John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

162

5. IV:15. Monday.

My wife with Mary, Charles’s wife and Mary-Louisa went to Boston to pay sundry visits and returned to dine. After dinner I rode with Charles round through Milton and Dorchester, returning by the way of the granite bridge— I went to Charles’s house to see the Sunset, but he was beclouded. Edmund Quincy came there with his wife’s brother Parker, a youth of about 15 and we spent the Evening together in the porch— Edmund Quincy is the second and youngest Son of Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard University, about 30 years of age, a young man in imminent danger of losing his mind and his life in the visionary pursuit of unattainable perfection— He has plunged headlong into the two fashionable frenzies of the day the immediate abolition of Slavery, and the tetotalism of Temperance— He has suffered himself to be wheedled and brow beaten into the dreams of George Fox and Simon Menno, till upon mere religious principle he has become a Non-resistant, no-government, no-religion mono-maniac. He has fallen into all the deplorable excesses of the most inflammable abolition Societies, and has whipped his blood into such a fermentation that it has burnt through its natural channels, and brought on hemorrhages which have brought him to death’s door— His loss of blood was so great during the last winter, that he was for months confined to his house, and his residence at his father’s house this Summer has but partially restored him— He is now about to leave this town, and to remove to Dedham for a permanent residence— The widow Dowse a Sister of President Quincy’s mother has resided many years at Dedham, and died a few weeks since, leaving her estate there; and all her property which was large to him— He has given it for a residence to his son Edmund, who is to go there in a few weeks— He is a young man of the purest character and most amiable disposition—with much passive Fortitude; but no active energy; with little acuteness of penetration, a strong will and a weak judgment; too well fitted to be made an instrument of mischief in the hands of more crafty fanatics, who know how to turn their benevolent enthusiasm to the promotion of their private interest.

List of Mount Wollaston papers continued—

21. 1670. and after— A small parcel of papers under one cover, of no value but as curiosities; being receipts of devises by Thomas Shepard, and other papers of Mrs Anna Shepard his widow, and Executrix. He died 1677 before the marriage of Daniel Quinsey with his daughter— His son Thomas Shepard succeeded him as Minister of Charlestown, and died 7. June 1685— Among these papers are two Deeds of Land in Charlestown— I suppose the Will of her husband Thomas Shepard, must be recorded in the registry of Wills for the County of Middlesex at Cambridge. By one of the papers it appears that in Feby 1725. John Quincy was Guardian of Alice, widow of Samuel Shepard, daughter of Arthur Mason of Boston, baker