Adams family

“ Adams asked and obtained leave of Congress to visit his family, mounted his horse, and rode joyfully home to Braintree. We can well imagine the rejoicings that greeted his return; but they were short-lived. He had barely reached home when word came that he was appointed ambassador to France, and that the frigate Boston was being prepared to carry him thither as soon as possible.
Here was a thunderbolt indeed! Weary and worn after four years of incessant labor, John Adams had longed almost passionately for the joys and comforts of home life and family affection. ”

“ We were obliged to confess that there were no Families in Little Arcady, in the true sense of the term, though we did not divine its true sense until she favored us with the detail that her second cousin had married a relative of the Adams family. We said honestly that we were devoid of Families in that sense. None of us had ever been able to marry an Adams. ”

“ Otherwise the family was rather an atmosphere than an influence. The boy had a large and overpowering set of brothers and sisters, who were modes or replicas of the same type, getting the same education, struggling with the same problems, and solving the question, or leaving it unsolved much in the same way. They knew no more than he what they wanted or what to do for it, but all were conscious that they would like to control power in some form; and the same thing could be said of an ant or an elephant. Their form was tied to politics or literature. ”

“ You're very aggravating, young man—very! He has disgraced the family; I have put him where he is seven times; he shall rot were he is! He never shall disgrace the family again. Think of Sir Sunderland Swiggs, and then think of him, and see what a pretty level the family has come to! That's the place for him, I have told him a dozen times how I wished him gone. The quicker he is out of the way, the better for the name of the family. ”

“ Certainly no one was strong enough to control them, least of all their mother, the queen-bee of the hive, on whom nine-tenths of the burden fell, on whose strength they all depended, but whose children were much too self-willed and self-confident to take guidance from her, or from any one else, unless in the direction they fancied. Father and mother were about equally helpless. Almost every large family in those days produced at least one black sheep, and if this generation of Adamses escaped, it was as much a matter of surprise to them as to their neighbors. ”

“ No family has loomed larger in American affairs than the Adams family of Massachusetts. John Adams, President himself and living to see his own son President—an experience which, probably no other man will ever enjoy—had a second cousin who page 175played a much more important part than he did in securing the independence of the United States. ”

“ The subject of this narrative was a great-grandson of Henry Adams, who emigrated from England about 1640, with a family of eight sons, being one of the earliest settlers in the town of Braintree, Massachusetts, where he had a grant of a small tract of forty acres of land. The father of John Adams, a deacon of the church, was a farmer by occupation, to which was added the business of shoemaking. He was a man of limited means, however, was enabled by hard pinching to give his son a fairly good education. ”

“ Ofttimes weather-bound and compelled to remain indoors for days, with no society save her children and domestics, it is not strange that she should be lonely. Nor could her mind dwell upon any pleasing anticipations for the future. Her husband three thousand miles away, a hostile army encompassing the country, poor and forlorn, she yet so managed and controlled her little estate, that it served to support her, and in old age, to prove the happy asylum of her honored family. Mr. Adams knew her exposed condition, yet trusted to her judgment to protect herself and little ones. ”

“ Husband and wife are full of forebodings, yet have always a heartening word for each other.
"I have some thought," writes Mr. Adams, "of petitioning the General Court for leave to bring my family here. I am a lonely, forlorn creature here. . . . It is a cruel reflection, which very often comes across me, that I should be separated so far from those babes whose education and welfare lie so near my heart. But greater misfortunes than these must not divert us from superior duties.
"Your sentiments of the duties we owe to our country are such as become the best of women and the best of men. ”

“ A sense of duty, his passions and his interest, thus conspiring to prevail upon him to avail himself of this advantage, he finds a few others in similar circumstances with himself; they naturally associate together, and aid each other. This is a faint sketch of the source and rise of the family spirit; very often the disposition to favor the family is as strong in the town, county, province, or kingdom, as it is in the house itself. The enthusiasm is indeed sometimes wilder, and carries away, like a torrent, all before it. ”

“ And yet although our dependence on the family system has been recognized in every age and in every land, there has been no restraint on personal liberty which has been more resented, by both men and women alike, than has been this bond which, when perfect, constrains one man and one woman to live a joint life until death shall them part, for the propagation, care, and defence of their children. ”

“ Tom Adams, driver of the brick-yard wagon, and signer of one of the pledges circulated at the great temperance meeting, was certainly a man worth saving. He had a wife and was rich in children. His wife was faithful, good-natured, and industrious, and his children were of that bright, irrepressible nature which is about the most valuable of inheritances in this land where other inheritances do not average largely in money value. For the good of such a group it was very desirable that the head of the family should be in the constant possession of strong arms and all his wits. ”

“ And the new truth, electrifying, glorifying American womanhood to-day, is the discovery that the State is but the larger family, the nation the old homestead, and that in this national home there is a room and a corner and a duty for "mother." A duty recognized by such a statesman as John Adams, who wrote to his wife in regard to her mother:
Your mother had a clear and penetrating understanding and a profound judgment, as well as an honest, a friendly and charitable heart. ”

“ Mrs. Adams was the old lady who had told the Kenways about their father breaking one of her windows when he was a boy. She had shown much interest in the Corner House girls. Now she was out on her front porch and saw them coming along Willow Street.
“Whatever have you girls been up to?” she demanded, pleasantly enough, but evincing much curiosity.
“Why, Mrs. Adams,” said Agnes, eagerly. “Don’t you see? We’ve adopted a family.”
“Humph! A family? Not those young’uns of Petunia Blossom? I see Uncle Rufus back at the old Corner House, and I expect the whole family will be there next.” ”

“ I believe there are few who have not at some period of their life been called to notice the change which a few short hours will bring over a household. A family may have lived on for years with no break in the home circle, and every thing connected with them have moved on with the regularity of clockwork, when some sudden and unlooked-for event will all at once change the very atmosphere of their home. Owing to her advanced age, Grandma Adams' death could hardly be supposed to have been unlooked for, yet so it was. ”

“ The picture of the ship, with Tite waving Mattie an adieu from the forecastle, haunted her mind.
"If that ship goes to the bottom of the sea, not a tear shall I shed—not a tear!" resumed the speaker, in an agitated tone. "And I have as tender a heart as anybody. But we must elevate the family. That's laudable, you know. Nice people are very particular about these things. And you know how much there is in names. Think of elevating the family by taking a man by the name of Toodlebug into it! ”

“ For human society, to deserve the name of civilization, must be an embodiment of order, or must at least tend toward a social equilibrium. I take, as an illustration of my meaning, the development of the domestic relations of our race.
I assume it to be generally admitted, that possibly man’s first and probably his greatest advance toward order—and, therefore, toward civilization—was the creation of the family as the social nucleus. As Napoleon said, when the lawyers were drafting his Civil Code, “Make the family responsible to its head, and the head to me, and I will keep order in France.” ”

“ If vice and infamy are thus rendered less odious, by being familiar in a family, by the example of parents and by education, it would be as unhappy as unaccountable, if virtue and honor were not recommended and rendered more amiable to children by the same means.
There are, and always have been, in every state, numbers possessed of some degree of family pride, who have been invariably encouraged, if not flattered in it, by the people. ”

“ Adams of Riverside, IL recently celebrated their 50th anniversary with a large party with dozens of their friends and family members.
However, the real celebration should be for a young sailor and his 20 year old fiance from Brookfield, IL who would not let even a world war from keeping them apart. With conflict still raging in the Pacific in June 1945, Jim Adams had planned to take advantage of a short leave to marry his sweetheart, Helen Jean Bennett. ”

“ Adams returned to Quincy, Massachusetts, where she lived in retirement, surrounded by her children and relatives, until her death, on the 14th of May, 1852. She was buried beside her husband in the family burying place. She is remembered as one of the most remarkable women who has ever graced the White House and other exalted positions as a fine representative American woman. ”

“ Toodleburg's a good enough young man in his place—but he's never, never coming back, my daughter. But even if he was to come back, there's no place for him in our family. View these things, always do, through the eye of philosophy—I do." Mrs. Chapman again [Pg 235] paused, bowed her head admonishingly, and extended her fat, waxy hands. Mattie still remained silent.
"After all the polishing you have had, my daughter, to let your mind run to such an unpolished young man. Drag a family down when a family is going up, and there's the end of that family—with society I mean." ”

“ Seward and Mr. Adams were contrasts; essentially they were much alike. Mr. Adams was taken to be rigid, but the Puritan character in all its forms could be supple enough when it chose; and in Massachusetts all the Adamses had been attacked in succession as no better than political mercenaries. Mr. Hildreth, in his standard history, went so far as to echo with approval the charge that treachery was hereditary in the family. Any Adams had at least to be thick-skinned, hardened to every contradictory epithet that virtue could supply, and, on the whole, armed to return such attentions ”

“ Instead of loud acclamations, which succeeded the other toasts, it was followed by soft and interrupted interjections and aspirations, as if each individual was casting up an ejaculatory prayer, that the two illustrious sages might pass the remainder of their days in tranquillity and ease, and finally be landed on the blissful shores of a happy eternity.
In September, 1825, President Adams, with his family, left Washington, on a visit to his venerable father, at Quincy. He travelled without ostentation, and especially requested that no public display might be manifested. ”

“ The place needs the addition of two or three hundred families to give it life and impetus. Each family now here has settled into itself, and grown conventional and rusty. Most of the people have considerable mental ability, but lock and bar their souls and hearts so closely that their better feelings cannot flow at all, nor find their legitimate sphere of action. They are all nice, quiet people, read a good deal, adopt theories and fine drawn sentiments in profession, but never make them of any use to themselves or others. They have considerable mental sympathy, but none of heart and soul. ”

“ If we are not provided for, it is no public fault. Besides, my father's children are able and willing to support themselves. I am sure you mean us kindly, but we have no claim upon public sympathy, and an appeal to it would crush us to the earth. I am very glad you did not speak first to my mother. My uncle Charles would not suffer it, even suppose she wished it."
This friend also departed to excite new speculations as to the pride and poverty of "poor dear Dr. Adams's family." In the world, however—the busy busy London world—it is idle to expect any thing to create even a nine days' wonder. ”

“ As for the White House, all the boy's family had lived there, and, barring the eight years of Andrew Jackson's reign, had been more or less at home there ever since it was built. The boy half thought he owned it, and took for granted that he should some day live in it. He felt no sensation whatever before Presidents. A President was a matter of course in every respectable family; he had two in his own; three, if he counted old Nathaniel Gorham, who, was the oldest and first in distinction. ”

“ Milnes Gaskell was kinder, for she thought the American perhaps a less dangerous friend than some Englishman might be, for her son, and she was probably right. The American had the sense to see that she was herself one of the most intelligent and sympathetic women in England; her sister, Miss Charlotte Wynn, was another; and both were of an age and a position in society that made their friendship a compliment as well as a pleasure. Their consent and approval settled the matter. In England, the family is a serious fact; once admitted to it, one is there for life. ”