 thought of their loyalty. So, from time to time, the 
 House voted sums of money for the use of the governor, 
 omitting, however, all mention of salary or term of grants; 
 and the sums thus voted were significantly proportional 
 to the good will evinced by the governor, or the hope of 
 that good will. The representatives of His Majesty were 
 needy, but they hardly dared accept money thus doled 
 out. Their instructions forbade them, "it being abso- 
 lutely necessary," as the Lords in Council declared, "for 
 your Majesty's service that the independence of the 
 Governor upon the assembly should be preserved," and 
 of the utmost importance to resist the power contended 
 for by the Massachusetts legislature "to bring the gov- 
 ernor appointed by your Majesty over them into a de- 
 pendency on their good will for his subsistence, which 
 would manifestly tend to a lessening of his authority, and 
 consequently of that dependence which this colony ought 
 to have upon the crown of Great Britain, by bringing 
 the whole legislative power into the hands of the people." 
 Governors appointed because of their supposed strength 
 of will met wills no less inflexible than their own. About 
 the time that Colonel Quincy assumed the duties of 
 
 39 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 speakership, Governor Burnet began his administration. 
 Hutchinson describes him as a person not "easily moved 
 from a resokition he had once taken up." No sooner 
 had Burnet begun his activities than "the House now 
 thought themselves obliged to be more particular than 
 they had been fully to assert their rights." Within a year 
 or so he passed away, his death hastened, as Hutchinson 
 insinuates, by the effect of the controversy upon his 
 spirits. "He did not know the temper of the New 
 England people. They have a strong sense of liberty 
 and are more easily drawn than driven." Of his suc- 
 cessor. Governor Belcher, there was but one question 
 asked by the appointing power, — Would he be able "to 
 influence the people to a compliance with the king's 
 instructions".^ He came to proffer one more opportu- 
 nity of paying due regard to the royal wisdom, "the last 
 signification of our royal pleasure to them upon this sub- 
 ject." Belcher first appealed to the House, and then 
 tried to dragoon it; but it would not yield an inch. In 
 utter despair he petitioned the home government for a 
 relaxation of its instructions, and for permission to receive 
 for a year or two the grants of money on the legislature's 
 own terms. And thus the matter rested until the whirl- 
 wind of the Revolution brought about a new alignment of 
 the antagonistic forces. 
 
 From the moment in which he first seated himself in 
 the speaker's chair, his oflSce brought Colonel Quincy 
 face to face with the royal governors. He it was who so 
 often led the members of the House when they marched 
 from their own chamber in the old State House to wait 
 
 40 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 upon his Excellency in his council chamber. He it was 
 who, conspicuously advanced, voiced a people's aspira- 
 tions, and presented their sturdy rejection of measures. 
 He it was who, in the forefront, received not only His 
 Majesty's instructions from the representative of royalty, 
 but also his threatenings. "I must tell you," Governor 
 Belcher declared on one of these occasions, "that it is 
 with the greatest surprise and concern to me that you 
 seem so willing at present to run Hazard of the fatal 
 consequences which your proceedings (in my opinion) 
 will certainly produce, and which you and your posterity 
 will groan under when it may be too late to find redress." 
 In response. Speaker Quincy calmly requests that the 
 governor's words be given him in writing, to insure fair 
 consideration. The members then ceremoniously return 
 to their own assembly room, and on this, or some other 
 occasion, answer, that "by refusing to disburse moneys 
 for defence as the House desired, his Excellency ])ut 
 them in the deplorable dilemma either to part with their 
 ancient liberties and usages, ... or to lie in this ex- 
 posed condition. This is truly shocking." 
 
 That campaign was ceaselessly continued throughout 
 John Quincy's speakership. "To one who really knew," 
 writes J. A. Doyle, "what political forces were at work 
 beneath the surface it might well seem the little cloud like 
 a man's hand, which held stored within it the whole 
 storm of Revolution." The same principles were in- 
 volved. All that James Otis and Sam Adams claimed in 
 the next generation was now insisted uj)on in the face 
 of governors especially appointed to exact submission. 
 
 41 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 If another element were needed to increase the strain 
 and stress of that period, it was furnished in full measure 
 by the unsettling influence of the great earthquake. 
 This occurred during the very year in which John Quincy 
 was elected speaker; and, with the heaving and trem- 
 bling of the solid earth, all things seemed unstable. The 
 superstition of the age accepted the phenomenon as the 
 warning of an angry God, and countless were the infer- 
 ences drawn from it. Manifestly, the times were out of 
 joint. Any reverse, any visitation, might be expected. 
 This state of feeling drew on the "Great Awakening," 
 with Jonathan Edwards for its relentless interpreter and 
 prophet. It was during the long speakership of Colonel 
 Quincy that the wild commotion of this unparalleled 
 religious revival reached its climax, and passed away. 
 While it lasted, it swept into its streaming extrava- 
 gances things political, financial, social. There was 
 hardly a line of thought or action it did not deflect from 
 its usual and rational course. We can easily believe 
 that under these circumstances the most self-contained 
 and far-seeing men only could maintain the direct 
 forthright, and continue trustworthy guides. 
 
 Not on the wide waters of world-politics, not so com- 
 pletely as Pitt, was John Quincy "the pilot who weath- 
 ered the storm;" but this, at least, can be said of him, — 
 that no man of his time surpassed him in compelling 
 sagacity of moral judgment, or in solid integrity of char- 
 acter. Like others of his name and kindred, he revealed 
 a generous competency in the performance of whatever 
 public duties were intrusted to him. A Marblehead 
 
 42 
 
OLD (HANCOCK) MEETING-HOUSE 
 
 EAST -60 feet 
 
 Ocjcoiis' Scat. 
 
 — 1 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 ( 1 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 ( 1 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 r 
 
 u Men's Gallery 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 jj 
 
 
 •11 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ElKnrn 
 
 Niirhlin 
 
 Kile 
 
 S3. 
 
 Mose» 
 Belcher, 
 Jr 
 
 .illen • 
 
 jii 
 
 "i-3 
 
 TRONT niMiR 
 
 Gruuiid !• loor, when dedicated in 1732 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 skipper, who was placed in charge of an ocean liner, was 
 asked if he did not feel a bit put to it to sail so great a 
 craft. *'No, sir," was the reply, " a Marblehead Captain 
 is always bigger than his ship." So of our Quincy 
 worthies, whether elected to govern town meetings, or 
 to shape the measure of state assemblies; whether chosen 
 to contend with kings, to administer this republic, to 
 arbitrate questions dividing great nations, they always 
 approved themselves level with the appointed task. 
 
 Such was the effective energy of John Quincy that it 
 not only compassed the admirable performance of the 
 speaker's duties, but sufficed for arduous labors on most 
 of the important committees ordered in his day. A 
 committee, for instance, was appointed to reduce into 
 some sort of system the chaos of a fluctuating currency. 
 He was its chairman; and the problem which confronted 
 him was indeed a difficult one, — to fix a standard of value 
 in the absence of silver and gold, during a time when old 
 tenor bills and new tenor bills were sliding up and down, — 
 though most generally down, — while bargaining was yet 
 in process. In such high estimation was Colonel Quincy's 
 judgment in financial matters held that his own town, 
 in its particular perplexities, never failed to claim his 
 assistance. He was also chairman of the legislative 
 committee charged with the draughting of instructions 
 for the agent of the Province at the court of Great Britain. 
 He was on military committees, as befitted one who held 
 the rank of colonel. He was called upon to see to the 
 repairs on Castle ^Yilliam when war with Spain was 
 declared. He was commissioned to allay the threatened 
 
 4S 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 tumult of the land bankers. So, not unnaturally, his 
 contemporaries take pains to record his "constant appli- 
 cation in the despatch of public business"; nor did the 
 House fail to vote that "there be paid four shillings 
 per diem to the Hon. John Quincy, Speaker of the 
 House, for every day of his attendance." When ill, it 
 is to be presumed, he would be required to live on his 
 private means. An item in the House Journal indicated 
 one such absence from illness on his part, and at the 
 same time affords incidentally an illuminating glimpse of 
 that "insolence of office" to which the House was now 
 and then subjected. At the opening of the session in 
 1739 the following is set down: "Inasmuch as this 
 House have been informed that the Hon. John Quincy, 
 Esq., their Speaker, is so indisposed that he can't con- 
 veniently attend the public service. Therefore voted that 
 Nathaniel Cunningham, Mr. James Allen, and Mr. 
 Thomas Rowell, be a committee to repair to the Speaker's 
 lodgings and make Inquiry as to the State of his Health, 
 that so the House may properly proceed to the choice of 
 another Speaker to take the chair in case he cannot 
 attend." His illness was prohibitive of his attendance; 
 so Ebenezer Pomroy was chosen speaker, and a com- 
 mittee was appointed to acquaint his Excellency, the 
 Governor, "who returned they had been at His Excel- 
 lency's Seat, and informed him by his servant they had 
 a Message from the House of Representatives to deliver 
 His Excellency, who sent them in answer. He received no 
 Message out of the Chair. Upon which the Committee ac- 
 quainted the Governor's Secretary with the subject-matter 
 
 44 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 of the message, and urged the Necessity of delivering it: 
 who quickly returned from the Governor, made answer 
 that His Excellency did not care; he would receive no 
 message out of his Chair." The speaker, let it be noted, 
 was still ill when the House was prorogued in January. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting among the lesser respon- 
 sibilities of John Quincy was his care of the Ponkapoag 
 Indians. That this duty should fall to him, and that 
 he should fulfil it so conscientiously for over a score of 
 years, bears testimony to his character. These Indians, 
 the remnant of the tribe of the Massachusetts which 
 once possessed the land about the Blue Hills, were being 
 rapidly despoiled of the little left them. Their white 
 neighbors were annexing their meadows, their orchards, 
 and their timber. In their distress they petitioned the 
 legislature of 1727 that "Major John Quincy, Esq., be 
 fully empowered and authorized to look after us in all 
 things." He was of Braintree, they on their reserva- 
 tion in Stoughton, separated from him by a dozen miles 
 or so of rough country — a tramp even an Indian would 
 not altogether fancy. But they had heard of his plain 
 honesty and valued judgment, and Major John Quincy 
 they would have. He accepted the trust; and, through 
 all the twenty-one years of official relations, he dealt pa- 
 tiently with these wards of his "as under the strongest 
 obligations to be faithful." Often, when the funds which 
 were at his disposal were exhausted, he borrowed from 
 his own pocket to meet needy circumstances. He was 
 resolute from the beginning not to sell the Indians any 
 strong drink. He did what he could to encourage them 
 
 45 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 in their religious duties. He defeated the schemes of 
 all those who would plunder them. In the long and 
 woful chapter of our Indian spoliations it is a relief to 
 come upon this record of just and humane supervision 
 and guardianship. 
 
 Not until lately has it been given us to get an inside 
 view of these most creditable relations. Hardly a single 
 line of Colonel Quincy's with regard to them was known 
 to be extant. Indeed, it was doubtful whether speci- 
 mens of his handwriting in any form, (except an occa- 
 sional signature) or on any subject had come down to 
 this day. A continued research has, however, now been 
 rewarded with the discovery of literally yards of his com- 
 position, hidden in that scrap-bag of the past known as 
 the Massachusetts State Archives. Mainly concerned 
 with the Ponkapoag trust, in this treasure- trove are two 
 long reports of expenditures of moneys committed to 
 Colonel Quincy; also a convincing and luminous answer 
 to a forged petition of those "men of Stoughton of no 
 character" who were itching to exploit the Indians again. 
 Finally, there also is his letter of resignation to Governor 
 Shirley, written in 1747. 
 
 These reports are at least well calculated to excite 
 sympathy with the toil undergone by the writer. I 
 measured one, and found it to contain some five feet ten 
 inches of wide, closely written pages. It is the careful, 
 itemized account of a conscientious man. From pence 
 to pounds, from corn to clothing, the items are put down 
 with dates and names; while the names excite wonder 
 that he had the patience to spell them. Amos Ahauton, 
 
 46 
 
^z-"^^.; 
 
 7 
 
 
 'frcr^i^SP 
 
 
 ^j:oj^^^^/ 
 
 ^>,r«^-;^ 
 
 C:/x 
 
 
 
 
 ,^,.. 
 
 i-f^U.: ..<^/f?) nJr ."^ /r^c /y^^7U'i^ JrC^7 ..//'^/ /S^C^' 
 
 
 .9^^ 
 
 l.p/^« 
 
 ^:yK'^^^^ /<^ t '^'^/:><S' 
 
 
 
 RESIGNATION OF GUARDIANSHIP OF TONKAPOAGS 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 Mary Sycamugf]^, Hezekiah Squaminofj^g, Abigail Quock, 
 Robert Mummentaug; one cannot but ask, — Did he 
 really know them all, and call them all by their individual 
 names? It seems not unlikely; for, certainly, he saw 
 them often enough. Not a week seems to have gone by 
 without its party of Indians striking the trail for Colonel 
 Quincy's farm. He did not dare to give them much 
 food at a time, for fear they would waste it; nor much 
 money, for fear they would squander it on drink. The 
 much-enduring guardian suffered for his carefulness. 
 "From Ponkapog to Pesth" is to us a familiar j)lirase. 
 In that day it might well have been inverted, — the pest 
 from Ponkapoag! Yet from all that appears, no matter 
 how frequent the visitation, both Colonel Quincy and 
 his wife never failed to treat kindly the red men, their 
 squaws, and their papooses. In one of those letters re- 
 cently found. Colonel Quincy writes, "they have always 
 had what was convenient of beer and cyder when they 
 came to his house, which has been very often, without 
 being charged anything therefor." In the fishing season 
 they came to the shore near his home where they "camped 
 for weeks, burning up his wood, and sometimes not 
 sparing his fencing stuff, . . . for which there was not the 
 least consideration made." When, at last, he resigns 
 his trust, which he has "with considerable Labour and 
 Pains Discharged to ^the Acceptance of this Hon'ble 
 Court," he does so, not for his own ease, but because 
 "several of the Indians who survive are aged and infirm 
 and so unable to come to your Memorialist for supplies 
 as formerly, by reason of their distance from him." 
 
 47 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 We now come to a passage in the life of Colonel Quincy 
 in which his career as a public man suffered sudden 
 eclipse. He, too, was subjected to one of those tests 
 which, soon or late, few political characters escape. In 
 his case it set the seal on his patriotism and his cour- 
 age, — it showed him one of that rare class of men long 
 ago, and for all time, described by Horace, — 
 
 Justum et tenacem propositi virum 
 Non civium ardor prava jubentium 
 Mente quatit solida, . . . 
 Si fractus illabatur orbis, 
 Impavidum ferient ruinse. 
 
 Colonel Quincy, at the commencement of the session of 
 1740, had received all the votes cast for speaker, except- 
 ing one only, — the vote presumably deposited by him- 
 self; a unanimity of choice with which he had been 
 honored almost every year since first he was summoned 
 to the chair. At the next session his familiar form was 
 not to be seen; nor did the name of the "Honorable John 
 Quincy, Esq., of Braintree," appear on the roll of the 
 House. A premonition of the sweeping changes then 
 wrought, like the far-drawn retreat of the waters from 
 the ocean shore which marks the oncoming of a tidal 
 wave, disturbed the previous session of 1739. At that 
 time, "when the House of Representatives came together 
 they chose the Honorable Paul Dudley, Esq., Speaker by 
 a great majority of votes." The governor, however, in- 
 terposed with his prerogative, vetoing the choice. Then 
 the House, docile to a degree, voted again, "when it 
 
 48 
 
JOHN QUIXCY 
 
 appeared that the Honourable John Quincy, Esq., was 
 chosen by a considerable majority of the votes." 
 
 What was the cause of this sudden withdrawal in the 
 Great and General Court of confidence in the man who 
 had been elected its speaker through fourteen successive 
 years ? Did he suffer from the suspicion that he deferred 
 more to the royal governor and his placemen than was 
 befitting ? On this point the provincial representatives 
 were extremely sensitive. A former speaker, Elisha 
 Cooke, the younger, who was a stanch champion of 
 provincial rights, fell under the swift censure of the 
 Boston voters at the mere insinuation that he welcomed 
 too eagerly the administration's favors. Or was it simply 
 that Colonel Quincy was in his turn a victim of the 
 craving for change, that notorious weakness of democ- 
 racies ? 
 
 The situation is made doubly perplexing by the action 
 of his ow^n neighbors, the voters of Braintree, in refusing, 
 at the next election, to return him as their representative. 
 What is the true explanation.? A tradition has always 
 prevailed hereabouts that the political commotion which 
 w'rought so complete and sudden an alteration in the 
 career of John Quincy was caused by the intrigues of 
 a certain Joseph Gooch, an exploiting politician, — a 
 startling intrusion then of that disorganizing phenomenon 
 which has now become so common a peril. This tradi- 
 tion, however, when closely scrutinized, melts away. It 
 is not, in the first place, easy to believe that the voters 
 of the Braintree of that period were so fickle that an up- 
 start politician by his manipulations, however cunning, 
 
 49 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 could demoralize in a day the loyalty of years. To con- 
 ceive this of the ages which we have regarded as simpler 
 and truer than our own would be, to say the least, a 
 severe wrench to the feelings. Furthermore, it so hap- 
 pens that, as a matter of fact, it was not Gooch who was 
 preferred to Colonel Quincy on this occasion, but Cap- 
 tain William Hunt. 
 
 We are thus forced to look elsewhere for adequate 
 interpretation. With a hint from the writings of Mr. 
 Andrew McFarland Davis, who has searched deeply into 
 several episodes of that distant day, we find the explana- 
 tion not in a political flurry, nor primarily in a contro- 
 versy with the king and his ministers, but in a most 
 unlooked-for agitation, — a wildcat banking craze! In 
 this day few have heard of that project for the issuance 
 of cheap currency here in Massachusetts known as the 
 Land Bank and Manufactory Company. Fewer still 
 realize the wide commotion it caused. Yet John Adams 
 records that " the act to destroy the Land Bank Scheme 
 raised a greater ferment in this Province than the Stamp 
 Act did." It was an eighteenth-century fiat-money de- 
 lusion, closely resembling, in its fundamental principles, 
 the similar crazes which have disturbed us in recent years. 
 Private gain and supposed patriotism were blended in 
 the eighteenth-century projects, just as they were in 
 those of the last half of the nineteenth century. The 
 mixture, indeed, is not uncommon; and, skilfully com- 
 pounded, can surely be relied on at almost any time to 
 rouse in many a resolute bearing and lofty sentiments. 
 The eighteenth-century scheme, revealing unmistakable 
 
 50 
 
MOUNT WOLLASTON (MERRYMiH-XT) IX kich, 
 
 MOUNT WOLLASTOX IX i83g 
 
 CITY si:al 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 aspects of a social antagonism, swept through the Prov- 
 ince. The people — that is, the farmers, artisans, and 
 smaller tradesmen — became roused over it to a fighting 
 pitch. They accordingly packed the House of Repre- 
 sentatives with its partisans. Governor Thomas Hutch- 
 inson subsequently wrote, in his history of that period, 
 "it appeared that by far the majority of the representa- 
 tives for 1740 [the year in which John Quincy was 
 dropped] were subscribers to, or favorers of, the scheme, 
 and they have ever since been distinguished by the name 
 of the Land Bank House." 
 
 The notion of a bank of issue, the currency of which 
 should be based on land values, had haunted the Province 
 for years. Of silver and gold there was little in circu- 
 lation; and that little was constantly, under the ordinary 
 and now well-understood conditions of trade, drained out 
 of the country. There was no pretence that the paper 
 currency, which displaced it, was redeemable, for the 
 expenses of the government were met by the emission of 
 bills of public credit. When these bills were emitted, a 
 specific pledge was made of a "fund" to be provided for 
 retiring the emission; this fund to be derived from taxes, 
 which were to be imposed at a future time. Taxes were 
 therefore imposed to retire bills previously issued to 
 meet public expenses, which, in turn, were again met by 
 the emission of more bills. As the result of such a finan- 
 cial policy systematically pursued, the currency not 
 unnaturally became thoroughly demoralized. The out- 
 standing bills of credit steadily declined in value, until it 
 became obvious that a financial crisis of some sort was 
 
 51 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 imminent. Under such circumstances other cure-all 
 panaceas and quack nostrums are always in order. It 
 was so after the French wars of the eighteenth century-. 
 It was so during the War of Independence. It was again 
 so during all the forty years which followed the War of 
 Secession in the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth- 
 century experience, as might surely have been anticipated, 
 the man arrived, nostrum in hand, as the fateful hour was 
 about to strike. The existing evil was to be remedied 
 through an ingenious revival and adaptation of the old 
 Land Bank idea. John Coleman — a needy Boston mer- 
 chant, Hutchinson called him — was to create, with others 
 who might join him, a people's cheap currency, — a fiat 
 money, as it has since been termed, founded on the value 
 of farms and homes and manufactures. The scheme 
 was fairly redolent of that form of popular favor which 
 frequently assumes the name and guise of patriotism. 
 The faith which the people had in themselves and in 
 their native land was to be imparted to bank issues of 
 paper money. The notes of Coleman's Land Bank, 
 as good as gold, were to supersede the use of hard money. 
 So John Coleman and others, to the number of some 
 three hundred and ninety-five, presented to the legisla- 
 ture their scheme, which provided, originally, for the 
 emission of £150,000 in currency secured on lands and 
 commodities of a value at once substantial and visible 
 to all, and which could not take to themselves wings. 
 So alluring w^as the project to its devisers, and, withal, so 
 rapidly did its popularity increase, that, while yet the 
 legislature was cautiously examining into its merits, other 
 
 52 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 subscribers, numbering eventually over a thousand, were 
 added to the list of its promoters. Mainly "yeomen," 
 these last did not, as a rule, subscribe individually for 
 over £100 of the currency. In exchange for it they 
 gave mortgages on their farms and homes. Braintree 
 contributed fourteen such subscribers, among whom were 
 William Hunt, Amos Stetson, Thomas Crosby, Benjamin 
 Beale, Danl. Thayer, and Moses Belcher, Jr. 
 
 The leading merchants and other men of business 
 experience in Boston and adjacent towns saw at once 
 the perilous character of the Land Bank. In a declara- 
 tion headed by Peter Faneuil, and which numbered 
 among its signers members of some of Braintree's first 
 families, such as Edmund and Josiah Quincy and the 
 son of the speaker, Norton Quincy, warning was given 
 that those whose names were affixed would not receive 
 the notes of the Land Bank in trade or any other busi- 
 ness transaction whatever, as they could not but believe 
 that the scheme would be of "pernicious consequence.'* 
 This announcement called forth passionate objections 
 from the Land-bankers, the character of which may be 
 gathered from a communication printed in one of the 
 papers of that day, the diminutive News Letter. This 
 communication also reveals among the people of the 
 Province a growing sense of social distinctions. The line 
 drawn between the so-called "patriot" and the "loyalist" 
 was becoming confused with a new and horizontal rift 
 of cleavage, now for the first time beginning to divide 
 men of substance from the struggling farmers and arti- 
 sans. The opposition merchants are many, says the 
 
 53 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 writer to the News Letter, and some are very rich, "but 
 then it must not be supposed that they are of equal weight 
 with all the rest of the Province. If you consider how 
 they obtained their influence and the ill use made of it, 
 you won't wonder we begin to be tired of it.'* The "ill 
 use" here alluded to was plainly pointed out in the claim 
 made in the letter that the Land Bank bills would "pre- 
 vent borrowing money and paying exorbitant interest." 
 
 Jonathan Belcher, the governor of the Province from 
 1730 to 1741, early showed himself wholly opposed to 
 the bank. His objections also were well founded; and, 
 at the outset, no personal element confused the issue. 
 The royal governor was quick to take advantage of 
 certain phrases contained in a report made by a com- 
 mittee of the legislature in March, 1740, adverse to the 
 scheme. These he embodied in a proclamation, represent- 
 ing that the notes would " have a great tendency to en- 
 damage His Majesty's good subjects as to their property," 
 and consequently warning all against receiving or pass- 
 ing them. The House of Representatives rapidly began 
 to reflect the temper spreading throughout the Com- 
 monwealth, and to take tone therefrom. According to 
 Hutchinson, "perhaps the major part in number of the 
 inhabitants of the Province openly or secretly are well 
 wishers of the" bank. Consequently, no matter how 
 strenuously the governor urged the representatives, they 
 could not be induced to pass any decisive judgment upon 
 the scheme nor forbid the issue of the notes. This 
 course, on their part, served only to incite the governor 
 to a policy yet more aggressive in character. During 
 
 54 
 
JOHN QT INCY 
 
 the recess of the House, striking right and left as witli a 
 bludgeon, he issued proclamation after proclamation, in 
 a vain endeavor to crush the portentous and fast-waxing 
 danger. In arbitrary and characteristic fashion he tlireat- 
 ened with dismissal any oflScer of the government — all, 
 indeed, who held commissions or licenses of any de- 
 scription — who should countenance the obnoxious bank, 
 or honor its notes. Attorneys were strictly admonished 
 to discourage the circulation of the prohibited currency 
 and to exercise an espionage over justices of the peace; 
 and justices of the peace, similarly warned, were urged 
 to keep a close watch over taverners and others. Delin- 
 quent military officials were singled out to be disciplined. 
 Colonel Quincy and others high in rank were instructed 
 by letter to inquire into the conduct of all holding com- 
 missions under them in regard to their attitude toward 
 the Land Bank; and such among them as persisted in 
 receiving or passing its bills were to be dismissed. Great 
 was the consequent consternation. A deep searching of 
 hearts was all-pervasive; as also a painful weighing of 
 convictions over against the assurance of the placemen's 
 present comfort. As if to inject the last drop of bitter- 
 ness into the controversy, the informer was abroad; and 
 so from the Berkshire Hills to Cape Cod confusion 
 reigned. 
 
 The mass of the community, victims of a "people's 
 currency" and cheap-money delusion, believed that the 
 Land Bank would prove a blessing, and as such would 
 save the Province from grave disasters. This conviction 
 was also shared by not a few of the official class. Among 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 such was Samuel Adams, father of the patriot of the same 
 name. This Samuel Adams held a commission as jus- 
 tice of the peace, and, immediately upon the issuance of 
 the proclamation of the governor aimed at those so 
 placed, he, with a fellow-official named Choate, wrote 
 to Belcher. In their missive they bluntly and boldly 
 informed him that holding office under him was "made 
 inconsistent with Prosecuting the Manufactory^ Scheme 
 in which we are concerned and whereon in our humble 
 opinions the interest of our Native Country so much 
 depends as to require the utmost of our endeavors to pro- 
 mote the same, Therefore we do resign our commissions 
 of Trusts." Later the governor, taking no other notice 
 of these resignations than to allude to the presumptuous 
 defence of the bank in which these officials "are deter- 
 mined to persist," dismissed Adams and Choate con- 
 tumeliously from their positions. None the less, Samuel 
 Adams, as one of its directors, "prosecuted" the scheme 
 most zealously; somewhat, be it added, to the em- 
 barrassment of his son financially in later days. 
 
 Through eleven troubled years Jonathan Belcher was 
 royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; 
 and, subsequently transferred to New Jersey, he for ten 
 years, and until his death in 1757, administered the 
 affairs of that Province both to his own satisfaction and 
 to that of the people. A Boston boy, he was to the 
 manner born. He was, also, a graduate of Harvard 
 College, nine years the senior of John Quincy. x\nd yet 
 Governor Belcher was neither a fortunate nor a popular 
 chief magistrate of Massachusetts. Though a victim of 
 
 56 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 the gout, the sufiering caused by attacks of which may 
 have made him irritable, his person and presence are 
 said to have been graceful and pleasing, while his manner 
 was hearty and his address affable. But, known to be 
 a friend and advocate of high prerogative principles in 
 government, he was given to intrigue and suspected of 
 tortuous political methods. Not in sympathy with the 
 mass of the community he was set to rule over, he was, 
 when opposed, inclined to arbitraiy measures. He was 
 unfortunate also in the period of his administration; for 
 it fell in the midst of what a grave historian has not hesi- 
 tated to term a "bog" of insolvency, — a miry waste in 
 which Massachusetts floundered about for over half a 
 century, continually seeking to devise some scheme by 
 w^hich something other than specie could be made avail- 
 able as currency and in discharge of debts. The finan- 
 cial situation had thus become well-nigh intolerable in 
 Belcher's time. Trade had turned into gambling, and 
 neither buyer nor seller could "calculate intelligently 
 what would be the worth to-morrow of the printed rags 
 which passed between them to-day." The private bank 
 project was sure to aggravate yet further the evils of the 
 situation, and in his opposition to it Belcher was w^holly 
 right; but, unfortunately, the methods of opposition he 
 had recourse to "served only to exasperate the people, 
 and beget a malignant spirit." The usual result fol- 
 lowed. In the popular mind, advocacy of the Land 
 Bank became identified with opposition to royal preroga- 
 tive and an arbitrary administration, the action of which 
 was dictated from Whitehall. Everywhere the stub- 
 
 67 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 born colonial spirit of resistance and retaliation was 
 aroused. Boston sent rebellious Land-bankers to the 
 next legislature. Braintree was both as unintimidated 
 and as unreasoning as Boston, and defiantly voted (though 
 not without debate, for John Quincy was moderator), 
 that in the matter of town rates the constables were to 
 pay and the treasurer to receive Land Bank bills. This 
 bordered closely on deliberate insurrection; and, had 
 the same action been taken by many other towns, a 
 wholly premature revolutionary movement might not 
 impossibly then have assumed shape. The Braintree 
 voters, moreover, capped their contumacy and misplaced 
 patriotism by electing for representative a Land Bank 
 subscriber. Captain William Hunt. Thus Colonel 
 Quincy, greatly to his credit, was, on an altogether false 
 issue, thrown out of the legislative position which he had 
 so long and honorably filled. 
 
 In May of 1741, while the excitement was still at its 
 height, the legislature again assembled. Promptly it 
 elected as speaker Samuel Watts, a Land Bank director. 
 As promptly the choice was vetoed by Governor Belcher. 
 Then the House chose William Fairfield, who, though 
 no oflScial of the Land Bank, was a strong advocate of 
 it, — a Land Bank partisan. He was endured till the 
 next day only, when the governor dissolved the House 
 because it disclosed "so much of an inclination to sup- 
 port the fraudulent and pernicious" scheme. At the 
 same brief session Samuel Adams, the ejected, was chosen 
 to His Majesty's Council, together with fourteen other 
 aggressive Land-bankers. The governor with scant 
 
 58 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 courtesy, flung them all out. They and their sympa- 
 thizers reinforced their persistence with sucli phrases as 
 that used by Henry Lee, — "the privilege of an English- 
 man is my sufficient warrant"; while Belcher, irritated 
 that a colony which "enjoyed more privileges than most 
 of his Majesty's Dominions (hap})y New England thus 
 distinguished)," should prove so wilful, grew more arbi- 
 trary. His course greatly stimulated the jealousy and 
 suspicion alw^ays felt in Massachusetts of government 
 through the "Lords of Trade and Plantation," who now 
 more than ever were intervening. The great majority 
 of the people were in open array against him; and events 
 were hastening to a crisis. Not only were subscribers 
 to the Land Bank threatened with ruin, not only were 
 officials closely sympathetic with the provincial feeling 
 deprived of their commissions, but the multitude, sin- 
 cere in their patriotic impulse, had a feeling that their 
 most sacred rights were being trampled on. Mutterings 
 of armed resistance were heard. The country' farmers 
 and the Boston artisans secretly combined. Word was 
 quietly passed around that on the 19th of this very 
 month of May some twenty thousand men would march 
 on Boston, where two thousand more would be ready to 
 unite wdth them. They would break the barrier erected 
 against the circulation of the Land Bank notes. They 
 would compel the merchants to take them for corn. Of 
 this ferment one of the centres seems to have been Brain- 
 tree. Notices of the rising were posted on its meeting- 
 house, or placed on the walls of its taverns. Other towns 
 near by — Stoughton, Weymouth, Hingham — saw like no- 
 
 59 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 tices: — ''Here are a number of men that want the com- 
 pany, of our design there is no fear of failing, our names 
 must be kept secret." Captain Pierce, of Milton, was to 
 lead them. Such were some of the statements made by 
 willing or unwilling witnesses. 
 
 These rumors were obvious exaggerations. Still they 
 were the flying spindrift attesting the tumultuous char- 
 acter of the storm which tore the waters of both political 
 and social life. Enough is revealed to show why John 
 Adams could afterwards say that a greater ferment was 
 raised than when, years later, the Stamp Act was im- 
 posed. Whatever the nature or extent of the threatened 
 insurrection, it was not kept so secret but that rumors of 
 it reached the ear of Governor Belcher. Nothing what- 
 ever, either documentary or in the way of tradition, has 
 come down to this generation throwing light on the per- 
 sonal or social relations which existed between Governor 
 Belcher and Colonel Quincy. Boston was then a com- 
 paratively small and compact town, with less than twenty 
 thousand inhabitants; and, both Boston boys, they were 
 some eight years only apart both at school and college, 
 Belcher being the elder. Subsequent to college days 
 Colonel Quincy was speaker of the House of Representa- 
 tives during all but the closing year of Belcher's long 
 administration. The two men must therefore have 
 known each other well, and their official relations at least 
 had necessarily been close. On the Land Bank issue they 
 were also clearly in full accord. Naturally, therefore, 
 when disturbing rumors of popular ferment in the towns 
 about Braintree were brought to the governor's notice, 
 
 60 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 he at once turned to Colonel Quiney for assistance. 
 Here are his instructions sent post haste, doubtless, to 
 Braintree: "His Excellency desires you would forth- 
 with make strict inquiry into the matter mentioned in 
 the enclosed paper, and if you find anything in the stor}\ 
 that you consult with Mr. Justice Lincoln [of Hingham], 
 upon it, And that he join with you in suppressing this 
 riotous and disorderly Proceeding; and that you report 
 the state of the Business as soon as may be. It will 
 be best to act with as much privacy and caution as the 
 affair w^ill permit, lest by making the matter too public 
 the people should be put in Mind of that which they had 
 but little thought of before." 
 
 The mission intrusted to Colonel Quiney seems to 
 have been carried out successfully. At least, no disturb- 
 ance occurred. Perhaps the proclamation issued a little 
 later, conveying the highly gratifying intelligence that 
 the unpopular Belcher had been removed and William 
 Shirley appointed as his successor, was most productive 
 of quiet. The change was fortunate, and was made at 
 just the right moment; for, by this time, the British Board 
 of Trade, which had been appealed to, had discovered 
 that an old Act of Parliament, called the "Bubble Act," 
 passed in 1719, at the time of the collapse of the South 
 Sea Company craze, could be made to do duty as an 
 effective weapon against the proposed Massachusetts 
 Land Bank; and thus, to quote the language of Palfrey, 
 "The Land Bank Company was caught in its own de- 
 vices. For besides that, by force of this law, the com- 
 pany must desist from all further issue of its bills, each 
 
 61 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 individual member of it was made liable, not only for 
 the negotiable value of them, but for the sum at which, 
 according to the stipulation on their face, they were 
 redeemable in silver, with the further addition of inter- 
 est from the time of their being put into circulation." 
 
 Whether just or otherwise, this action was certainly 
 drastic. It brought the Land Bank scheme to a sum- 
 mary close. The directors not only "disincorporated 
 themselves," but they proceeded to call in their bills 
 outstanding, and "consumed them to ashes" so effectually 
 that, as Belcher's successor shortly after wrote, "not one 
 honest man will suffer much by it." But this course of 
 treatment, however salutary as well as effective, emanat- 
 ing as it did from a foreign source always in Massachu- 
 setts regarded with suspicion and jealousy, was far from 
 acceptable to the community to which it was applied. 
 It might be paternal: it was certainly arbitrary. The 
 Massachusetts Bay community had never taken kindly 
 to paternalism; and they now fiercely resented this appli- 
 cation of the rod. It aroused in the hearts of the pro- 
 vincials not only a feeling of intense resentment, but 
 emotions of desperation even. The representatives as- 
 serted in their General Court Journal that, if they "did 
 not struggle in every way to maintain their liberty, they 
 would act more like the vassals of an arbitrary prince 
 than like subjects of King George their most gracious 
 Sovereign"; and, as John Adams subsequently put it 
 in one of his controversial papers, "This radical change 
 in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of 
 the people was the real American Revolution." Those 
 
 6S 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 conteniporarv chroniclers may not be far wrong who 
 asserted that, if Belcher had continued much lonp^er in 
 office, a collision with Great Britain, more or less for- 
 midable in character, might have occurred in 1741. The 
 theme chosen for his part in the Harvard Commence- 
 ment of 1740 by the younger Sam Adams is suggestive 
 on this })oint. It was set forth in these words: "Whether 
 it be lawful to resist the superior magistrates, if the Com- 
 monwealth cannot be otherwise preserved?" Delivered 
 at that precise moment, it was no abstract question, no 
 academic anticipation of a strife looming on a distant 
 horizon. It w^as a present, a vital question, urged by 
 the thoughts and emotions fostered in the speaker's own 
 home, inspired by the indignation felt for the contumely 
 to which his father had been subjected in that very 
 spring. 
 
 The exhuming of the South Sea "Bubble Act," and 
 its parliamentary application to the Province, was one 
 of the closing episodes of Governor Belcher's adminis- 
 tration. For it he was, probably with justice, held 
 responsible, and it intensified the odium w'ith which he 
 had already come to be regarded. None the less it 
 smoothed the path of his successor, for the Land Bank 
 scheme was removed from it. By great good fortune, 
 also, Governor Shirley, though not, like Belcher, Mas- 
 sachusetts born, was as courteous and tactful as his 
 predecessor had been irritable and arbitrary; and, al- 
 though he had to carr}^ out the provisions of an o])prossive, 
 even if salutary, Act of Parliament, he did it in such 
 fashion as to work the least injury. He calmed the 
 
 03 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 storm, adroitly directing the attention of the people to 
 the Spanish War, its aspect of danger to the colonies, 
 and the need of enlistments. With its eyes set on the 
 costly, if successful, Louisburg expedition, the Province, 
 in very helpless fashion, drifted into complete public 
 insolvency. The popular delusion that money can be 
 made out of paper by virtue of an act of legislation 
 worked its disastrous consequences. Almost every pos- 
 sible ingenious expedient for making payments with new 
 promises to pay had been, or now, was tried; and its 
 inefficacy proved. At last, as an outcome wholly unfore- 
 seen, of the brilliant success which crowned Governor 
 Shirley's early military ventures, the financial capacity 
 of Thomas Hutchinson devised, in spite of popular oppo- 
 sition, a way "of extrication from a state of things in 
 which Massachusetts, with ample resources in the capac- 
 ities of her position and the energy of her people was 
 [for over half a century] kept in a miserable state of 
 indigence and discomfort." 
 
 This, however, is anticipating the course of events, in 
 which the Land Bank scheme of 1740 was but a single 
 episode. Colonel John Quincy was not concerned with 
 those later developments through which the Province of 
 Massachusetts Bay, burdened with merely the ordi- 
 naiy oppressions of the old-world, eighteenth-century, 
 foreign misgovernment, drifted on toward the hour when 
 extraordinary impositions in the form of "writs of assist- 
 ance" and "Stamp Act" stirred the people to overt deeds 
 of rebellion. 
 
 We are now, however, in a position to see that Colonel 
 
 64 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 Qiiincy, amid the confusions and perplexities of his time, 
 pursued the one course open for the immediate relief 
 and the ultimate liberation of his country. Obviously, 
 he was side-tracked in his political career because of his 
 opposition to a popular movement in itself inherently 
 unsound, though for a time identified in the popular 
 mind with patriotic aspirations. His affiliation with a 
 royal governor, as eager to oppose the self-governing 
 instincts of the people as he was ready to crush a fiat- 
 money craze, was a mere unavoidable incident; and the 
 supposition that, because of such affiliation, lie wjis 
 justly rejected by the Braintree constituency is contrary 
 to every consideration of historic perspective. The situ- 
 ation was plainly confused; nor did the issues of the 
 period present themselves in simple form. Everything, 
 however, goes to show that John Quincy was one with 
 the community of which he was a part in all their higher 
 aspirations, that he set his face like a flint against any 
 encroachments upon the rights and privileges of the 
 Province; but how could he, a sagacious, level-headed 
 man, raise the standard of revolt against England with 
 "Liberty and a Land Bank" for a battle-cry.? To 
 choose deliberately between the alternatives thrust upon 
 him was, to a far-seeing and sensitive man, little less 
 than tragical. On the one hand, blending with the 
 delusive visions of wealth, were the groping aspirations 
 of the provincial home-rulers. On the other hand was 
 partnership with the recognized exponent of prerogative 
 and alien rule in the destruction of the scheme created by 
 those delusions. It was not given to him, as it was to 
 
 65 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 Charles Sumner in his fight for the freedom of the slave, 
 to feel and declare — "There is no other side!" There 
 was another side; and the fact that John Quincy did not 
 halt between two opinions bears witness to his strength 
 of character. Disregarding consequences, as far as he 
 personally was concerned, he openly and sturdily devoted 
 his energies to what he conceived to be the duty nearest 
 at hand; and so in that crisis of 1741 John Quincy proved 
 true to himself, true to his convictions that the Land 
 Bank scheme was fraught with measureless disaster to its 
 infatuated supporters. Accordingly, until the scheme 
 was crushed, he stood by the constituted authorities, 
 accepting the odium inseparable from that line of action. 
 The day of freedom's fight, clear of the Land Bank and 
 the fiat money of 1741, — though, unfortunately, not of a 
 fiat money of its own invention, — was yet to come. 
 Against that day he maintained the ancient league with 
 righteousness, doing the work proper to the hour. May 
 we not apply to him those words which Morley uses to 
 characterize Gladstone — "A glorious nature that doth 
 put life into business, with a solid and sober nature that 
 hath as much of the ballast as of the sail" ? 
 
 While Colonel Quincy was bearing in dignified silence 
 the disfavor of his fellow-citizens, that veiy unsavory 
 demagogue, Joseph Gooch, took advantage of the 
 speaker's popular obscuration to displace him as colonel 
 of the Suffolk regiment. The account of what then 
 occurred is interesting enough to be presented in all the 
 fulness with which President John Adams has pre- 
 served it. With free strokes of the pen he presents a 
 
 66 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 rough outline of that familiar personality — a stage dema- 
 gogue in a Puritan community. With the Land-bankers 
 in power and the voters demoralized, it was compara- 
 tively easy for this wealthy Boston lawyer to invade 
 Braintree, rout its respectabilities, and parade as the 
 popular figure of the day. "He had been a man of 
 pleasure," wrote President Adams, "and bore the in- 
 delible marks of it on his face to the grave. . . . Not suc- 
 ceeding at the bar in Boston, he had recourse to religion 
 to assist him, joined the Old South Church, to avail him- 
 self of the influence of the sisterhood, and set up for 
 representative for the town of Boston, but failed, and 
 disappointed of his hopes in law and politics, he re- 
 nounced the city, came up to Quincy [then part of Brain- 
 tree], hired a house, turned churchman and set himself 
 to intriguing for promotion both in the military' and civil 
 departments. He interceded with the favorites of Gov- 
 ernor Shirley, in this place, to procure him the commis- 
 sion of colonel in the regiment of militia, and an election 
 for representative of the town in the General Court. He 
 promised to build a steeple to their church, at his own 
 expense. 
 
 "It was at this time the corru})t })ractice of treating, 
 as they called it, at training and at elections was intro- 
 duced, which so long prevailed in the town of Braintree.'* 
 The most liberal advantage was taken of this custom by 
 Gooch. Like water from the town pump, beer and cider 
 flowed on the training-field; while, in the taverns, they 
 were constantly on tap. A display of such exuberant 
 good-fellowship melted the hearts of the naturally re- 
 
 67 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 served New England farmer, nor could Governor Shirley, 
 then a resident of Braintree, resist the voice of the multi- 
 tude, and even the importunity of his own church. He 
 reluctantly dismissed Colonel Quincy, saying years after- 
 wards that nothing he had ever done in his administration 
 had given him so much pain; and Gooch was made colonel 
 in his stead. "Application was made to all the captains, 
 lieutenants and ensigns, in that part of the regiment which 
 lies within the three parishes of the ancient town of 
 Braintree, to see if they would accept commissions under 
 Colonel Gooch, and agree to vote for him as representa- 
 tive for the town. The then present oflficers were men 
 among the most respectable of the inhabitants, in point 
 of property, understanding and character. They rejected 
 the proposition with scorn. My father was among them,'* 
 continues President Adams, "he was offered a captain's 
 commission. He spurned the offer with disdain; would 
 serve in the militia under no colonel but Quincy." But 
 with the new officers — "these were of a very different 
 character" — Gooch prevailed. He was elected repre- 
 sentative over even the Land-banker, Captain Hunt, not 
 improbably himself one of the more respectable oflScers 
 who would not serve under Gooch. The demoralization 
 was, however, only temporary, for President Adams goes 
 on, "all the substantial people of the town aroused them- 
 selves," and turned Gooch out, "which so enraged him 
 that he swore he would no longer live in Braintree; re- 
 nounced the church, refused to build their steeple, built 
 him a house on Milton Hill, and there passed the re- 
 mainder of his days." 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 From this welter of confusions Colonel Quincy emerged, 
 invitino^ confidence by his sane and safj^acioiis judfi^ment. 
 Even in the hour of their infatuation his own towns- 
 people did not cease to call upon him to serve on the 
 more exacting committees. After the old fashion he was 
 chosen moderator of the March meeting of 1743, and 
 they also paid him the compliment (the highest they then 
 could) of electing him selectman with his loyal comrade, 
 Lieutenant John Adams; and thus early was it exempli- 
 fied that the statesmen of this community regard no 
 office too humble for them in which to serve their neigh- 
 bors and fellow-citizens, and John Quincy, in the sim- 
 plicity of his devotion to the public good, only showed 
 the true attitude of a citizen in a free democracy. His 
 large experience and abilities were not, however, destined 
 to remain long unemployed in their fulness for the benefit 
 of the entire Province. Once more, in 1744, he was re- 
 turned to the House of Representatives; and, in all, he 
 was elected four additional years to that body. He did 
 not become again " the Honorable Speaker," but a marked 
 distinction was paid him by his elevation to the higher 
 chamber, as it w^as accounted, the Governor's Council. 
 Here, with the urbane and conciliatory Shirley, he wrought 
 for eight successive years, — a period which included some 
 of the most trying experiences of the French War, with its 
 Indian accompaniments. When at last he retired from 
 office, the people, though sorely oppressed in trade, were, 
 in a political sense, "as buoyant as ever." 
 
 Of Cavour it has been said that he had all the prudence 
 and all the imprudence of the true statesman. John 
 
 69 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 Quincy was prudent, — always prudent; but, on that high 
 level which gave moral stability to his career, he secured 
 the confidence of two generations of contemporaries. 
 Chosen by the colonists to the most responsible offices to 
 which a native-born New England man might aspire, 
 higher position for him there was not. An American, he 
 asked for no more honorable place than to be in the 
 van of those who were contending for the rights of Amer- 
 icans. Said King George III. to John Adams in their 
 first interview after independence was secured, "I un- 
 derstand you are much attached to your country?" "I 
 have no attachment but to my country," quickly re- 
 sponded Adams. "An honest man," rejoined the king, 
 *'will never have any other." 
 
 When he finally retired to his farm on the shores of 
 Boston Bay, Colonel Quincy was some sixty-five years 
 old. Here, in the mansion built about the time of his 
 marriage, he passed in apparent contentment the closing 
 years of a busy and useful life, — a sequence not always 
 assured. But, before coming to the last scene of all, 
 something should be said of his untiring labors for the 
 town. I had the curiosity to read through the Braintree 
 records to learn how large those labors were. I found 
 that he had been chosen moderator forty- two times, at 
 least, — a record which, it is safe to say, has not been sur- 
 passed. To enumerate the committees on which Colonel 
 Quincy served would be tedious. An exception should 
 be made, however, in case of the one created in 1729, to 
 determine "whether it may be an advantage to the town 
 to be divided into two towns." The North Precinct took 
 
 70 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 the lead in this matter, and John Qnincy was made chair- 
 man of the committee, which agreed on a favorable 
 report; but the two other precincts would not let the 
 North Precinct go. In 1756 the North Precinct again 
 brought forward a "scheme" to divide the town; and 
 again it w^as defeated. If, as is not unlikely, John Quincy 
 was also the moving spirit in this second attempt at a 
 severance, it would make him, in a more intimate sense, 
 the father of the town created nearly forty years later. 
 
 An examination of the church records shows that 
 Colonel Quincy was as deeply interested in spiritual as in 
 secular affairs. Their every page makes manifest his 
 hearty co-operation with the pastors whose ministry co- 
 incided with the more active period of his life, — the Rev. 
 John Hancock and the Rev. Lemuel Briant. Frequently 
 elected moderator, this otherwise busy man assumed also 
 the perplexing duties of the parish committees. When 
 the Rev. Mr. Briant, an advanced liberal, is charged with 
 heresy by a council of sister churches, it is John Quincy 
 who acts as chairman of the committee chosen to con- 
 sider the charges; and the report returned by the commit- 
 tee, which we may assume to have been drawn up by the 
 chairman, is for that day a remarkable production. It 
 was decisive in its defence of the pastor's "right of pri- 
 vate judgment," and its commendation of him "for the 
 pains he takes to promote a free and impartial examina- 
 tion into all articles of our holy religion, so that all may 
 judge, even of themselves, what is right." Such lan- 
 guage then used was indicative of a vigorous and inde- 
 pendent mind of high order. A masterful hand is re- 
 
 71 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 vealed. When a new meeting-house is to be built, he, as 
 a matter of course, is put on the committee. As early 
 in his church relations as 1723, Major Quincy *'was 
 fairly and clearly chosen by written votes to the oflBce of 
 tuning the Psalm in our assemblies of public worship;" 
 and, dying, he bequeathed a silver tankard for the com- 
 munion service which bears this inscription — "The gift 
 of the Hon'ble John Quincy, Esq., to the First Church 
 in Braintree, 1767.'* 
 
 A brief sketch printed in the columns of the Massachu- 
 setts Gazette of July 23, 1767, closes with these words: 
 **In private life he was exemplary; — headorn'dthe chris- 
 tian profession by an holy life, a strict observance of the 
 Lord's day, and a constant attendance upon the public 
 ordinances of religion, — in one word, he was a gentle- 
 man true to his trust, diligent and active in public busi- 
 ness, punctual in promises and appointments, just towards 
 all men, and devout towards God." 
 
 Before John Quincy passed peacefully away in his own 
 home, one glimpse of him there is afforded through the 
 diary of John Adams, w^ho, then a man of thirty, had 
 some fourteen months before become the husband of 
 a grand-daughter of the Master of Mt. Wollaston. The 
 entry is of the 25th of December, 1765. It is as fol- 
 lows: "Went not to Christmas; dined at home; drank 
 tea at grandfather Quincy's. The old gentleman in- 
 quisitive about the hearing before the Governor and 
 Council; about the Governor's and Secretary's looks 
 and behaviour, and about the final determination of the 
 Board. The old lady as merry and chatty as ever, with 
 
TABLET TO PRESIDENT JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 
 
JOHN QFIXCY 
 
 her stories out of the newspa})ers." The hearing was on 
 the memorial of tlie town of Boston that the courts of 
 law, arbitrarily closed in retaliation for the Stamj) Act 
 riots, should be opened. John Adams appeared with 
 Gridley and Otis as counsel for the town in support of 
 the memorial. 
 
 Dying on the 13tli of July, 1767, in the seventy-eighth 
 year of his age, John Quincy left four children: his only 
 son Norton, who, passing his days in the home of his 
 father, died without issue; Elizabeth, who married the 
 Rev. William Smith, of Weymouth; Anna, who married 
 John Thaxter, of Hingham; and Lucy, who married 
 Cotton Tufts, of Weymouth. To Elizabeth and her hus- 
 band, the pastor of the Weymouth church, was born 
 Abigail, who married John Adams. This is the bond of 
 kinship which unites the Adamses and the Quincys. It 
 was emphasized by the transmission of a name ; for, as old 
 John Quincy lay dying at Mt. Wollaston, this grand- 
 daughter of his gave birth to a son; and when the next 
 day, July V2, as was then the practice, the child was 
 baptized, its grandmother, who was present at its birth, 
 requested that it might be called after her father. Long 
 afterwards the child thus named wrote of this incident: 
 "It was filial tenderness that gave the name. It was 
 the name of one [massing from earth to immortality. 
 These have been among the strongest links of my attach- 
 ment to the name of Quincy, and have been to me 
 through life a perpetual admonition to do nothing un- 
 worthy of it." 
 
 However the links were forged, we all feel that attach- 
 
 73 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 ment to the name of Quincy. May it grow till it shall 
 be to each of us a perpetual admonition to do nothing 
 unworthy of Quincy! May the lives of all who have 
 lived within its limits, and the labors of all who have 
 devoted themselves to its peace and prosperity, inspire 
 us with kindred virtues! And may he whose name it 
 bears marshal us also the way to victories of freedom, 
 friendship, faith! It was, it is said, a custom of the 
 Locrian Greeks to leave a vacant place in their charging 
 ranks for the spirit of Ajax, their elect hero. As the 
 people of this community move onward in generations 
 through the years to come, may they invoke as the genius 
 of the vanward line no presence less worthy than the 
 shade of John Quincy! 
 
 ADDRESS BY BROOKS ADAMS. 
 
 It would be absurd for me to introduce to you my own 
 brother, who, to say the least, is as well known to you 
 as I am myself, were it not that I can say of him some- 
 thing he cannot say of himself. 
 
 If it be true that the best lesson a man can learn is to 
 honor his father and his mother, because thereby he learns 
 to respect himself, it should follow that the best lesson any 
 community can learn is to honor their ancestors, since by 
 so doing they are taught to be ashamed to disgrace them. 
 
 In this light my brother has been a public benefactor, 
 for among his generation no man has done more to unroll 
 before those who shall succeed us the noble record of the 
 past than Charles Francis Adams. 
 
 74 
 
JOHN QIJINCY 
 
 ADDRESS BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 
 
 Sixteen years ago it devolved on me to address a Quincy 
 audience on an occasion not dissimilar to that of to-day. 
 Standing where I now stand, I then spoke of an event 
 which had occurred one hundred years before, — the in- 
 corporation of what was previously the North Precinct 
 of Braintree as an independent municipality, to be called 
 Quincy. We were celebrating a first Centennial. Then 
 the burden of the day devolved on me. It is different 
 now. We are here to commemorate him after whom the 
 town was named, one who had been five-and-twenty 
 years in his grave when Quincy was incorporated, and 
 my part is strictly subordinate. After the elaborate and 
 exhaustive address delivered by Mr. Wilson, not much 
 at best remains to be said of John Quincy. The prepa- 
 ration of that address has been with Mr. Wilson a labor 
 of love, and the information he has slowly and painfully 
 gathered together is forcibly suggestive of the vast mass 
 of historical material in the dusty archives of the Com- 
 monwealth, in which he has so long and so toilsomely 
 delved. What I have to contribute to the occasion will, 
 therefore, occupy hardly more than a brief ten minutes, 
 and I shall surely close before the hands of yonder clock 
 mark the quarter-hour. 
 
 Of Colonel John Quincy, of Mt. Wollaston, it can 
 truly be said he is strictly typical of his time, — a time, as 
 Mr. Wilson has told us, now lost in oblivion. He be- 
 
 76 
 
JOHN QIJINCY 
 
 longed to what is known in Massachusetts history as the 
 Provincial Period; for the existence of Massachusetts as 
 a community distinctly and naturally divides itself into 
 three periods of development, — the Colonial, the Pro- 
 vincial, and the Period of the Commonwealth. The 
 first of the three, and, perhaps, historically the most in- 
 teresting, began in 1620, with the settlement of Plymouth, 
 and with that of Boston ten years later; and it closed 
 with the abrogation in 1684 of the original charter of 
 King James I., consummated through the action of the 
 English courts of law. Then followed a brief interlude, 
 almost of chaos, in which the most prominent figure is 
 that Governor Edmund Andros whom the colonists, one 
 day after the English Revolution of 1688 became known, 
 rising en masse, put, as the expression went, "in a strong 
 place"; in other words, they shut him up, a deposed 
 prisoner of state, in what was afterwards known as 
 Castle William. The interregnum, so to speak, dating 
 from the abrogation of King James's charter, lasted 
 seven years, to 1691, when the charter of William and 
 Mary was matured ; and, under it, what was subsequently 
 known as the Province of Massachusetts Bay came into 
 existence. In May of the following year the first royal 
 governor, William Phipps, landed in Boston; and, from 
 1692, the succession of royal governors continued until 
 the last of them. Governor Sir William Howe, left Boston 
 with the evacuating British forces in March, 1776. An- 
 other brief interregnum then ensued, until the Common- 
 wealth of Massachusetts came into being upon the 
 formal adoption of the Constitution of 1780. 
 
 76 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 Now it so chances that Colonel John Quincy was 
 born in July, 1689. He was thus a little more than two 
 years old when the Charter of WiUiam and Mary passed 
 the seals, and not yet three when the first royal gov- 
 ernor landed. He died in July, 1767, and the famous 
 Tea Impost Bill — though at the time of his death the 
 fact was unknown in New England — had been enacted 
 by the British Parliament one short month only before, 
 — in the preceding June. Thus the life of John Quincy 
 was exactly coterminous with the Massachusetts Pro- 
 vincial Period, for, born three months after the deposi- 
 tion of Andros, he died in the month ensuing the passage 
 of that Act of Parliament which proved the beginning 
 of the end. I have also said that Colonel John Quincy 
 was typical of his time, — of a period lost in obscurity; 
 for, historically, it is undeniable that its Provincial 
 Period is for Massachusetts the least interesting of its 
 history. It naturally is, therefore, that one of the three 
 periods which has passed into the deepest popular ob- 
 hvion. With the Colonial Period, or that of the set- 
 tlement, we are all more or less familiar. Its traditions 
 abide. Names connected with it are still household 
 words. It goes without saying, also, that we are equally 
 familiar, indeed even more familiar, with the Revo- 
 lutionary Period and what thereafter followed down 
 to our own time. But the eighty years which intervened 
 between the ending of the Colony and the beginning of 
 the Commonwealth have practically passed out of mem- 
 ory; and so Colonel John Quincy merely shared the fate 
 of the epoch in which he lived and played his part. 
 
 77 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 For instance, if I were now to ask those here to name 
 any character prominent in public life during Provincial 
 times, I gravely doubt whether a single name would be 
 suggested. If one was suggested, it would probably be 
 that of Thomas Hutchinson, practically the last royal 
 governor. As respects literature, it would be the same. 
 I have myself been somewhat of a student of the writings 
 which have come down to us from the period of the 
 Province, but I found them utterly devoid of imagination, 
 of research, or of scientific value. Essentially theological, 
 the Provincial Period left behind it little more than a 
 dreary accumulation of pulpit discourses. The two books 
 it produced of which I have ever had occasion to make 
 considerable use were the "Magnalia" of Cotton Mather 
 and the "Sermons" of Jonathan Edwards, — works which, 
 it may safely be said, are distinctly, in the phrase of 
 Hamlet, "caviare to the general." It was the same with 
 events. They had no real significance. The Indian 
 wars had constituted a great and interesting feature of 
 the earlier time; but they ended, in 1676, with the death 
 of King Philip at Mt. Hope. Thereafter we hear of what 
 is known as Queen Anne's War, the Old French War, 
 King George's War and the taking of Louisburg, while 
 the pathetic exile of the Arcadian settlers is made familiar 
 by the verses of Longfellow. The story of Wolfe and the 
 capture of Quebec, the great epoch-making incident of the 
 last French war, alone stand vividly out. The political 
 issues of the period, at best trivial and monotonous, are 
 now, to a large extent, well-nigh incomprehensible. The 
 community, very limited in numbers, was wretchedly poor; 
 
 78 
 
JOHN QIIINCY 
 
 and its poverty was aggravated by everlasting controver- 
 sies over the issue of paper money — provincial bills of 
 the old tenor and the new tenor — and projects of land 
 banks such as Mr. Wilson has described; as, also, the 
 tedious, ever-recurring question relating to the salary of 
 the royally appointed governor, whether it should be 
 settled on him during his tenure of the office, or by virtue 
 of an annual legislative vote. So, if I were now asked in 
 what narrative the history of the period in which Colonel 
 John Quincy was so prominent a public character could 
 best be studied, I should be compelled to reply — in that 
 child's book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, entitled 
 "Grandfather's Chair." For general perusal the standard 
 histories are simply unreadable. 
 
 But let me illustrate: — Mr. Wilson, in the course of his 
 address, made repeated references to Governor Burnet, 
 whose death, he tells us, Hutchinson ascribes largely to 
 irritation and worry incident to his unending controver- 
 sies with the provincial legislative body. Mr. Wilson has 
 also spoken at length and very interestingly of Governor 
 Belcher, and his connection with the Land Bank of 1740. 
 Here is what Nathaniel Hawthorne says of these two 
 great characters of their day, in that most striking sketch 
 of his entitled "Howe's Masquerade," one of his four 
 charming legends of the Province House. The scene is 
 laid early in the year 1776, and the author is describing 
 the weird procession of governors, as the figures com- 
 posing it emerged from the upper landing of the Province 
 House, and, descending the broad flight of stairs, passed, 
 in the presence of General Sir William Howe and his 
 
 79 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 guests, through the ante-chamber of the official residence 
 of the representatives of royalty. After picturing Gov- 
 ernor Shute as an officer "in a scarlet and embroidered 
 uniform, cut in a fashion old enough to have been worn 
 by the Duke of Marlborough," Hawthorne then goes on: 
 "Next came a portly gentleman, wearing a coat of shaggy 
 cloth, lined with silken velvet. He had sense, shrewd- 
 ness and humor in his face, and a folio volume under his 
 arm; but his aspect was that of a man vexed and tor- 
 mented beyond all patience, and harassed almost to 
 death. He went hastily down, and was followed by a 
 dignified person, dressed in a purple velvet suit, with very 
 rich embroidery. His demeanor would have possessed 
 much stateliness, only that a grievous fit of the gout 
 compelled him to hobble from stair to stair, with con- 
 tortions of face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this 
 figure on the staircase, he shivered as with an ague, but 
 continued to watch him steadfastly, until the gouty 
 gentleman had reached the threshold, made a gesture of 
 anguish and despair, and vanished into the outer gloom, 
 whither the funeral music summoned him. 
 
 "'Governor Belcher! — my old patron! — in his very 
 shape and dress!' gasped Dr. Byles. 'This is an awful 
 mockery!'" 
 
 Here are two of the leading public characters of the 
 period portrayed to the life, and yet I gravely doubt 
 whether one of you who now listen to this extract has 
 any distinct impression of either of them, or of Governor 
 Shute who preceded them, or of Governor Shirley who 
 followed them. None the less, these were the four royal 
 
 80 
 
joiTx Qrrxrv 
 
 governors of Massachusetts Bay during the long period 
 of John Quincy's public life. If they are quite forgotten, 
 why should John Quincy be even partially remembered? 
 
 No! Chance largely rules the game; and, whether in 
 arms, in statesmanship, in literature, in art or science, 
 no man can make his mark unless opportunity offers. 
 In the case of John Quincy opportunity never offered. 
 The stage on which he played his part was small, its 
 atmosphere frigitl. Again, as Mr. Wilson has suggested, 
 had he lived before, and under different auspices, there 
 is reason to assume he might have been the compatriot 
 and coadjutor of Hampden, and as conspicuous as was 
 Speaker Lenthal before, or John Hancock later. Had 
 his lot been cast in the years which followed, he might 
 not impossibly have been a fellow-actor with Washing- 
 ton. He showed many of the characteristics of each and 
 all of those named. Simply, for him the opportunity 
 never presented itself. He was of his age! 
 
 But it must always be borne in mind that John Quincy 
 died in July, 1767, on the eve of that revolutionary 
 convulsion known as our War of Independence. The 
 importance and dramatic character of that convulsion, 
 the overshadowing fame of those who rose into prom- 
 inence in it, were, as Mr. Wilson has truly observed, 
 even as a deluge, in that they first submerged, and then 
 obliterated from the sands of time, the footprints of 
 those who had gone before, and who had, none the less, 
 prepared and made wide the way for the succeeding 
 generation. 
 
 Thus born amid the throes of what is known as the 
 
 81 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 "Glorious Revolution of 1688," — that upheaval which 
 ended the Stuart dynasty, and incidentally led to the 
 downfall of Andros, — John Quincy seems to us in a way 
 very remote. He belongs to the period of Queen Anne, 
 of Marlborough and of the fourteenth Louis. He was 
 contemporary with Peter the Great. And yet, seen in 
 another way, he to me seems very near. For, as 
 he lay dying at Mt. Wollaston, a great-grandson, the 
 child of a daughter's daughter, was born to him, 
 and was given his name. I, a descendant of his, 
 was already in my thirteenth year when that great- 
 grandson of John Quincy died. Thus one overlapping 
 life carries him now addressing you back to Governor 
 Andros and the time of the Stuarts, — back to the Revo- 
 lution of 1688 and the Colonial Period of Massachusetts, 
 back to a time anterior to Peter the Great. It seems as 
 though I had but to reach out my hand, and it touches 
 them. Seen thus, the twentieth century becomes closely 
 linked with the seventeenth. 
 
 And now, in closing, I have a confession to make. 
 Some years ago it devolved on me to prepare an inscrip- 
 tion for that tablet to John Quincy which faces you 
 yonder on the wall, east of this pulpit. A descendant of 
 Colonel Quincy, I thought at the time I had prepared 
 that inscription with care and accurately. Later, to my 
 own great mortification, I learned that I had begun it in 
 ignorance, and gone on to a misstatement of fact. It 
 records that he was born in 1689, not giving the exact 
 date of his birth, and goes on to add that his birthplace 
 was Braintree. And yet it so chances that I myself had 
 
 82 
 
MEMORIAL TABLET TO JOHN QLIXCY 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 previously discovered, as the result of my own researches, 
 that John Quincy, born on the 21st of July, came into 
 being, not in Braintree, but in Boston. Having made 
 this confession, I propose to ])ass my error along, and 
 put the responsibility for it where it belongs. I have 
 said that I myself, in the course of investigations made 
 years before, had discovered, and first published cor- 
 rectly, both the date and place of John Quincy's birth. 
 When, however, I came to pre])aring an inscription for 
 the enduring marble, a reference to my own writings not 
 being convenient, I had recourse to those of Dr. Pattee. 
 I had generally found Dr. Pattee accurate; but in his 
 History' of Old Braintree and Quincy, page 588, to my 
 lasting confusion, I found the following, — "John Quincy 
 was born in the North Precinct of Braintree in 1689," — 
 and I accepted the statement! It must, of course, be 
 changed, and the record made correct. Nevertheless, 
 it also affords additional and curious illustration of the 
 fact, so emphasized by Mr. Wilson, that John Quincy 
 had in our generation become legendary, and a charac- 
 ter hardly less fabulous than he who gave name to Rome, 
 when I, a descendant, preparing the inscription to be 
 graven on the tablet for which he for whom Quincy was 
 named had waited a century and a third, was unable to 
 specify the precise date of his birth, and gave the place 
 thereof incorrectly. 
 
 At the conclusion of this address the congregation, 
 invited by the President, arose and sang "Old Hundred." 
 The Benediction, pronounced by the Rev. Ellery Chan- 
 
 8S 
 
JOHN QUINCY 
 
 ning Butler, ended the exercises. The people lingered 
 for a while to examine the two tablets, — that to John 
 Quincy and the one to Charles Francis Adams; and to 
 greet one another, and to welcome strangers. 
 
 MB 2.4.2 
 
 84 
 
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