By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate
John Quincy Adams retired from public life when he lost the 1828 presidential election to Andrew Jackson. However, he was not retired for long. In 1830, he ran for and was elected to a seat in the House of Representatives for Massachusetts. He served in this role, being elected to office nine consecutive times, until his death in 1848.
Adams had always exhibited a deep interest in astronomy, as I’ve written about here. In 1843, at the age of 76 and while serving as a congressman, he embarked on a journey to Cincinnati to lay the cornerstone of the Cincinnati Observatory. This observatory was built through the efforts of professor Ormsby McKnight Mitchel, who personally solicited donations for a month and a half, raising $7,500, enough to buy a telescope.
Adams recorded his travels in a daily diary, as he had been doing since he was a child, and he made an interesting entry on 1 November 1843—a list of locations with a number next to each. Perhaps those numbers indicated the number of days since he began his trip?
“1. IV:30. Wednesday— From
| Cleveland to | |
| Mill creek | 9. |
| Tinker’s creek | 13 |
| Boston | 21 |
| Peninsula | 24 |
| Old Portage | 32 |
| Coal house | 35 |
| Akron | 38 |
| New Portage | 44 |
| Clinton | 52 |
| Fulton | 56 |
| Massillon | 65 |
| Bethlehem | 71. |
| Bolivar | 80 |
| Zoar | 83 |
| Jenning’s bridge | 86 |
| Dover | 93 |
| Lockport | 97 |
| Newcastle | 99 |
| Trenton | 103 |
| Eastport | 107 |
| Gnadenhutten | 108 |
| Port Washington | 112 |
| Newcomerstown | 118. |
| Evansburg | 122 |
| Newport, Lewisville | 132 |
| Roscoe | 135 |
| Adam’s Mills | 145 |
| Webbsport | 149 |
| Dresden | 151 |
| Frazeysburg | 155 |
| Nashport | 161. |
| Licking T | 170. |
| Newark | 176 |
| N. end of Licking Summit | 181 |
| Granville | 187 |
| Hebron. | 189 |
| Millersport (D.C.) | 191 |
| Baltimore | 196 |
| Havensport | 202 |
| Carroll | 204 |
| Winchester | 210 |
| Rarey’s Bridge | 214 |
| Lockburn | 221. |
| Columbus. | 232” |
If numbers meant days, then Adams had been traveling for the better part of a year! Between the above diary entry on 1 November, and his arrival in Cincinnati on Wednesday, 8 November 1843, he writes of having a cold with “head ache, feverish chills, hoarseness, and a sore throat and my tussis senilis in full force.” Tussis senilis was the name for a severe, chronic cough, but he also named one of his ailments as catarrh, or a buildup of mucus in the throat. His diary goes on to mention waking up several times during the night, something he records often on the later leg of his journey.
He also describes the other passengers with “fascinating manners (which) substitutes for beauty,” and the layout of the canal packet boat Rob-Roy used to convey him from Akron, up the Ohio Canal to Portsmouth, Ohio, then by land carriage to Cincinnati, with several stops on the snowy seven-day trip.
At each stop on his journey, Adams was met with a throng of people expecting him to make speeches, kiss cheeks, shake hands, dine, play cards, and generally be affable. He seemed not to mind this but rather to enjoy it in his irreverent way. In Portsmouth, a delegate from the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, Mr. William Green, joined Adams and accompanied him for the rest of his trip to Cincinnati. However, Adams’s mood wears thin within just a few days, “The activity and unceang (unceasing) attentions of this gentleman since he joined us, have alleviated much my anxiety; but my catarrh, and excessive kindness drive me to despair.”
Finally arriving in Cincinnati, Adams was ushered into a barouche, a type of open carriage. A welcoming crowd followed the carriage to a resident’s house, where the mayor made a welcoming speech and the crowd cheered Adams. However, after so many days traveling and feeling too ill to sleep properly, Adams confessed to his diary, “My answer was flat, stale and unprofitable, without a spark of eloquence or a flash of oratory—confused—incoherent—muddy, and yet received with new shouts of welcome.”
The next day was the day of the stone laying for the Cincinnati Observatory. Adams had been working on his address during his travels but notes in his diary his difficulty writing it because of the cramped conditions, the weather, his cold, and the company around him. Nevertheless, he finished the address before breakfast the morning of the stone laying. To get to the observatory, another barouche was set up to include the mayor and the president of the Astronomical Society. The procession also included carriages with other important Cincinnatians, a military escort, a band, and a crowd of supporters to walk beside the carriages. Then it started to rain. The cover of the barouche had to be lifted to protect the dignitaries from the rain, and in effect it “exclude(d) the sight of me from the people and of the people from me.” But the procession continued:
“The procession marched round sundry streets, the rain increasing till it poured down in torrents. Yet the throng in the Streets seemed not at all to diminish—It looked like a sea of mud—The ascent of the hill was steep and slippery for the horses, and not without difficulty attained—The summit of the hill was a circular plain of which the corner stone was the centre. At the circumference, a stage was erected from which my discourse was to have been delivered; but the whole plain was covered with an auditory of Umbrella’s instead of faces.”
Cincinnati Thursday 9. November 1843.
Adams laid the cornerstone and read his address, which received three “hearty cheers.” Afterward, the crowd dispersed. The discourse portion of the event was postponed to the following day and held inside a chapel. That evening, Adams attended a temperance tea party in a house that had formerly been a theater.
On his third day in Cincinnati, Adams gave a speech for nearly “two hours, without a symptom of impatience or inattention of the Auditory.” Afterward, the city named the hill upon which the observatory stands “Mount Adams.” Adams then shook hands with every member of the Astronomical Society, as well as anyone in the crowd who wished to shake his hand. He then retired to his accommodations and talked to numerous visitors bearing invitations. In the evening, he went to a theatrical comedy and then a ball. “The Ball was splendid—the banquet sumptuous and temperate and the company genteel and lovely— Thus closes, blessed be God one memorable day of my life.”