Country Vacations & Resorts

Time in Office: 1825 to 1829
Terms: One
Birthday: July 11, 1767
Birth Place: Quincy, Massachusetts – formerly Braintree.
Date of Death: February 23, 1848
Place of Death: Inside the Capitol Building, Washington, DC
Buried: United First Parish Church, Quincy, Massachusetts

Notes:

~ Witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill at age seven.
~ Began a diary at the age of 12, and kept it for 68 years.
~ A world-traveler by the age of 18.
~ A “…child of the American Revolution.”
~ First US President to be photographed.

Young John Quincy Adams
Photo: National Park Service

How about a trip to France with your father at the age of eleven? John Adams served as an American envoy to France from 1778 until 1779 and to the Netherlands from 1780 until 1782. John Quincy accompanied his father on these dangerous ocean voyages – his mother, Abigail and his sister joining them in 1784. During the first journey, the ship carrying John and his father was struck by lightning, tossed around by a hurricane, and was fired on by British vessels.

A trip from Boston to England, even barring these other circumstances, required a journey of nearly a month.

Leyden University, Holland

At the age of 14, John Quincy accompanied Francis Dana as a secretary and French interpreter, on a mission to St. Petersburg, Russia. He also spent time in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark and, in 1804, published a travel report of Silesia. He attended Leyden (Leiden) University, Holland in 1780 which is also the year he began his personal diary.

John Quincy Adams became fluent in both the French and Dutch languages and at least familiar with German. He entered Harvard College, graduated in 1788, and in 1791 began practicing law in Boston. All this travel and accomplishment and still only 24 years of age! But he didn’t remain long in Boston….

By 1791 he was appointed (by his father), as Minister to Prussia (present day Germany and Poland), a post he retained until 1801.

John Quincy Adams even met and married his wife outside the United States, at All Hallows by the Tower, London – making him the only President with a foreign-born First Lady. Commissioned minister plenipotentiary to Russia in 1809, Adams, his wife, and their youngest son Charles Francis then spent five years in St. Petersburg and his European travel was again extended when John Quincy was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Great Britain in 1815.

By 1817, at the age of 50, he was making his eighth and final voyage across the Atlantic.

John Quincy Adams was still traveling – even after his death. His original interment was temporary, in the public vault at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Later, he was interred in Quincy across from the First Parish Church, called Hancock Cemetery. After his wife’s death, his son, Charles Francis Adams, had him re-interred with his wife in a family crypt in the United First Parish Church across the street.

Recommended reading on this intelligent and well-traveled 6th President of the United States:

On next to the 7th President of the United States, Andrew Jackson…

“Traveling with American Presidents” list