Toward the end of 1830 JQA conceived the idea of having an heraldic design made for a copper plate that would contain, within its shield, elements from the seals of the Adams, Smith, Quincy, and Boylston families. It was his intent that the engraving should be “a memorial to my children of my father and mother” and that he would use impressions from it as his bookplate. He thereupon employed William J. Stone, Washington engraver, who had executed the 1823 facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, to design and execute the plate (JQA, Diary, 30 Dec. 1830; 14, 27 Jan., 1, 4 Feb. 1831). For Stone’s use, JQA wrote to CFA for wax impressions of the Smith and Quincy seals, most recently in his letter of 15–16 Jan. (Adams Papers), in which he wrote, “I wait for the Quincy blazonry of Magna Charta.” The plate was completed on 17 Feb. (JQA, Diary), and on 28 Feb. JQA sent to CFA an impression of it stamped on the upper portion of the first sheet of his letter paper. To this he subjoined an explication of each of the elements of the seal (JQA to CFA, 28 Feb., Adams Papers; printed along with a reproduction of the bookplate in Catalogue of JQA’s Books , p. 142–144).

The portraits by Chester Harding (1792–1866) were currently held in high esteem. Harding had made his residence in Boston since 1826 and at this time had his studio at 22 Beacon Street ( Boston Directory, 1830–1831). During 1828 he had spent several months in Washington, where a large number of persons prominent in public life sat for him. At that time he did portraits of JQA, of Chief Justice John Marshall, and of Daniel Webster, among others (Margaret E. White, A Sketch of Chester Harding, Artist, Boston, 1890, p. 182–183, 194). However, it is probable that the portraits of Marshall and Webster to which CFA here refers were not those done in 1828. The Boston Athenaeum in Jan. 1830 commissioned Harding to do a full-length portrait of Marshall standing, paid him $350 upon its completion, and exhibited it at its Gallery later in the year (Mabel M. Swan, The Athenaeum Gallery 1827–1873, Boston, 1940, p. 118–120). The Webster portrait which CFA here reports seeing for the first time is probably the full-length one of Webster standing which Harding exhibited later in 1831 at the Athenaeum Gallery, which was then purchased by several subscribers for $500 and presented to the Athenaeum, and which was badly damaged in 1848 and repainted by Harding in 1851 (Swan, The Athenaeum Gallery, p. 120). A smaller version of this portrait is now at the Massachusetts Historical Society and may be closer to the larger painting in its original state than the repainted one at the Athenaeum. It is possible that CFA is referring to an altogether different portrait of Webster by Harding, for Webster was a favorite subject of his; nine portraits of Webster by 412him were listed in 1883 (MHS Procs., 2d ser., 2 [1885–1886]:261–262), and others have since come to light. The Marshall portrait, still hanging at the Athenaeum, is reproduced in Swan, The Athenaeum Gallery, facing p. 118; the MHS’s Webster is reproduced in Guy C. Lee, History of North America, Phila., 1903–1905, 13:259.

Harding painted at least two portraits of JQA, one in 1827, and another, partly from life and partly a copy of the first, in 1828. CFA’s earlier verdict was that though a likeness it was “not an agreeable one.” See vol. 2:160, 177; also JQA, Diary, entry for 20 Feb. 1828. One of the two is probably the portrait now at the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, Rhode Island. It has been reproduced in Frederic A. Ogg, Builders of the Republic (The Pageant of America, vol. 8), New Haven, 1927, p. 240.