Adams (John Quincy) is born in Quincy (then Braintree).

The son of John and Abigail (Smith) Adams, John Quincy Adams, graduates from Harvard College, studies law, moves to Boston in 1790, and lives near today’s 62 Boylston Street. He serves as minister to the Netherlands and Portugal (1794-96), Prussia (1797-1801), marries Louisa Catherine Johnson in 1797,* moves back to Boston in 1801, and lives near today’s 39 Hanover Street. Adams serves in the Massachusetts Senate (1802), the U.S. Senate (1804-1808), as minister to Russia (1809-14) and Great Britain (1815-17), as Secretary of State (1817-1825), president (1825-29), and in Congress (1831-48), where he becomes known for his eloquent speeches against slavery, Adams dies in Washington on February 23, 1848, and is buried alongside his parents in a crypt in the United First Parish Church in Quincy. Theodore Parker later calls him “The one great man since Washington, whom America had no cause to fear.”