Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1829-10-07
Morning clear and weather warm, so that the weather was fine when we started for the purpose for which I came out—Surveying or overlooking a survey to be made of the old farm on Penn’s Hill. My father presuming that I am the only son likely to remain in the State is desirous of giving me information which he never possessed in the same circumstances and of which he felt very much, the want.1 I am therefore induced to consent to the arrangement which breaks up my home considerably.
We started after breakfast, our party consisting of my father, Thomas B. Adams, Mr. Humphreys a Surveyor from Weymouth, two men to carry the Chain, and myself.2 We started from the upper Comer on the old Plymouth Road above the old House, the Birth place of my father and his Father before him. Our Survey was of a lot of land including the two Houses and about one hundred and eight Acres of land.3 The boundaries being rather irregular and a portion of it fresh Meadow, it was quite a slow affair so that it was nearly four before we were thinking of a return home. I obtained some 38acquaintance with this property which I never had before and perhaps attached a little more idea of value to it than heretofore although in truth it is most unmanageable property as to any change to be made of it. But; after all property is but a pure business in this life giving more care than pleasure. And if I could only feel sure of being beyond any want, I should care but little what my father’s pursuits might be. I returned considerably fatigued from the exercise. We of course dined late and though I attempted same kind of conversation with my father it resulted in nothing as we both of us inclined to sleep. I therefore retired early.
After three days in the woods and swamps, JQA wrote that the survey was of “lands which I have owned twenty-six years, without knowing how they were bounded, nor even where some of them were” (JQA to LCA, 11 Oct., Adams Papers).
Lemuel Humphreys was the surveyor, William Spear and one Baxter, the chain bearers (JQA, Diary, 7 Oct. 1829).
The Adams farm, at the foot of Penn’s Hill in Quincy, was established by Deacon John Adams, CFA’s great-grandfather. The house on the northern side was the home of JA’s parents (and is now called the John Adams Birthplace), that adjacent to it on the southern side was the home of JA and AA after their marriage in 1764 (now the John Quincy Adams Birthplace). See JA, Diary and Autobiography
, 1:15, note, for a fuller account and same, p. 256 for a drawing of the homestead made by Eliza Susan Quincy in 1822; also Waldo C. Sprague, The President John Adams and the President John Quincy Adams Birthplaces, Quincy, 1959. The houses, given to the city of Quincy in 1940 by the Adams family, are in the care of the Quincy Historical Society and are open to the public.