We drove a little south of Boston to Quincy/Braintree to visit John and Abigail Adams's home as well as John Quincey. If ever you come to Boston you can take the red line to the Quincy station and that is very close to the visitors center.
If one wants to go into the homes you must take a tour. They belong to the National Park Service. The tickets are $5 and a trolley takes you to the two sites. From reading history and from pictures that you see, the Braintree homes are in the country. In their day they were surrounded by their farm land. Now the city surrounds them. They are in the same place as they have always been and some of the structure is original, but of course work has had to be done to maintain them. The houses were close together to share a well and for protection. When you see a photo of these two houses ( which I don't have) John was born in the house on the right and John Quincy the house on the left. The picture that I posted is the birthplace of John.
When John and Abigail returned from Europe a in 1784 they had been living in large homes and couldn't quite see themselves in the little birth homes so they bought a larger home which he named Peace Fields which is where they lived the rest of their lives as did the next 3 generations. The house is larger now than when they moved in. They added an addition then years later their grandson added yet another. The house is furnished with things from all three generations. When John was president, the president bought the furnishings for the White House so some of that is in this house. Victorian chairs that they had in France are in the parlor. Some of the dishes that they used in the White House are in the china cabinet. It is a beautiful home, rich in history. John Quincy wanted to have a library built to house his father's books as well as his own. When his son married into money, he built a separate stone library. It is like the old libraries that you see with the ladder to the second story of books. It used to be the presidental library, but now all of the presidental papers and letters and John's books are in the Boston Library special collection area.
One stop that isn't on the tour is the churh where the two presidents and their first ladies are buried. It's next to the visitors center. The church is made of stone quarried from the Adams farm and John Q. oversaw its building. There is a crypt in the basement.
A little south of Quincy at Bridgewater was our next stop this time trying to learn more of Don's history. We went to the city clerk's office and she had a book that directed us to the proper cemetery. Armed with a map we found the cemetery and with a little looking found the grave markers of two more older generations of the Hoffmann/Lewis family. We were surprised to find anything because when you get back into the 1700's so many of the cemeteries are abandoned.
Today we tour Rhode Island--it is a bitty place