Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-07-05
The morning threatened to be warm but a pleasant East Wind came in time to cool us. I declined going to town, and passed my day in reading Walpole’s Memoires of the last ten Years of George the 2d. with a volume of Smollett to illustrate. It is interesting, yet the very miserable accommodations which I have for reading injure the interest of my occupations very much. Continued my Work of Catalogue and what with morning and afternoon did tolerably well. But my Father was fatigued and indolent, and we were interrupted more than once. Robert Buchanan, son of my Aunt, Mrs. Frye, came to Quincy to pass a few days with us. He has just left West Point, and comes here to pass a short time for the purpose of seeing the Country. He has altered infinitely since I saw him last, and on the whole improved very materially.1
This was the day for celebration and noisy enough at the house at Quincy, there being a celebration just above at the Railway.2 We drank John’s birth day in a glass of pretty indifferent Champagne. I was sleepy and stupid. Evening, a visit from Mr. Beale our Neighbour. Brilliant night.
Robert Christie Buchanan (1811–1878) was the son of LCA’s sister, Mrs. Nathaniel Frye Jr., by her first husband, Andrew Buchanan. Robert Buchanan had graduated from West Point a few weeks before and was to have a distinguished military career. See vol. 1:4, 2:21;
DAB
; Adams Genealogy.
Independence Day was celebrated at Quincy beginning at 10 o’clock with a procession to the Second Congregational Meeting House in Milton, near the Quincy and Milton (“Granite”) Railway, where services were held at 12 noon. Following the services, there was a dinner attended by two or three hundred persons in a tent erected in the rear of the Railway Hotel (Boston Patriot, 3 July, p. 2, col. 5; 8 July, p. 2, col. 1; 14 July, p. 2, col. 2). On the Railway, see below, entry for 23 Aug.; its proximity to the Old House is evident on the “map of Boston and the adjacent towns” reproduced in the present volume.