The first of John Adams’ ancestors arrived in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1638 along with many other Puritans. John Adams’ father was a deacon in the local church and a farmer by profession.
“What has preserved this race of Adamses in all their ramifications in such numbers, health, peace, comfort, and mediocrity? I believe it is religion, without which they would have been rakes, fops, sots, gamblers, starved with hunger, or frozen with cold, scalped by Indians, etc., etc., etc., been melted away and disappeared…” (John Adams in a letter to good friend Benjamin Rush)
It is no surprise then, that the elder Adams desired John to go to Harvard and become a minister. John was an intelligent and active boy who was, “unusually sensitive to criticism but also quickly responsive to praise…” (McCullough) John would have been content to work on the farm for the rest of his life. (Or so he thought as a boy).
Although John was destined to become a lawyer and not minister or a farmer by trade, he did end up going to Harvard.
“It had long been an article of faith among the Adamses that land was the only sound investment and, once purchased, was never to be sold. Only once is Deacon John known to have made an exception to the rule, when he sold ten acres to help send his son John to college.”
And so began the formal education of our second president.
History Schmistory 