John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

29. III:50. Monday— Sun rose 4:29— He has visibly gained southing.

My wife went to Boston this morning with our grand daughter Mary-Louisa, to give a last sitting to Mr Durand— They dined at my Son Charles’s and returned this Evening. At four O’Clock this afternoon I attended the funeral of Mr John Bailey, which was from Mr Cunningham’s Meeting house at Dorchester. The funeral service was performed by Mr Ritchie, formerly Minister at Canton, and of whose church Mr Bailey was a member— The service consisted in the reading of the 15th. Chapter of the 1st of Corinthians from the 35th. verse to the end of the chapter, and a prayer— There was then a procession to the burying ground in Milton, where the body was deposited in a tomb. The father of Mr Bailey was present, and three of his five children: a boy and two girls— I first became acquainted with Mr Bailey in September 1817—after my last return from Europe, when I entered upon the duties of the Department of State. I appointed him a Clerk in that Department— He had been before that time a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, and a Professor at the College in Providence Rhode-Island— He served six years in the Department of State, and was then elected a member of the House of Representatives of the United States for Norfolk District; Massachusetts— The House vacated his election upon the absurd pretence that he was at the time when elected a Clerk in an Executive Department— The People of the District immediately re-elected him, and the House then received him— He was afterwards re-elected to three successive Congresses, until 1831. He has since been two years a member of the Senate of the Commonwealth from the County of Norfolk, and was the Anti-Masonic Candidate for Governor this present year— He was a man of excellent principles, of sound understanding, and of benevolent character. Purely republican, and devoted to Liberty and good Government— He had taken an active part in the principal political controversies of the last twenty-five years; but always with great moderation— Shortly before his election to Congress and while in the Department of State, he had married Miss Young, a niece of Moses Young, who had also been a Clerk in the Department of State— She was of an Irish family; her father having been a brother of Moses Young, at whose invitation they all came to this Country, about the year 1820— Mr Bailey leaves five children. His wife has been for two or three years threatened with pulmonary consumption, and little 29expected to survive him— He took his death, by exposure, in the exertions to save the house in which he lived from a fire, with which it was in danger from the conflagration of a factory in its neighbourhood about the first of March last— Mr Bailey was in the 53d. year of his age— He was one of the warmest and most faithful of my friends. I feel his loss, as of a brother— After the funeral, I went by invitation to the house of Mr Joseph Morton, where several of the Antimasons from Boston, took tea—Mr and Mrs B. F. Hallett, Dr Abner Phelps, Dr Bates, Mr and Miss Gassett, and some others were there— Mr Morton has a well cultivated garden, and a large number of thrifty fruit trees.— His cherries just ripening— Mr Edward Everett, and Dr Thompson of Charlestown were at the funeral, in the Church, but did not go to the grave-yard, nor to Mr Morton’s— I came home about 8 O’Clock.