The Adams Temple and School Fund was created by John Adams’ gift to the town of Quincy, dated 25 June 1822, of lands the future income from which were to be used first toward the building of a stone temple in Quincy (see volume 3:xi–xii), and after its completion to the support of a classical school or academy there. By a further deed, on 10 August in the same year, Adams gave to the town with certain stipulations “the fragments of my library which still remain in my possession.” The administration of both the fund and xthe library was placed in a board of five supervisors. After the gifts were accepted by the Town of Quincy, the supervisors and selectmen exercised joint oversight for a time. However, by act of the Massachusetts legislature, 3 February 1827, the Adams Temple and School Fund was incorporated and thereafter the Supervisors assumed full control, elected officers, &c. At about the time that the Supervisors became a corporate entity a record book was begun. The Records of the Supervisors from the beginning to 1942 are encompassed in a single volume of ledger size, bound in full leather. The stamping on front and back includes the rubric “Presented by John Quincy Adams.” Into the volume was first copied in one hand the documents relating to the Fund’s establishment and its administration up to incorporation. The minute book proper begins with the meeting of 18 April 1827, at which time Thomas Boylston Adams was elected Clerk. He served until his death in 1832. The Supervisors, meeting in early October to name his successor on the board, chose John Quincy Adams, and to the clerkship elected Charles Francis Adams, who recorded the first meeting he attended on 27 October 1832. He wrote up the minutes just over a week later (see below, p. 385–386 and 391–392). Charles Francis Adams continued to serve as Clerk of the Supervisors through the meeting of 3 September 1857. For the first ten years of his tenure as Clerk, however, he was not a Supervisor. Initially he could not qualify because he was not a resident of Quincy; after he became a resident, there was no vacancy to be filled until 1842.

On another of the actions taken at the first meeting recorded by Charles Francis Adams as Clerk, namely the appointment of a committee to examine the state of the library remaining in John Adams’ “Office,” see below, p. 139, 389–391. The charge to the same committee to move toward the realization of the donor’s provisions for a school and library building came to nothing for many years, the Adams Academy building not being put into construction until 1870.

The volume of Records is kept in the Treasurer’s vault in the City Hall, Quincy.