John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams: The Original Tortured Poets

By Gwen Fries, Adams Papers

With her 11th studio album, Taylor Swift introduced the world to her “Tortured Poets Department,” inducting like-minded artists to her fictional committee. After a week of assiduously studying the criteria, I have two new members to nominate. I hereby call this meeting to order.

I stand before my fellow members of the Tortured Poets Department with an application for two new members—John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams. I enter into evidence the following summary of my findings.

Louisa Catherine Adams. Oil by Charles Robert Leslie, 1816. Courtesy of Diplomatic Reception Rooms (Taylorized by the author)

Exhibit A: Tortured — I love you. It’s ruining my life

That like the esteemed founder and chairwoman of the Department, Ms. Swift, Mrs. Adams found it difficult to balance her private life with her public demands.

In her Diary she wrote that it was “a very painful thing to me to be dragged into public notice, and made an object of debate in every company—but these are the penalties I must pay for being the Wife of a man . . . who by his real and extraordinary merits throws those who are more ambitious than himself into the shade.” (LCA, Diary, 21 Dec. 1819)

Her husband’s vocal political views on the gag rule and slavery alienated many of her loved ones in the South. “Every friend is turned into an enemy; and now the prospect terminates with the fear of losing the love, the friendship and the society of my own nearest and dearest connections.” (LCA, Diary, 21 Dec. 1835)

In private, she was tortured by the belief that her husband would have been better off married to someone else. “Few have laboured harder to correct the defects of their character than I have, or have studied their faults so keenly,” Mrs. Adams confided to her diary, “but there is a constitutional irritability about me of late years, trying to my friends and painful to myself, which is I know so disagreeable to all who live with me; it induces me to live much alone, that I may not burthen those, whose happiness I most desire in this life, and for whom I would willingly make any sacrifices to promote their welfare.”

Exhibit B: Poets
Straight from the Tortured Poets Department

That both Mrs. and Mr. Adams were lifelong poets. A catalog of their extant poetry is entered into evidence. “Could I have chosen my own Genius and Condition I should have made myself a great Poet,” John Quincy wrote on 16 Oct. 1816. “I have wasted much of my life in writing verses.”

John Quincy Adams. Oil by Pieter Van Huffel, 1815. Courtesy of the NPG. (Taylorized by the author)

Exhibit C: Independent Thinkers

I’ll tell you something about my good name
It’s mine alone to disgrace
I don’t cater to all these vipers

That like our esteemed chairwoman, Ms. Swift, Mr. Adams refused to be steered by the opinions of others or dominated by his reputation or the reputation of his illustrious father. As a young senator serving in the years immediately following his father’s loss to the new President Jefferson, John Quincy chose to follow his instinct rather than the party line of the Federalists who had supported his father.

On 20 Dec. 1803, Adams wrote to Joseph Hall, “When I accepted the station I hold, it was not with the expectation of giving satisfaction at all times to all my constituents.— I expected to be often censured & from various & opposite quarters.”

To his Diary, Adams declared, “I find myself of course in opposition to the federalists in general. . . . In this state of things my situation calls in a peculiar manner for prudence; my political prospects are declining, and as my term of Service draws near its close, I am constantly approaching to the certainty of being restored to the situation of a private citizen— For this Event however, I hope to have my mind sufficiently prepared— In the mean time I implore that Spirit from whom every good and perfect gift descends to enable me to render essential Service to my Country, and that I may never be governed in my public conduct by any consideration other than that of my duty.”

Exhibit D: Florida!!!
No one asks any questions here

That as Secretary of State, Adams negotiated the Adams-Onis (Transcontinental) Treaty, convincing Spain to relinquish Florida to the United States. Without this intervention, the chairwoman, Ms. Swift, would have nowhere to go when she “need[s] to forget” and to “bury” her “regrets.”

The above evidence is respectfully submitted to the Department.

Sincerely,

Gwen Fries

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding for the John Quincy Adams Digital Diary was provided by the Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund, with additional contributions by Harvard University Press and a number of private donors. The Mellon Foundation in partnership with the National Historical Publications and Records Commission also supports the project through funding for the Society’s digital publishing collaborative, the Primary Source Cooperative.

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Letters from the Collections

By Hilde Perrin, Library Assistant

April is designated National Card and Letter Writing Month by the United States Postal Service, a month dedicated to the joy of writing and receiving correspondence. Here at the MHS, letters are in no short supply. With over 13 million documents in our collection, we have lots of correspondence ranging from famous figures like the Adams family to regular friends writing to friends. I asked a few of our library staff members to share some of the fun letters they have come across in our collections.

Library Assistant Grace Doeden chose a letter written by O.R. Howard Thompson to Ruby V. Elliot in 1917. Grace is currently working with the Ruby V. Elliot Bookplate collection, a compilation of bookplates that Elliot collected from friends and acquaintances. Thompson sent this letter to Elliot, along with his bookplate, joking that he did it because her brother told him to, stating that “I always do what I am told.” The bookplate that accompanies the letter features a cat lounging on an armchair, and a quote in German attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah” or “Look, the good lies so near.”

Left: Letter written by O.R. Howard Thompson to Ruby V. Elliot, 26 February 1917, Ruby V. Elliot Bookplate collection. Right: Bookplate of O.R. Howard Thompson, Ruby V. Elliot Bookplate collection.

Associate Reference Librarian for Rights and Reproductions Hannah Elder picked a rather endearing letter, written by a child named Freddy. Here’s what she has to say about it:

“I first came across this letter while making reproductions from the Horatio R. Storrer papers [hyperlink: https://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0001] a few years ago. I snapped a quick picture of it with my phone and have been enchanted ever since. It is a birthday greeting written to “Carrie Gilmore,” Caroline Augusta Gilmore, by an unidentified child (“Freddy”) at an unknown date. We so rarely see the letters of children and this one is so very sweet. It’s fun to see Freddy’s emerging handwriting – note that he puts serifs on almost all of his letters. I especially love the stick figure drawn on the back of the letter. Is it a snowman? A dapper gentleman? Only Freddy knows.”

Transcription: Dear Carry

I want to see you very much. I hope you will come home soon.

Charles has given me a ship, it is very pretty. Much love & a happi birthday. Freddy

Letter from Freddy to Carrie Gilmore, Horatio R. Storrer papers

The letter I chose for this spotlight is a postcard from the Charles Cornish Pearson papers. Pearson served in France during World War I, and the majority of the collection is made up of the letters he wrote home to his family. While he wrote page-length letters to his parents and siblings, he often opted to send short postcard messages to his aunt, Florence Pearson. Not only do these postcards contain short messages of what he had been up to, they also feature fun images of the places Pearson was visiting during his time in France. This missive was written while visiting Paris and features an image of the tomb of Napoleon, with the caption explaining his impression of Paris. He writes:

“Just a line from gay
Paris. Some town &
mighty glad to get a
chance to visit it.
Some wonderful sights &
all quite different from
everything in the States.
C.C.P”

Postcard from Charles Cornish Pearson to Florence Pearson 10 August 1918, Charles Cornish Pearson papers

Take inspiration from the letters in the MHS collection in this final week of National Card and Letter Writing Month to send your own letters and postcards. You never know, they might end up in an archive!

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“Unto the Least of These”: Animal Welfare in the 1930s

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist 

The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) was founded in March 1868 by George Thorndike Angell. (You might recognize his name from the Angell Animal Medical Center.) That same year, he and his prominent backer Emily (Warren) Appleton were instrumental in getting the first anti-animal cruelty law passed in Massachusetts.

The MHS holds a number of printed items related to the MSPCA, but today I’d like to focus on a small manuscript volume we acquired a few years ago: the records of the Winchester (Mass.) Women’s Auxiliary of the MSPCA. What’s interesting about this volume is how we can see the mission of the state organization applied to local issues.

Records of the Winchester Women’s Auxiliary, MSPCA

The Winchester Auxiliary was founded in 1931, and these records document its first seven-plus years. The organization’s work consisted of fundraising via fairs, food sales, and other events; support for animal facilities and services; education on the humane treatment of animals, including Be Kind to Animals Week every spring; and lobbying for animal-friendly legislation.

Most meetings were held at the home of Marion Munroe (Rice) Taylor, the group’s founder and president, at 137 Mount Vernon Street. Her sister Carolyn B. Rice served on the Work Committee. Sometimes there were guest speakers, among them Edith Washburn Clarke and Francis H. Rowley, and members routinely spent time during meetings preparing surgical dressings for veterinary hospitals.

Local concerns addressed by the group included: the lack of an animal clinic or qualified veterinarian in town, conditions at the dog pound, and the summer watering of horses. One member successfully appealed to Eugenia Parker, scion of the wealthy Parker family of Winchester, to allow drivers to water their horses on her property at 60 Lloyd Street during the hot summer months.

Speaking of horses, the auxiliary also participated in the annual MSPCA Horses’ Christmas. Every holiday season, the MSPCA collected and distributed free food to working horses in Boston. One year, Winchester residents donated “fifteen and a half bushels of grain, about four bushels of carrots, several pounds of loaf sugar and many bags, large and small, of apples.” As the secretary wrote, “although the number of horses in the State is now so much smaller than before the days of the automobile, the records show that of the cases of cruelty handled by the Society in the past three months, 50% were for cruelty to horses.”

The organization also advocated for legislation that ran the gamut, from laws against steel traps, animal experimentation, and exploitative and abusive roadside zoos and pet shows, to the protection of coastal waterfowl from pollution by oil-burning ships. In particular, the auxiliary fought for a ban on “setting up” horses’ tails, a practice which, as expert Sandra Tozzini explains, included removing or cutting bones, muscles, or tendons for purely cosmetic purposes.

I was impressed with the initiative and the ingenuity of these women and the variety of their activities. Wherever they saw a need, they took action. At the end of one meeting, the chairperson quoted from Matthew 25:40: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me.”

As word got out, membership in and donations to the group increased. Marion Taylor became the go-to person for complaints about animal abuse or neglect in Winchester. She offered advice, referred matters to the authorities, and even took animals into her home. In one ten-month period, she “personally cared for 78 cats, 4 pigeons, 5 baby squirrels, 2 baby owls, and 9 dogs.”

Mrs. Taylor wasn’t the only person celebrated by the Women’s Auxiliary. Also recognized were “the brave Winchester girl, Miss Dorothy Goodhue, who jumped into the icy water of the Aberjona River to save her dog,” as well as “the lineman who, while working recently in Winthrop, rescued two tiny puppies from an ashcan where they had been abandoned.”

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Lighting Strikes on the Longitude: John Adams and Lodestones

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

In 1780–1784, John Adams was in Amsterdam negotiating loans from the Dutch Republic so that the United States could be more independent from France. On 1 June 1783, Adams wrote in his diary what he knew about lodestones, and what experiments he thought scientists should do to learn more about them.

“The Loadstone is in Possession of the most remarkable, wonderfull and misterious Property in Nature. This Substance is in the Secret of the whole Globe. It must have a Sympathy with the whole Globe. It is governed by a Law and influenced by some active Principle that pervades and operates from Pole to pole, and from the Surface to the Center and the Antipodes. It is found in all Parts of the Earth. Break the Stone to Pieces, and each Morcel retains two Poles, a north and a south Pole, and does not loose its Virtue. The Magnetic Effluvia are too subtle, to be seen by a Microscope, yet they have great Activity and Strength. Iron has a Sympathy with Magnatism and Electricity, which should be examined by every Experiment, which Ingenuity can devise.

Has it been tryed whether the Magnet looses any of its Force in Vacuo? in a Bottle charged with Electrical Fire? &c. This Metal called Iron may one day reveal the Secrets of Nature. The primary Springs of Nature may be too subtle for all our Senses and Faculties. I should think however that no Subject deserved more the Attention of Philosophers or was more proper for Experiments than the Sympathy between Iron and the magnetical and Electrical Fluid.

It would be worth while to grind the Magnet to Powder and see if the Dust still retained the Virtue. Steep the Stone or the Dust in Wine, Spirits, Oyl and other fluids to see if the Virtue is affected, increased or diminished.

Is there no Chimical Proscess, that can be formed upon the Stone or the Dust to discover, what it is that the magnetic Virtue resides in.

Whether boiling or burning the Stone destroys or diminishes the Virtue.

See whether Earth, Air, Water or Fire any wise applied affects it, and how.”

Diary of John Adams, vol. 3, 1 June 1783

A lodestone is a type of rock found naturally magnetized and usually near the earth’s surface. The current theory (pun intended) is that the stone, called magnetite or Fe₃0₄, is not magnetized by the poles of the earth, which would be too weak to magnetize rock so far from them, but by magnetic fields surrounding lightning bolts. The lodestone had been used for more than a millennium for seafaring navigation because of its property to point towards the north and south poles anywhere on the globe, and because of its availability in North and South America and Europe.

Searching the internet to see if anyone has performed the tasks suggested by Adams on a lodestone, I came up with the following items: an article that confirms “garlic breath” has no effect on lodestones; a book published in 1600, De Magnete by William Gilbert (1544?–1603); and a letter written byPetrus Peregrinus The Magnet (1269). All these sources discuss experiments conducted on lodestones.

In 1787, while John Adams served as the first U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, he received a letter from Pelatiah Webster (1726–1795), dated 7 June 1787. Webster’s letter recommended Mr. John Churchman of Philadelphia, Penn., who had discovered a way to decipher the longitude of any place on the earth on any day using a magnetized lodestone. (Latitude lines are the same distance from each other and therefore easier to determine than longitude lines, which grow closer together as they reach the poles.) This excerpt is from Webster’s letter:

“Viz that the Magnectic needle has two poles one 13.°56′ from the N. Pole of the Earth the other South, abt. 18.o from the S. Pole of the Earth, Which Poles have a Constant Rotation from West to East, & form their Revolutions in 463 Years, & 344 days i.e. abt. 47′ Minutes of a degree in a Year, that the True place of these poles may be Ascertain’d, & Tables of the Same calculated for Every Given Minute of Time, & of Course that the line or point of no Variation for Any place & the Time, may be Easily found, & of Course the Angle of Variation & Radius will always be Attainable, & the Difference of Latitude of the place of observation & that of the Magnetic Pole will be one Side of the Triangle Necessary to be found.”

Churchman also corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and wrote this letter on 6 June 1787, transcribing his pamphlet and explaining his theory a bit more.

From Churchman’s research he created this map:

Color photograph of a printed map on paper discolored with age. The main image is a globe with longitude and latitude lines with the continents colored in and labeled. The view is from the north pole down with the pole in the center and the globe sliced into 6 longitude sections all the way around. In the bottom right corner is black ink printed text that is written in cursive and print which reads, “To George Washington President of the United States of America This Magnetic Atlas or Variation Chart is humbly inscribed by John Churchman.” With two blue stamps that read “Harvard College Library.”
“An explanation of the magnetic atlas, or variation chart, hereunto annexed; projected on a plan entirely new, by which the magnetic variation on any part of the globe may be precisely determined for any time, past, present, or future: and the variation and latitude being accurately known, the longitude is of consequence truly determined,” John Churchman, 1790. Courtesy Harvard Library.

The way to decipher longitude had not been discovered by 1714 when Great Britain’s Parliament created a large monetary prize for the person who presents the solution to the newly formed Board of Longitude. Churchman took his theory to the board for 17 years from 1787 to 1804, convinced he had the solution; however, the Board never approved it. See their record of correspondence with Churchman’s many letters.  He also applied to the American Philosophical Society for recognition of his theory in 1787, where it was also declined.

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