John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

122 Quincy Saturday 10. October 1840.

10. III.30. Saturday

French Jonathan Gillett

Sun rose 6.6. Set 5:29. Fahrenheit 32.

Jonathan French some time my gardener, now teacher of one of the town schools, came with one of his boys, a son of Mr Gillett the stage driver, and asked to see what he called the record of the Adams family; by which he meant the old table of concentric circles made in 1799. by Elijah Adams of Medfield, which I shewed him— He said that Gillets son wanted to make out a similar table of his own family; but I imagine that the teacher wanted it as much as the pupil. This passion for genealogy, seems to be anti-democratic, but it is deeply seated in human nature— I feel it intensely myself, and often regret that the first and second Henry Adams, left no memorial of their emigration from England, whence they came and when—and what relatives they left in England.— Of the first and second Joseph Adams, the birth, marriages and death are recorded on the parish or town books: the copies of their Will, and town records contain a few very scanty notices of incidents in their lives, but not a book or scrap of paper remains— Willards body of Divinity is the only book of my grandfather’s that has come down; to that folio volume, printed in 172 he was a subscriber, and in a blank leaf before its title page are entered in his own hand-writing the date of his marriage with Susanna Boylston, and of the births of his three Sons, John, Peter Boylston and Elihu— He was a Selectman of the town, and Deacon of the Church, but his education was only that of the town school, and his condition of life, much like that of the brothers Ebenezer and Josiah Adams of the present day— That I suppose was the condition of the family from the settlement at Mount Wollaston—till my father. Harvard College, made my grandfather’s elder brother Joseph Minister of Newington, and my father’s Cousin Zabdiel Minister of Lunenburg. A spark of etherial fire in the Soul of my father, kindling at the lamp of that call made my father a scholar, a lawyer, a patriot, a Statesman and one of the prime founders of the greatest republics that ever honoured the race of Man. That father, a mother worthy of such a husband, Harvard College, Leyden University, seven years of youthful travel, and the blessing of Heaven, have made of me a common-place personage, par negotiis nec supra—just able to sustain the position in which they placed me, and about to disappear from the Stage, leaving nothing behind me worthy of being remembered in after ages.— Having lived with unceasing aspirations for unfading glory as a benefactor of mankind.— The spark of ethereal fire descends not from sire to son— A proof of this will be seen, in my Lecture upon Faith, this day finished—for the measure of a man’s mind is in every paper that he composes for public exhibition— If I try again it will be with no better success.— My wife, with Mrs John and Mrs Charles went to Boston this afternoon and returned to tea— I visited my garden and Nursery and gathered walnuts and English Oak Acorns, but planted none.