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Description of Pictures: I got hopelessly lost trying to find the place which made me late. I got on one of the tours -- which was great -- but we didn't have enough free time to actually walk around any of the sites or see the tombs. They said you weren't allowed to take pictures inside of the houses because of provisions of the Patriot Act. Be real. I can't wait for this administration to be gone!
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
ADAMS_080607_002.JPG: Model of Peacefield
ADAMS_080607_013.JPG: United First Parish Church:
The congregation of the United First Parish Church was founded in 1639. Among its first members were Anne Hutchinson and John Wheelwright who were banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony for having ideas which the parent church in Boston found dangerous. As was a New England tradition, the church was also the town's meeting house. The church was "Puritan in faith and Congregational in governance" until 1750, when liberal or Unitarian thought advocated the separation of church and state, and the church has been Unitarian in philosophy ever since.
The congregation's first structure was located about 1/2 mile south of the present structure. By 1666 there was another building made of stone with a bell. A large meeting house was built on the site of the present structure in 1732. When John Adams was preparing his will in 1820, the First Parish Church was too small for the congregation. In his will, John Adams deeded 220 acres of land to the town with the provision that the income was to be used for, "the completion and furnishing of a temple to be built of stone." Construction began in 1827, one year after John Adams' death, and the church was dedicated the next year in 1828. The Church was designed by Alexander Parris who also designed Quincy Market in Boston. After his parents' deaths, John Quincy Adams arranged to have them interred into a small crypt beneath the church. Charles Francis Adams in turn had his parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Quincy Adams, interred along side John and Abigail in the crypt.
Today, the United First Parish Church is on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Park Service in cooperation with the parish has made the church a part of the Adams National Historical Park's interpretive program. Visitors can now experience the important place that the United First Parish Church played in the lives of a family who through the course of four generations greatly contributed to the founding and strengthening of this nation.
ADAMS_080607_020.JPG: Adams National Historical Park's Presidential Birthplaces:
The birthplaces of John Adams and John Quincy Adams provide visitors with a unique opportunity to witness the environment that shaped two of the United States' greatest leaders and the first father and son United States Presidents. The opportunity is further enhanced by the fact that they are also the two oldest presidential birthplaces in the country and are located less than 75 feet apart. It was in the John Quincy Adams Birthplace, where the Adams family resided during the American Revolutionary War, that John Adams drafted the Massachusetts Constitution. In this saltbox style home, Abigail Adams wrote many of her famous letters to her husband during John's appointment to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
The John Adams and John Quincy Adams Birthplaces serve as a stage for National Park Service Rangers to interpret the story of a family's dedication to public service and its contributions to the founding and strengthening of this nation.
ADAMS_080607_024.JPG: Adams National Historical Park's "Peacefield":
The estate that John Adams named "Peacefield," later referred to as the "Old House," was home to four generations of the Adams family. The seven room farmhouse, built in 1731, was bought by John and Abigail Adams in 1787. This home served as a safehaven to three more generations of the Adams family, and its structures and landscape reflect over two hundred and fifty years of American History.
John Quincy Adams inherited the house in 1826, while he was the sixth President of the United States. He and his English-born wife, Louisa Catherine, began a tradition of the layering of history by adding their belongings to those of John and Abigail. While Peacefield remained a working farm, John Quincy Adams also used it as a seminary, a place where he experimented with new and different varieties of trees. Like his father before him, Charles Francis Adams added his belongings to the previous generations' when he and Mrs. Charles Francis Adams inherited the house in 1848. The third generation of Peacefield's residents made the most changes to the house and landscape, adding a servant's wing, library, carriage house and converting the former working farm into a gentleman's country estate. Finally, between 1889 and 1927, Brooks and Evelyn Adams were the last generation to add their belongings to the already immense collection in the house making it their summer home. Brooks Adams recognized the historical importance of the home and arranged for the Adams Memorial Society, made up of his nieces and nephews, to preserve it as a museum. in 1946, the house and grounds were donated to the American people through the National Park Service.
Today, Adams National Historical Park serves as a setting for the National Park Service's interpretation of the history of one of America's most prominent political and diplomatic families. The park is an educational resource for every student, regardless of age.
ADAMS_080607_025.JPG: United First Parish Church is on the far left.
John Quincy Adams' birthplace is in the middle.
John Adams' birthplace is on the right.
ADAMS_080607_040.JPG: Entering John Adams' birthplace. No photography was allowed inside.
ADAMS_080607_046.JPG: John Quincy Adams birthplace
ADAMS_080607_049.JPG: John Adams' birthplace
ADAMS_080607_083.JPG: Peacefield
ADAMS_080607_169.JPG: A tree that the Adams' planted
ADAMS_080607_177.JPG: The Adams' library
ADAMS_080607_196.JPG: Carriage house
ADAMS_080607_203.JPG: The Statue:
This bronze statue, dedicated by the Quincy Partnership on June 14, 1997, was created by sculptor Lloyd Lillie of Newton, Massachusetts. It depicts Abigail Adams urging young John Quincy Adams to go out into the world and prove himself. The statue stands on the grounds of the Hancock Meetinghouse, predecessor to the adjacent United First Parish Church.
ADAMS_080607_209.JPG: Abigail Adams:
"Improve your understanding for acquiring usefull knowledge and virtue, such as will render you an ornament to society, an Honour to your Country, and a Blessing to Your parents." -- Abigail Adams in a letter to her 10-year-old son, John Quincy Adams, in Europe
Abigail Adams was a determined and intelligent woman and one of history's most renowned and prolific letter writers. She holds the distinction of being the wife of the second U.S. President, John Adams, and the mother of the sixth President, John Quincy Adams. For nearly a decade during and after the American Revolution, as her husband struggled at home and abroad to establish a new nation, Abigail remained the "patriot on the home front," a keen observer and astute chronicler of the events that led to American independence. Her now-famous correspondence provided her husband with a window on the tumultuous events in Boston and Braintree and left an indelible "pen and parchment" record for future generations.
In a compelling appeal for women's rights, Abigail urged her husband to "Remember the Ladies" as John and his fellow delegates at the Constitutional Congress sought to devise a new code of laws for the young nation. In her children, she sought to instill a commitment to education, family, and public service. During the American Revolution, as patriots of all ages answered the call of their fledgling country, Abigail inspired her 11-yaer-old son with the words "these are the times in which a genius would wish to live."
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Adams National Historical Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts, preserves the home of Presidents of the United States John Adams and John Quincy Adams, of U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Charles Francis Adams, Sr., and of the writers and historians Henry Adams and Brooks Adams.
The national historical park's eleven historic structures tell the story of five generations of the Adams family (from 1720 to 1927) including Presidents, First Ladies, U.S. Ministers, historians, writers, and family members who supported and contributed to their success. In addition to the "Peacefield," home to four generations of the Adams family, the park's main historic features include: John Adams birthplace (October 30, 1735), the nearby John Quincy Adams birthplace (July 11, 1767); the Stone Library (built in 1870 to house the books of John Quincy Adams and believed to be the first presidential library) containing more than 14,000 historic volumes. United First Parish Church, where both Presidents and the First Ladies are entombed in the Adams Crypt are not now nor have they ever been administered by the National Park service. The Church is owned by the active congregation of Unitarian Universalists. the congregation has used its own resources including its endowments to preserve the building. In the past 10 years the congregation has invested almost $2 million to preserve the building for the next several generations of citizens and members of the congregation.
There is an off-site visitor center located within one mile of the historic structures. Regularly scheduled tours of the historic homes, are offered in season (April 19 to November 10). The park provides a trolleybus between sites. Access to the historic homes is by guided tour only. Access to United First Parish Church is provided by the congregation and they ask for a small donation. The National Park Service does not provide trolley service to the churc ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (MA -- Quincy -- Adams NHP) directly related to this one:
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2001_MA_Adams: MA -- Quincy -- Adams NHP (29 photos from 2001)
2008 photos: Equipment this year: I was using three cameras -- the Fuji S9000 and the Canon Rebel Xti from last year, and a new camera, the Fuji S100fs. The first two cameras had their pluses and minuses and I really didn't have a single camera that I thought I could use for just about everything. But I loved the S100fs and used it almost exclusively this year.
Trips this year: (1) Civil War Preservation Trust annual conference in Springfield, Missouri , (2) a week in New York, (3) a week in San Diego for the Comic-Con, (4) a driving trip to St. Louis, and (5) a visit to dad and Dixie's in Asheville, North Carolina.
Ego strokes: A picture I'd taken last year during a Friends of the Homeless event was published in USA Today with a photo credit and everything! I became a volunteer photographer with the AFI/Silver theater.
Number of photos taken this year: 330,000.
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