John Quincy Adams, Scientific Farmer and Landscape Gardener

With a Heart of Oak: John Quincy Adams, Scientific Farmer and Landscape Gardener

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Citation McKindley, Mona Rose. 2013. With a Heart of Oak: John Quincy Adams, Scientific Farmer and Landscape Gardener. Master's thesis, Harvard University, Extension School.

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With a Heart of Oak: John Quincy Adams, Scientific Farmer and Landscape Gardener

Mona Rose McKindley

A Thesis in the Field of History

for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies

Harvard University

March 2013

Abstract

Typical inquiries into the life work of John Quincy Adams cover his political accomplishments. This thesis explores the work of Adams as a scientific farmer and gardener. The details of Adams’s study of botany and his accomplishments in horticulture and landscape gardening have been overlooked. I studied Adams’s diaries and a select group of his letters to explore why he gardened and why he grew his own trees from seed. Here we learn what gardening meant to him and how his pursuits differed from other farmers. Adams promoted scientific research among American farmers to benefit agriculture. He sought to fulfill George Washington’s plan for a national university and botanic garden in the federal city. As a member of numerous scientific societies, Adams contributed to the progress of horticulture and landscape gardening during the early national period in America. His efforts to unite the work among various states contributed to the emergence of an American science.

iii

“The plant may come late, though the seed be sown early.”

George Washington’s remarks on a lack of support for a national university and botanic garden in the federal city.

Biography

The author, a federal estate gardener, has weeded and watered trees planted by

John Quincy Adams at the White House and at Adams National Historical Park in

Quincy, Massachusetts. She trained in horticulture at the National Arboretum and frequented the US Botanic Garden. After transferring to the Boston area, an interest in garden history led her to complete a graduate certificate program in the history of landscape design at the Landscape Institute of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard

University. As a National Park Service gardener she is still invited to join the gardeners at Peace Field in the annual winter pruning of the historic fruit trees in the orchard.

Acknowledgements

Kelly Cobble, Curator, Adams National Historical Park, assisted with queries on the Adams library, scientific apparatus, and botanical drawings in the park collection.

Her insights were valuable as I focused my topic.

Margie Coffin-Brown, Historical Landscape Architect, Senior Project Manager,

Preservation Planning, Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation has allowed me access to her team’s ongoing work on a cultural resource report for Adams National Park.

Elizabeth Carroll-Horrocks, Director of Archives, American Academy of Arts and Sciences assisted in my early research on American scientific societies.

Sara Martin, Series Editor, Adams Family Correspondence, the Massachusetts

Historical Society, was very accessible and helpful. My research would not have been possible in the time allowed to complete the project without access to John Quincy

Adams’s diaries online.

Caroline Keinath, Deputy Superintendent, and Marianne Peak, Superintendent,

Adams National Historical Park have supported my research, allowed access to park resources, and answered my questions.

Thanks to Cary Donahue for his patience and support through the ALM Program and the thesis research.

Table of Contents

Biography ...... v

Acknowledgments ...... vi

List of Tables ...... ix

List of Figures ...... x

I. Introduction ...... 1

Thesis ...... 2

II. Father and Son Scientific Farmers ...... 9

An Early Interest in Agriculture, Botany, and Gardening ...... 11

Peace Field and Penn’s Hill Valley, the Ancestral Land ...... 12

The Penn’s Hill Farm ...... 17

Exploring Horticulture ...... 20

Attachment to the Land ...... 23

Gardening for the Future ...... 25

III. The President’s House Garden and Tree Nursery ...... 26

The First Family Studies Botany ...... 29

Landscape Gardening in the Federal City ...... 31

A Federal Oak Forest Preserve and Cultivated Live Oak Farm ...... 37

Continued Experimental Gardening at the Homestead Farm ...... 39

Gardening with Grandchildren ...... 49

IV. John Quincy Adams and American Scientific Societies ...... 51

vii

The American Academy and the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture ...... 52

The Boston Natural Philosophy Society ...... 55

The Boston Natural History Society and the American Philosophical Society ...... 58

Secretary of State Adams Promotes Agriculture ...... 62

Adams Builds His Horticultural Library ...... 65

The Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences ...... 68

The National Institute and a National Congress of Scientists ...... 72

Conclusion ...... 75

Appendix ...... 77

Bibliography ...... 87

viii

List of Tables

Table 1 Books on Agriculture, Gardening, and Horticulture ...... 82

Table 2 Real Estate Owned by John Quincy Adams in Massachusetts in 1826 ...... 84

Table 3 Plants Adams Grew on the White House Grounds ...... 85

Table 4 Tree and Fruit Varieties Planted by Adams at Peacefield and Mount Wollaston ...... 86

List of Figures

Figure 1 White Oak Leaf, Painted by First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams ...... 77

Figure 2 Pin Oak Leaf and Fruit, Painted by Abigail Smith Adams ...... 78

Figure 3 Tamarind and Persimmon, Painted by Abigail Smith Adams ...... 79

Figure 4 View of Mount Wollaston “The seat of John Quincy (1689-1767) Esqr.” Painted by Eliza Susan Quincy ...... 80

Figure 5 Sketch for a Seal for the Columbian Institute, Design by John Quincy Adams ...... 81

Chapter I

Introduction

John Quincy Adams was a New England gentleman farmer and gardener. He enjoyed the routine duties of farming such as surveying his land and supervising his tenant farmers. He liked the physical challenge of digging and planting, just as his father and grandfather had done, on ancestral land in Massachusetts. He annually fussed in the garden in autumn, perfecting his nursery bed soils and planting the seeds of native trees with anticipation for emerging saplings the following spring. He expected mixed results because he did not have a greenhouse or laborers to nurture his plants over the months he was away each year. Yet gardening was not a hobby for Adams. His work with plants, including horticultural experiments, was a deliberate effort to participate in the work of the founding fathers in establishing America’s prominence in agriculture. To that end, he read widely in botany and he not only shared the results of his knowledge from experience on American soils with other scientific farmers, but also practical or working farmers. His tenacity toward this cause reveals his “heart of oak.”

Oak trees held special meaning to Adams. A large old oak shaded the farmhouse where he was born. He created an oak leaf seal and bookplate for his personal library.

The design consisted of two white oak leaves and an acorn with the words Alteri seculo,“for another age” under the figures.1 Adams believed that the trees one generation planted would benefit the next few generations. He sometimes referred to the

1 Henry Adams, “The Seals and Book-Plates of the Adams Family, 1783-1905,” A Catalogue of the Books of John Quincy Adams Deposited in the Boston Athenaeum (Boston: Athenaeum, 1938).

oak in his carefully worded letters and speeches. He once wrote that a writer who wished to maintain a newspaper independent of the influence from other newspapers or legislators must:

. . . have a heart of oak, nerves of iron, and a soul of adamant to carry it through. The work would bring a hornets nest upon the head. If they should not sting him … to blindness he would have to pursue his march with them continually swarming over him and beset on all side with slander …. 2

Adams knew that tree symbols and garden imagery held deep meanings for the emerging nation. Massive old trees were visual reminders of the human potential in the new land. Clusters of mature trees on a well-managed farm’s wood-lot recalled the

American wilderness. The act of preserving American scenery within a cultivated space was a dramatic display of the country’s wealth and potential. Oaks and pines were also symbols of America’s economic strength and military potential. Oak leaves and pine trees were printed on many early American banners and coins. Adams also knew the

“heart of oak” recalled a true fighting spirit, from Virgil’s epic poem Aeneid. (It also became a motto of Britain’s Royal Navy.) Adams pushed to share this spirit among those with power to build the new government.

Thesis

It is valuable to examine John Quincy Adams’s life work in science, especially botany and horticulture, because only then can we see his continual contributions toward the evolution of an American science over the first four decades of the nineteenth

2 John Quincy Adams diary 32, 21 March 1821-30 November 1822, page 347 [electronic edition]. The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection. Boston, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005 < http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries>. Citation is from a conversation with John Calhoun on the 28th of July of 1822. Hereafter the diary notations will be noted with date, the diary volume number, date of volume, and page number. It will show if the citation is from the electronic or microfilm edition.

century. Scholarship in the history of science in America during the early republic has noted the work of the founding fathers in the applied sciences to benefit agriculture and the mechanical arts. This scholarship also examines the activities of regional groups of

American gentlemen scientists in the pursuit of knowledge of America’s natural resources that held promise for improvements in agriculture. However, scholarship on

Adams’s involvement in promoting science, both the vernacular or popular science and the professional science, in the early American republic has been scarce.3

Adams historian Samuel Flagg Bemis has written, “no statesman since Franklin had done so much to advance the cause of science in America.” 4 Bemis describes

Adams’s support for research in astronomy and his advocacy for institutions for public diffusion of knowledge (such as the work that led to the creation of the Smithsonian) as examples of this dedication. This thesis will show Adams’s efforts in gardening and promoting an American botany and horticulture as another example of Adams’s work to advance the cause of science in America, an example that has been overlooked by both historians of the Adams family and by historians of science in the early American republic.

This work is divided into four chapters. Chapter I includes an overview of the thesis. In summary, John Quincy Adams stands out among the many scientific gentlemen who hoped to improve agriculture during the early republic, following the work begun by the founders. He believed, as the founders did, that progress in American farming would strengthen the nation and grow the economy, enabling the country to be

3 Thomas Bender, Review: “Science and the Culture of American Communities: The Nineteenth Century,” History of Education Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1976): 73.

4 Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1956), 523.

self-sufficient. Adams felt this could be achieved if there was a focus on an independent science in America, informed by European work but based on research in the United

States on America’s natural resources. Scholarship on Adams by Paul Nagel, Joseph

Whelan, and Andrea Wulf has, by not exploring how John Quincy Adams felt it was his personal duty and destiny to follow in the work of President Washington, his father,

Thomas Jefferson, and President Monroe, misrepresented Adams on precisely this point.

Historians, even members of the Adams family, also misunderstand why farming and gardening were important to Adams. His cousin, scientific farmer, mayor, and

Harvard president Josiah Quincy, does not discuss the horticultural experiments of John

Quincy Adams in his biography of Adams. Perhaps this is because farming was second nature to the two of them. It was routine business to discuss successes with fencing off fields, novel planting techniques, new breeds of chickens, or botanical curiosities at social gatherings and society meetings. Adams’s son Charles Francis and grandsons

Brooks and Henry Adams correctly observed John Quincy Adams enjoyed the study of plants and the process of discovery while gardening, perhaps even more than the end result. Yet they did not understand why Adams was such a diligent scientific gardener.

An analysis of these observations on Adams is found in chapter two. My insights on his farming and gardening come from a careful reading of his diaries and some of his correspondence from the 1790s through 1847. The stories of his gardening adventures are set into the context of the history of farming in the new republic. As a young man

Adams was typical in that he was very fond of the ancestral farms and shared his joy of farming and gardening with his family, promoting the virtues of this work. As a public official he promoted federal support for advances in agriculture and botanic exploration

that would benefit the nation. His efforts and enthusiasm for botany and horticulture did not wane; this struggle was unusual. President Adams worked for improvements in agriculture and the conservation of American forests, even as the country was still being surveyed and explored.

An examination of Adams’s beautification of the President’s House grounds and tree planting in the federal city follows in chapter three. Adams contributed to the development of an American aesthetic through his design of public spaces and his home garden. Landscape historian Therese O’Malley has noted the existence of Adams’s

White House garden and presidential tree nursery but she has not discussed his design aesthetic. Garden historians such as O’Malley have not acknowledged the depth of

Adams’s knowledge in landscape gardening through his study of works by John Evelyn,

J. C. Loudon, Bernard M’ Mahon, Phillip Miller, Herman Fürst von Puckler Moskau, and

Thomas Whately. Historians of the early American republic have not noted Adams’s study of European gardens and his correspondence on garden design and the use of ornamental shade trees with Thomas Jefferson, then Benjamin Latrobe, and later with

David Hosack, and finally with Alexander Jackson Downing.

Chapter four covers Adams’s significant activities among scientific societies as the field of botany captured the attention of free Americans in every state. Adams’s support for advances in agriculture led to his sporadic but intense study of botany and experiments in horticulture. Adams was an active participant in the botanical and horticultural work of several scientific societies in Washington, DC and New England.

He gathered and sent news of Boston area societies to New York, Philadelphia, the

Southern states, and Europe. He lectured at public events and corresponded with

botanists, nurserymen, and professional military scientists. Adams worked in congressional committees to unify the botanical activities and natural history exploration among the states. His foremost scientific project in the last decade of his life was building a national astronomy program, yet he continued to garden seasonally, tending to his native woodland trees grown from seed.

Historians have noted the significance of the early regional scientific societies in the emergence of an American science by the 1830s. They recognize Adams as one who knew the potential for science research toward national improvements however, the details of his work in promoting experimental horticulture and landscape gardening is missing from this scholarship. Simon Baatz, George Daniels, A. Hunter Dupree, John

Oliver, and Raymond Stearns discuss the work of American scientific societies during the first few decades of the nineteenth century, as American efforts in science became internationally known. Stearns notes that Adams was among the first American politicians of this era with a vision of scientific research for the sake of knowledge. This general statement is a start, but as chapter four will establish, Adams followed in his father’s work in this way, although he differed from John Adams, who strove to build an

American science community that would remain independent of Europe.

This was the distinctive way in which he, as a member of the younger revolutionary generation, carried forward the work of the founders: John Quincy sought to involve the international scientific community in an American science. Again, the existing historiography has not quite grasped this point. John Oliver discusses John

Quincy Adams’s work with the Columbian Institute and other Washington city-based scientific societies, but he does not comment on Adams’s efforts to unify the work

ongoing in various states and support natural history exploration with the use of federal funds. George Daniels writes on the social history of American science. He describes the work of Boston-area scientific societies in financing natural history field surveys and facilitating a sharing of scientific literature and natural history specimens among various states. Daniels mentions John Lowell and the deep merchant pockets among the scientific societies but he does not reveal how Lowell and other Boston area scientific gentlemen confided in John Quincy Adams on various issues including astronomy, botany, chemistry, natural philosophy, and European advances in these fields. Similarly,

Simon Baatz describes the highly respected American scientific journals, scientific publications, and the philanthropy of the Boston area men of science, but he does not mention the work of John Quincy Adams among these men. It is known that Adams began his interest in gardening in the first decade of the nineteenth century, but few historians acknowledge that his studies in botany and horticulture continued into the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, beyond the chronology Baatz, Wulf, and other historians of the early republic have discussed.

To complete the thesis, I analyze historian A. Hunter Dupree’s review of science in the federal government during the early national period. At this point, Adams was trying to unify the work of individual scientific societies in various states. He believed that both applied science and research in science being done among various states could be undertaken on a national level, with federal funding. Dupree reveals that Adams was convinced a national scientific institution would come to fruition in the future, when the sciences were more extensively cultivated. In fact, John Quincy Adams saw a bounding growth in American astronomy, natural history discovery, market agriculture, and

ornamental horticulture through the work of regional scientific societies during his last years. Fittingly, Adams’s more than fifty years of exploration in botany and horticulture bore fruit. While Adams was not able to see many of his ideas take seed with fellow legislators in Congress, he did live to see the first national congress of scientific societies meet in the federal city. The year after his death a national science foundation, a private group to advise the federal government on the sciences, was formed.

Chapter II

Father and Son Scientific Farmers

The study of natural philosophy in the early American republic was informed by intellectual traditions derived from ancient Greeks, medieval Arabs, and medieval

Europeans. Natural history emerged as a specialized field of new inquiry because it involved the collection, classification, and analysis of data. A communications network among men of science within Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States enabled this study. The most important natural philosophers knew each other.5 As citizens of the early American republic began to study their nation’s natural resources, especially the plants through botany, European science was significantly affected by the new discoveries.6 In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Dutch, British, and

French botanists used their American connections to visit and gather curiosities that could be grown in their homelands.

The founding fathers encouraged botanical study and hoped the new nation could become self-sufficient through improvements in agriculture. Madison believed farming was a political act and that, therefore, experimental farmers were patriotic individuals.7

Jefferson wanted farmers in all the states to plant maple trees to develop a sugar industry.

John Adams tried to inform Massachusetts farmers that they needed to fertilize their soils

5 Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), 5.

6 Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America, 7.

7 Andrea Wulf, Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 116.

with manure or green crops such as clover or buckwheat.8 Washington wanted a botanic garden in the federal city for the systematic, scientific study of plants used in agriculture.

John Adams supported this plan and worked to obtain national support for agricultural research and other applied sciences during his presidency. 9 Benjamin Rush, the

Philadelphia physician, followed Adams’s thinking. The founders worked toward developing the permanent institutionalization of science with expectations of federal funding. John Adams also worked among gentlemen scientists in the Boston area to tackle projects in agriculture that the new government would not fund. 10

Jefferson is well known for his interest in natural philosophy. He was president of Philadelphia’s foremost scientific group, the American Philosophical Society. The society supported improvements in astronomy, agriculture, applied technology and natural history exploration. However, Jefferson only gave sporadic attention to the development of science as part of his official duties because he believed the constitution did not allow federal sponsorship of an institution to do scientific research.11 In the second decade of the nineteenth century, John Quincy Adams, like many other government officials, revisited these issues. Adams hoped he could bring the founders’ unfinished business to fruition. His interests, struggles, and joy in gardening and horticulture are presented after a review of his earliest introduction to the natural world.

8 Wulf, Founding Gardeners, 97, 123.

9 Bernard Cohen, Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison (New York: WW Norton, 1995), 235.

10 George Daniels, Science in American Society: A Social History (New York: Knopf, 1971), 133.

11A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986), 19, 21.

An Early Interest in Agriculture, Botany, and Gardening

Adams had always liked farming and gardening.12 He developed a love of nature and a reverence for inquiry as a boy under the guidance of his parents. His mother,

Abigail, was his first tutor in the outdoors.13 Boyhood excursions at Penn’s Hill farm made a deep impression on him. He chased amphibians and eels in the meadows and swamps, watched birds in the trees and observed seasonal changes in nature while at play. Adams believed, as his mother taught him, that God was the Architect of the

Universe, Governor of the Universe, and Sustainer of life as well as the coordinator of human events. 14 He believed one should discover their nature and develop their talents to better understand the nature of God. 15

As a young boy, John Quincy Adams helped with chores on the Braintree family farm in Penn’s Hill Valley while his father was away. From Philadelphia, John Adams sent messages to John Quincy to practice frugality, industry, and perseverance in his studies and duties on the farm. He was also asked to cultivate piety, simplicity, prudence, patience, and humility.16 One of young Johnny’s more crucial duties was to go from

Braintree to Boston along the post road on his pony to get the mail by himself. Perhaps

12 John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, Volume 9, ed. Charles Francis Adams, (Philadelphia: JB Lippincott, 1847-77), 545. Charles Francis Adams noted his father wrote on June 7, 1833: “My natural propensity was to raise trees, fruit and forest, from the seed. I had it in early youth, but the course of my life deprived me of the means of pursuing the bent of my inclination.”

13 Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams (Boston: Rosby, Nichols, Lee, 1860), 2.

14 David Lee Thibault, “The Religious-Political Mindset of John Quincy Adams” (MA Thesis, California State University Fullerton, 1988, UMI 1333647), 4 and 15.

15 Thibault, “The Religious-Political Mindset of John Quincy Adams,” 38, 61- 62.

16 Paul Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 10.

he developed his initial sense of self and an attachment to the family land in the Penn’s

Hill Valley as he carried out his responsibilities while his father was away. Adams formed bonds with relatives and neighbors who were doing their part to build the new nation. The historian Andrea Wulf, who has written on the farms of the founding fathers, has concluded that “their farms and fields and gardens could be read like their diaries and letters.” 17 That was certainly true of John and Abigail Adams’s farm, a model that John

Quincy would later sustain on his own land, given to him by his father.

Peace Field and Penn’s Hill Valley, the Ancestral Land

John and Abigail moved to their Quincy farm in 1788. It was once the best farm in town with a large kitchen garden that included many select fruit trees, but by the time

Adams purchased it, it was run down. The property had once been the summer estate of

Major Leonard Vassall of Boston who was a merchant and a member of the militia. (He also managed large, sugar plantations in Jamaica, worked by slaves.) 18 John and

Abigail created a well laid out property, with fields for grains and pasture for livestock.

They grew barley, alfalfa hay, corn, and rye though not all in the same year. The apple orchard was under-planted with clover, which both enriched the trees and fed the cattle.

Root crops such as potatoes and turnips were a staple. There was order and symmetry in

17 Wulf, Founding Gardeners, 103.

18 This was a family business for several generations. Simon Smith wrote, “The Vassalls aspired to be masters of the Atlantic slave economy rather than merchant servants.” Leonard Vassall moved to Boston to send his sons to Harvard. See Simon David Smith, Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic: The World of the Lascelles, 1648-183 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 21 and 42.

the old-fashioned eighteenth-century style.19 The farm also had a few well-placed shade trees, planted with genteel aesthetics in mind. John Adams planted a flowering horse chestnut tree and other shade trees in the dooryard to cool the house and any people who were within the dooryard. It became a handsome tree over the years and a focal point as one rounded the bend in the coast road heading toward the house. John Adams called his modest farm the farm of a patriot; it was fundamentally utilitarian. All ornament was counter-balanced by usefulness. He was not a prosperous merchant whose garden was a mere symbol of wealth. He had been about the business of helping to form a new nation.20 For that reason, John Adams named his estate Peace Field, to commemorate the peace he helped negotiate with the United States and Great Britain and the peace he preserved with France. 21

With Abigail’s management they added on to the mansion and upgraded the outbuildings. During the initial renovation John was in Philadelphia as George

Washington’s Vice President. When he heard Mrs. Adams was about to build two barns and paint the family crest on the side of a carriage she had purchased, he wrote to Abigail to reinforce his wishes. All improvements on the farm were to be utilitarian. He needed a good barn, tight fences, a managed woodlot, and a pruned orchard with all “wilderness” or weeds removed. There was to be no statuary or fountains, and especially no display of

19 Barbara Saurdy, Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998), 50.

20 David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 200, 391.

21 Lacy, Adams National Historical Site Cultural Landscape Report and Illustrated Site Chronology, Cultural Landscape Publication No. 13, Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation (Boston, MA: National Park Service, 1977), 4.

a family crest painted on a carriage. He clarified, “The barn must not be a monument of foppery . . . I protest against two buildings – and all expensive ornament.” 22

Abigail complied with his wishes building just one barn with a stable, but they did eventually add a cider house, woodshed, and second barn to the east of the house. One utilitarian ornament, the family heirloom weathervane, was placed on a post across the road where it was easily viewed from the house or the road.

Abigail strove to improve the farm in other ways, making it a bit more modern and appropriate for a statesman’s home. She removed cedar trees on the west side of the house out at the property boundary so the meadows and the distant Blue Hills of

Braintree could be seen. She improved the kitchen garden and dooryard flower garden, replanting some of the well-established old boxwood edging and adding her favorite flowers. The kitchen garden or the upper garden was planted in the traditional style used at their Penn’s Hill farm with culinary and medicinal herbs along the main axis, berry vines on supports behind this border, and the salad vegetables along the cross axis. The shaded quarter of the garden was used for starting seed and rooting cuttings of plants.23

Abigail added Swamp Bay magnolia trees, althaea or Rose of Sharon shrubs, garden peonies, and roses to the kitchen garden and front door-yard garden areas. Her personal touch added refinement to the farm. To create a more stately front entrance, she moved several dooryard lilac shrubs to the front walk, three on each side. She had the grass

22 Lacy, Cultural Landscape Report and Illustrated Site Chronology, 15. Lacy cites the letter of John Adams to Abigail December 14, 1798.

23 See David Stuart, The Kitchen Garden: A Historical Guide to Traditional Crops (London: Robert Hale), 1984.

plots along the walks scythed and rolled regularly. 24 Since there were flowering fruit trees and a few other culinary or medicinal flowers in the kitchen garden (the gillyflower or pinks, nasturtiums, and the Marvel-of-Peru) Abigail and other family members sometimes referred to the kitchen garden as a “flower garden.” However the flower garden on the farm was the dooryard garden. Here Abigail under-planted the shrubs near the turf panels with cowslip, columbines, daffodils, and sometimes tulips to ornament her front door. This design, with the original flagstone landing at the entrance step, was in the traditional eighteenth-century style. Although not elaborate, it was a special place on the farm. Most farms in this era did not have many flowers or a manicured lawn.

The dooryard flower garden was precious to John Quincy Adams. After his parents were gone and he lived at this farm with his family, Adams commented every few years in his diaries on the May blooming lilac shrubs and the August blooming “althaea” shrubs. Each year he was home he was charmed by the hummingbirds that darted about the flowering shrubs. 25 The althaea may have also been an indicator plant for Adams, who watched for optimal conditions to plant seeds and transplant trees in the fall.

As John Adams improved his northern orchard he added new fruit trees grafted on dwarf rootstocks. He and John Quincy Adams knew how to prune a standard tree hard over the years to encourage young fruiting branches. 26 In his kitchen garden, John

Adams gradually added select fruit tree that were popular in New England. These

24 Lacy, Cultural Landscape Report and Illustrated Site Chronology, 13-18.

25 Alice M. Coats, Garden Shrubs and Their Histories (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1965), 168. Althaea shrubs were recommended by garden designer J.C. Loudon for their upright and stately appearance and bold, holly hock type flowers. The althea was also known as hibiscus and as Rose of Sharon.

26 Barbara Saurdy, Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805, 62. See also Ann Leighton. American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century: For Comfort and Affluence (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1987), “The American Way” page 361. Adams had both types of trees in his garden.

included the Rhode Island Greening Apple, the Saint Germain and Saint Michael Pear, an

Endicott Pear, some apricots and various cherry trees. Abigail nurtured an old native grape vine from the Vassall kitchen garden and added raspberries, blackberries, huckleberry, thimbleberry, whortleberry, and red and white currants. 27

While John Adams was away again in Philadelphia, as the President of the United

States, Abigail renovated a farmhouse just north of their main house. She needed more work space to prepare larger and more elaborate meals for future distinguished dinner guests. The middle of the first floor was converted in to a farm kitchen and a space there was made to accommodate more of the domestic help.28 A small dairy, a room to make and hold her popular butter and clotted cream, was built in the back of the farmhouse. (It kept cool in summers due to the proximity of a well with a pump located near the building.) Abigail directed construction of an upstairs addition of two rooms, one with a fireplace, to warm the farmhouse during winter. This became John Adams’s office and library, a quiet spot away from the family activities in the house to read and write. John

Quincy Adams later used the same space for the same purpose. In this way a simple tenant farmhouse, built on the foundation of the same structure that was once the quarters of the Vassall servants and slaves, became the summer presidential office. 29

27 Alison Crosbie, Laurie Pazzano, and Margie Coffin Brown, Draft Cultural Landscape Report for Peacefield (Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation: Adams National Historical Park, Quincy, Massachusetts, Boston: National Park Service), 35. Also See William Strong, History of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 1829-1878 (Boston, 1880), 43. The Massachusetts Agricultural Repository listed the best fruits to grow at the time.

29 Thomas Amory, A Home of the Olden Time (Boston: David Clapp & Son), 1872. The tenant farm house was built on or a renovation of a previous structure of the servants house for the slaves or field hands of the Vassalls. Slaves built the garden and worked the fields during few years the Vassalls summered there. Domestic slaves may have slept on mats in the main house at the foot of the beds, in the old kitchen, or in the farm house. See also Thomas C. Hubka, Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (University Press of New England, 1984), 12 and 21.

John Adams maintained a managed wood lot as a property line fence with his neighbor, Captain Benjamin Beale. Other boundaries of the farm were marked with palling fences. When he returned to Peace Field, in his retirement from politics, Adams cherished the work as he mended fences and built stone walls. He was passionate about improving fallow fields. He tilled the land and fertilized it with dried seaweed or composted manure. He did not have a rich enough soil to grow hemp for the ship building industry but he achieved good results with his grains and root crops. Again with utility and style in mind, he changed the use of his stony field hill lot, south of the main road. It was most likely in this field that he constructed a ha-ha ditch instead of a fence to keep the cattle and sheep from the cultivated field. With this landscape feature he could look out to view the hillside without the interruption of a fence. Thus, the Adams family modified the traditional, old-fashioned, eighteenth-century English style farm into a simple American ornamental farm that became the summer retreat of two United States

Presidents.

The Penn’s Hill Farm

John Quincy Adams began seasonal farming and gardening at the farm where he had been born, in the Penn’s Hill Valley, in 1802.30 At that point a Boston lawyer,

Adams had accepted an elected position as a state senator from Suffolk County. Married to Louisa Catherine Johnson, Adams and his young family had just returned from diplomatic service in Prussia and Great Britain. The family employed help on the farm but Adams enjoyed digging in the garden. He shoveled dried manure that was gathered

30 John Quincy’s dabbling in rudimentary plant identification and wild flower study at this time may have been limited to a few occasions.

and carted for him and pruned his apple trees. He managed the woodlots for fuel and building material, as his father taught him.31

In his second season on the farm Adams began experiments with seeding new varieties of native berries, beans, and apples. That summer his wife and young son stayed in Washington among the company of her relatives. Adams attended scientific society meetings in the evenings. He fussed over woodland seedling trees he grew in prepared soil from local, native hard wood tree seeds and nuts. He experimented with shaping the form of new tree seedlings with heading or lateral cuts and painted the new pruning cuts with Forsyth’s plaster. This compound of mud, lime, manure and water was thought to help fresh wounds seal over by keeping the tissue from drying out. His trials included a few exotic seeds he chose for their potential to be naturalized in his woodlots. Adams had some good apple and peach trees grown from seed on the farm that summer. His activities in the garden showed a dedicated pursuit in pomology. 32 Adams continued to discuss both his trials with plants and insect pests and the literature he read in botany with other working and gentlemen farmers. In that initial way, he was a participant in the emerging field of American botany as it related to improvements in agriculture.

By mid-summer of 1802, Adams became involved in projects on farms near his father’s farm, a few miles up the coast road in Quincy. He experimented with his version of Forsyth’s plaster on an old decayed apple tree. He noted a trimmed apricot tree that lost its vigor, wondering if he had pruned it too late in the season. He grafted fresh

31 Brooks Adams, John Quincy Adams, Manuscript, 1905–1909, 4-5. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1776, Adams Family 4th generation. See also, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vol. 4. Charles Francis notes in August of 1802 that John Quincy farmed with his father.

32 John Quincy Adams diary 27, 1 January 1803–4 August 1809, page 87 [electronic edition]. A few decades after Forsyth published his formula it was declared to be a failure because it induced rot in plants and inhibited fresh cuts from properly forming new wound tissue and bark.

cuttings of desirable peach, plum, and pear trees on to vigorous rootstalks of fruit trees already growing in the ground. He performed similar experiments of fruit tree propagation on his brother’s farm. When Captain Beale, his father’s neighbor, had peach borers, Adams visited to gather a few “worms” to study the insect under closer observation in captivity. He ruminated over remedies for insect pests on fruit trees, studying what he could find in the literature on the subject.

Work in the garden eased his worries in the summer of 1803 as Adams helped his father keep watch over his ailing mother. Louisa Catherine tended to their second, newborn son in Braintree while John Quincy spent many days in Quincy. He discussed farming and fruit cultivation with his father. They walked together through the kitchen garden, cultivated fields, and meadows.33 If they did not tour the farm during the day, then in the evening they hiked to the top of Stony Field Hill to survey the land and watch the sunset with a view of Quincy Bay. This would become an Adams tradition practiced in each successive generation, to walk the grounds either alone or with company, to think or to discuss family matters. 34

John and John Quincy joined in community projects such as improving the roads, constructing new bridges, and beautifying public squares. They visited neighboring farms regularly to discuss farming or town business. On July 29, 1804, Adams toured his cousin Josiah Quincy’s Mount Wollaston farm to see his ornamental flowering “thorn”

33 Nagel, John Quincy Adams, 141.

34 John Quincy Adams sought the refuge of a long walk and quiet time in the farmhouse study in the middle of the night when his brother died. Charles Francis walked alone through the farm when a son died of a childhood illness. Henry Adams and Brooks Adams paced in their mother’s flower garden regularly during involved discussions on family matters or their writing projects. These events are recorded in their diaries and letters.

and apple hedges and other ornamental trees. 35 Quincy’s experimental farm inspired

John Quincy Adams to persevere with his fruit and forest tree experiments, even if it would take years to see the benefits. He hoped he could improve on a new American apple or pear variety by creating a better shape or flavor. He strove to find some new methods to control fruit tree pests. If he could understand the life cycle of apple coddling moths and find a way to disrupt them from eating the fruit, he would have felt satisfaction in his contribution to the work of the farming and gardening community. When his horticultural experiments failed he did not fret. Adams enjoyed simply watching plants grow and studying their annual cycles. He believed his gardening activities were meaningful because he was a participant in the progress of American botany.

Exploring Horticulture

That summer Adams traveled with a friend, William Shaw, to “Jamaica Plains” where he met his brother and his neighbor, E. Price Greenleaf, to tour John C. Warren’s garden and flourishing nursery trees. Adams noted Warren’s peach, nectarine, plum, pear, almond, cherry, and service berry trees were in excellent condition. He recorded one delightful curiosity, a grafted tree with a peach and plum growing on separate branches.36 This trip stimulated his enthusiasm for the study of horticulture. That year

35 John Quincy Adams diary 27, 1 January 1803 - 4 August 1809, page 94 [electronic edition]. Flowering hawthorn, buckthorn, crabapple, and brambles were used by a few farmers in America as an experiment to create live ornamental hedges. It took a few years to sculpt dense hedges in this way, at a considerable expense when compared to the cost of building stone walls or wooden paling fences.

36 Noted in August of 1804, John Quincy Adams diary 27, 1 January 1803 - 4 August 1809, page 97 [electronic edition].

John Adams gave the title to several tracts of land in the Penn’s Hill Valley to John

Quincy Adams. In 1804, John Quincy Adams was farming his own land. 37

By 1805 John Quincy, his wife Louisa, and her sister began to reside year round at the Penn’s Hill farm. They moved in April, when the plum trees were in bloom. Their two sons were attending school in Quincy. Although a farmer is usually hopeful at the beginning of the growing season, Adams was distraught. He worried about his professional life and his ability to provide for the family. He became greatly depressed.38

Through his mother’s intervention, her cousin, Dr. Cotton Tufts examined the ailing

Adams. Tufts prescribed rest from extensive reading, writing and study. He recommended recreational gardening to keep the physical body busy while the mind relaxed.

Under doctor’s orders, Adams began gardening and exploring natural history with more regularity. He began to study the botany of wild flowers at Penn’s Hill Valley.

Louisa Catherine, the children, and his niece Eliza came along for walks to observe newly blooming wild flowers. They brought some wildflowers home for further study.

Perhaps Mr. Adams had hoped Mrs. Adams would press the specimens and label their reproductive parts. In some way, “the ladies” as he referred to them in his diary, did not enjoy the study of botany. The story is told differently in each of their journals. Henry

37 “My father gave me by Deed of 23 April 1804 two pieces of land about 17 and 16 acres known by the names of the Penn’s Hill orchard and Atherton’s pasture which form part of my old Quincy Farm. There was lying in common with the Atherton pasture a spot of seventeen acres which about the year 1770 my father had taken a lease of from Francis Verchild to whom it belonged. Under this lease he held it till the American Revolution came on, when Verchild left the Country and never came back.” Sept 25, 1819. John Quincy Adams diary 31, 1 January 1819 - 20 March 1821, page 173 [electronic edition].

38 Paul Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life, 132. See also Joseph Whelan. Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 155-156.

Adams recalled that first summer of botany through reading his grandmother’s journals.

He wrote, “Louisa Catherine Adams and her sister spent time on Botany and rambling among the rocks and woods under the direction of Mr. Adams who entered heart and soul into the pursuit of plants and wildflowers.” 39 But Joan Challinor, who has written on the life of Louisa Catherine noted, “John Quincy Adams tried without success to interest

Louisa in wildflowers.” 40 As the years progressed, Mrs. Adams did take further interest in the study of botany and native forest trees. This will be seen in a description of the family adventures in botany as they were living in the city of Washington.

Gardening and natural history scouting with the family was somewhat therapeutic for Adams, but his spirits and self-esteem improved even more after he learned he was recommended for a salaried position at Harvard College as the Boyleston Professor of

Rhetoric and Oratory. Adams craved involvement in the academic circles of the Boston area. The following spring, as he immersed himself in Harvard College, Adams continued to read botany and follow the local news among working farmers. In his own garden he noted the decline of certain seedling trees defoliated by insects. Undaunted, he planted more tree seeds, including the seeds of apples, cherries, currents, peaches, pears, oaks, and walnuts. Gardening involved patience and diligence. After an afternoon discussing agriculture with his father and reviewing experiments at Peace Field, he recorded in his journal some frustrations. “I examined a number of flowers but the

39 Henry Adams, Notes on a Memoir of Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams. Henry Adams Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Catalog No. bMS Am 1217.7.

40 Joan R. Challinor, “Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams: The Price of Ambition” (Ph.D. Diss. 2 vols. American University, 1982), 389.

further I advance in botanical studies the more I find to do the more doubtful I am whether the use will pay the cost.” 41

In the summer of 1807 Adams attended most of the weekly lectures given by Dr.

Benjamin Waterhouse at Harvard. (They had met in Europe when Adams was a teenager and continued to be life-long friends, mentoring each other on topics of interest in the arts and sciences.) Waterhouse’s lectures covered all aspects of science. In particular,

Adams noted a June lecture on how plants reproduce. Adams continued experiments with tree seedlings and some flower seeds at both Penn’s Hill and at his father’s farm,

Peace Field. Dr. John Warren sold him some “White Magdalene Peach buds.” 42 John and John Quincy Adams worked to determine the best soil and exposure to produce vigorous trees.

Attachment to the Land

John Adams and John Quincy Adams entertained members of the local scientific societies and various gatherings of scientific gentlemen at Peace Field. In such a stimulating intellectual environment, John Quincy Adams grew very fond of Boston’s south shore, his homeland. As a young state senator, Adams recorded his thoughts on his attachment to the farm in the autumn of 1806. This was written one month after he noted in the same diary that he had sent his first son, George, off to his initial year at school by himself:

41 Noted on June 22, 1805, John Quincy Adams diary 27, 1 January 1803-4 August 1809, page 165, [electronic edition].

42 Noted on August 29, 1806, John Quincy Adams diary 27, 1 January 1803 - 4 August 1809, page 252 [electronic edition].

This afternoon I took George with me over part of the farm; with the view to familiarize him at this time in his life with the scenes upon which my own earliest recollection dwells. I feel an attachment to this place more powerful than any other spot upon Earth Precisely because they are associated with the first impressions of which the traces remain upon my mind. These attachments are connected with some of the sentiments and opinions which I most cherish and which I should wish my children to possess. 43

Adams noted similar sentiments in his diary two decades later. A neighbor in the

Penn’s Hill Valley, Mr. Field, wanted some lumber and offered to get rid of a very old oak tree near the road and the Adams farm house at Penn’s Hill. Adams was unable to sell the “ancient tree” because he recalled fond memories collecting acorns under it as a boy. 44 And again, on one trip in a public carriage on the first leg of his journey to

Washington, he pointed out to a fellow passenger, Mrs. Roberdeau, the last view of the

Blue Hills as they were seen from the borders of Dedham and Walpole. Then he quietly pondered his attachment to the land. The next morning he recorded his thoughts on that day:

enquiring of myself what it was that gave to those hills such power of touching sensibility as I always experience at their first and final appearance coming to or going from home - I traced the sensation to the spot of my nativity at the foot of Penn’s Hill. I composed five stanzas upon the village on that spot between Dedham and Providence. 45

43 Noted on October 18, 1806, John Quincy Adams diary 27, 1 January 1803 - 4 August 1809, page 258 [electronic edition].

44 Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, 192. He cites this event as described in the diary of John Quincy Adams November 6, 1829.

45 John Quincy Adams diary 38, 1 October 1830 - 24 March 1832, page 287 [electronic edition].

Gardening for the Future

Historians Joseph Whelan, Samuel Flagg Bemis, and Paul Nagel have acknowledged the great affection that John Quincy Adams had for his homeland. They have recognized Adams’s efforts in promoting scientific agriculture and experimental gardening. But none has fully explored why Adams gardened and what this meant to him. Whelan understood that Adams had always enjoyed the farm and garden: “ his love of nature predated even his ancient habit of early rising and brisk morning walks; it suffused his diary from youth to old age.” 46 Bemis believed Adams’s regular gardening helped him establish a routine away from work, which eased the stress of being a young lawyer and father without significant business.47 Nagel, who read Adams’s diaries more closely, thought Adams considered gardening a scientific pursuit but also concluded that

Adams gardened as a recreational activity, to relieve stress. Nagel argues that Adams hoped to make something of the land he inherited, due to his industrious nature.48 To be sure, gardening on ancestral land, as his father and grandfather had done, was meaningful to Adams on a personal level. Yet Adams felt himself, as a Massachusetts resident, to be a participant in a regional pursuit, a community endeavor. He hoped he would be able to contribute toward the progress of agriculture in the Commonwealth. When Adams was elected President of the United States, gardening became an act of even greater significance.

46 Whelan, Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade, 117.

47 Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, 204-205.

48 Paul Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life, 141, 151. Nagel mentions Adams gardened more intently when he was troubled over his mother’s health, over his investments, and when his wife Louisa Catherine was not able to spend the summer with him.

Chapter III

The President’s House Garden and Tree Nursery

By the second decade of the nineteenth century, farmers in most of the states had increased enthusiasm for botanical progress in their nation. As President of the United

States, Adams had a budget to beautify the President’s House grounds and a paid

“scientific gardener” to nurture the plants and answer his questions. Adams spent many mornings in the presidential garden. He even discontinued his habitual spring walks at dawn and summer early morning swims to spend more time there. Adams planned experiments cultivating local woodland trees. Native trees grown from seed developed a healthier root system than those propagated by cuttings. These could be planted alongside similar nursery trees and studied as they matured.

In the 1820s the President’s House grounds had been graded, raked, and seeded with orchard grass and clover seed so it began to appear refined among the muddy, wild areas of the city.49 Jefferson had marked out areas to plant and defined carriage roads.

He enclosed the space with fencing. By 1824, Pennsylvania Avenue crossed in front of the mansion, following the city plan of architect Charles Bulfinch.50 President Adams kept the gardener who had served under Monroe’s administration, Charles Bizet, who had

49 Frederick L. Kramer, The White House Gardens: A History and Pictorial Record (New York: Great American Editions, 1973), 16.

50 William Seale, The President’s House: A History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; Washington, DC: In association with White House Historical Association, 2008), 167.

tended the presidential vegetable garden and supervised workers leveling the grounds to the north of the mansion.

Adams replaced Bizet when the grading of the north ground was done. Adams first hired a laborer John Foy then later John Ousley, an experienced and knowledgeable gardener. The fences were repaired and a tree nursery was begun of seedling native trees, specifically the ornate catalpa and chestnuts, the stately tulip poplars, oaks, and walnuts, and the billowy honey locust and willows.51 Adams planned to one day use some of the sapling trees he grew to add to the shade trees set out in boxes along Pennsylvania

Avenue. There were enough native seedling trees to add some to the newly created

Lafayette Square and augment the native plant collection at the national botanic garden begun by the Columbia Institute. 52

Next, Adams grew native and exotic mulberries then began ornamental tree and shrub plantings on the undeveloped President’s House grounds. He planted native oaks around the perimeter of the estate to shade the walks.53 He experimented with foreign plants that were sent to him from the small collection at the new botanic garden near the

Capitol. Plants and seeds came to him from nurserymen, merchants, and American diplomats abroad. His personal valet, Antoine, joined in natural history excursions and scoured the woods for the native plants and seeds he needed for the different projects underway each season. Adams had cold frames built to root the hundreds of seeds and

51 William Seale, The President’s House, 168. After the Adams administration, John Foy worked at the Capitol grounds and earned a better salary than the more experienced John Ousley, who complained to John Quincy Adams about the situation.

52 Therese O’Malley, “Art and Science in American Landscape Architecture: The National Mall, Washington, D.C., 1791-1852,” Ph.D., Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1989, 118-119. The boxes were built around the trees to keep the pigs from chewing on the bark of the trees.

53 Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, 123.

cuttings he acquired.54 In June of 1827 he noted, “In this small garden of not less than two acres there are forest and fruit trees, shrubs, hedges, esculent vegetables, kitchen and medicinal herbs, hot house plants, flowers and weeds to the amount, I conjecture, of at least one thousand.” By May of 1828 Adams counted native forest trees and exotic trials coming up from seed: “Eighty-two black walnuts along the northern border; twenty-one chestnuts, thirty oaks, twenty-five more black walnuts, and eight cork oaks.” There were also many rows of white mulberry trees planted by John Foy. 55

As gardeners from around the country heard about the President’s landscaping projects, they sent seeds and their encouragement. In compliance with a request, Thomas

Peter sent some chestnuts that came from trees planted by his father who had grown his trees from seeds sent to him by President Washington.56 William Prince, nurseryman and son of William Prince the creator of the Linnaean Botanic Garden in New York, sent a letter of support and a horticultural pamphlet to Adams, “a fellow scientific gardener”:

I send to you my short Treatise on Horticulture that you may thereby judge what degree of progress our country is making in that department of science …. E Price Greenleaf of Quincy mentioned …. in a recent letter that you felt a desire to visit my garden and it would be a source of great pleasure and pride to me that you do so at any period … it has ever been the first wish of my heart to contribute (my work) to the public zeal and to evince to the world that our country could at last equal the proudest in Europe. 57

54 Seale, The President’s House, 169.

55 Frederick L. Kramer, 18.

56 Edward S. Dana and Charles Schubert, A Century of Science in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918), 19.

57 The Adams Family, Microfilms of the Adams Papers. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954- . Reel 486 Letters Received and other Loose Papers, n.p.

Even the members of Congress who were watching the expenditures on public buildings valued Adams’s the landscape gardening efforts. A report on the President’s

House grounds in 1829 by James Ogle, Congressman from Pennsylvania, was initially critical of the expense incurred during the John Quincy Adams administration, especially the tree nursery on the site. However, Ogle described the positive effects of the

“President’s Mansion” and the “President’s Garden”:

Prior to the disbursement of these appropriations, the grounds presented a rude, uneven, and shapeless appearance; not a few of the pristine sandy knolls and hollows still remained. .… the grounds of the President were brought into fine condition, the fences were put in excellent order, the “high” hills were made plain, and the “deep” valleys were made smooth, and the entire grounds by the close of Mr. Adams’ Presidency wore a style and finish quite acceptable to the taste and judgment of our plain, republican farmers. 58

The First Family Studies Botany

While he gardened, President Adams began studying the botanical names of plants. Each week he learned the names of the plants as they flowered. Many were the most popular garden flowers of the eighteenth century.59 He discussed his discoveries in the evenings with his family. Adams family lore, stories from John Quincy’s grandchildren’s generation, had reported that Adams tended to sprout seeds in glass jars

58 Kramer, The White House Gardens, 33. One tree Adams planted survived into the twentieth century, an American elm on the south grounds, east “Jefferson’s mound.” In the twentieth century the decayed tree had to be removed. First Lady Barbara Bush oversaw the replanting of a propagule of the original elm in the same place.

59 Noted on June 18, 1827, John Quincy Adams diary 37, 11 November 1825 - 24 June 1828, page 225 [electronic edition]. Ann Leighton lists the most popular flowers of the era in her book, American Gardens in the Nineteenth Century: For Comfort and Affluence,” (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1987).

or put cocoons of moths in fine cups or boxes then misplace them on the bookshelves in his study. The stories are true. Adams records in his diary starting seeds in clay pots, glass tumblers, or wine crates filled with earth. He noted reading about the technique of sprouting seeds in glass jars from Du Hamel as an easy experiment to watch the “first process of vegetation.” 60 This was an excellent method to share his enthusiasm for botany with his family.

Although other stories report Adams did not like flowers and that he only planted trees, this is not true. Adams did have a passion for native woodland trees but he also enjoyed learning about all the traditional kitchen garden plants, native and exotic flowers, the wild flowers, and even the local weeds. Supportive of the President’s passions, Mrs.

Adams, her sister Caroline, and her nieces Abigail Smith and Elizabeth Coombs Adams began to study and draw the various fruits and leaves of forest trees that were important to the President. 61 In April and June of 1826 Mrs. Adams identified leaves of an oak

Adams had picked by using the illustrated botany by Andre Michaux, North American

Sylva. She painted an oak leaf as it was illustrated in Michaux’s botany, as a study. The next summer, Adams noted in his diary he picked three twigs of oaks from College Hill on June 14, 1827, a post oak, a black oak, and an unknown oak he called a Black Jack

Oak, for his wife to paint. President Adam’s nieces also drew some of his plant cuttings and gardening experiments of seedlings in pots.

60 Noted on June 18, 1827, John Quincy Adams diary 37, 11 November 1825 - 24 June 1828, page 225 [electronic edition]. Du Hamal du Monceau. Des Semis et Plantations des Arbre, 1760.

61 Various relatives lived with the first family over the years. Abigail was the daughter of John Quincy’s brother Thomas. Her work shows the talent of a trained botanical illustrator. There are nine other drawings in the collection at the Adams National Historical Park; two are done by Mrs. Louisa Catherine Adams when she was First Lady. Elizabeth Coombs Adams (Eliza) also studied botanical illustration with her sister in the 1830s, drawing some of the experiments at Peace Field for John Quincy Adams.

Adams treasured sharing the cultivation of plants with the family. Louisa

Catherine began to spin domestic silk. Their son John was following the local grain industry and running a stone mill. Several of the flowers grown in the Presidents House

Garden were also later planted in the family kitchen garden at Peacefield. These include asters, balloon flowers, coxcomb, chrysanthemum, daisies, foxgloves, white double hollyhocks, larkspur delphinium, lupines, mock orange, morning glory, Oriental poppy,

African and French marigolds, snapdragons, and Veronica. Adams believed he and his family were participants in the work to advance the understanding of American agriculture. (See the appendix Table 3 for a complete list of what was grown at the White

House. See a sample of the botanical illustrations created by the First Lady and her niece in Figures 1, 2, and 3.)

Landscape Gardening in the Federal City

In an essay on the emerging profession of landscape gardening in America, historian Therese O’Malley has noted the influence of Adams among the members of the

Washington scientific community in landscaping the White House grounds and

Pennsylvania Avenue. During the early decades of the nineteenth century she describes an interconnectedness of the work among horticulturists, plant hunters, garden designers, garden writers and the botanists of the commercial nurseries in the Atlantic states.62

They knew each other socially and supported each other professionally. O’Malley mentions the camaraderie and respect Adams had among this society but it is equally

62 Therese O’Malley, “From Practice to Theory: The Emerging Profession of Landscape Gardening in Early Nineteenth-Century America” in Botanical Progress, Horticultural Innovations and Cultural Changes (Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 231.

important that Adams had a significant impact on the emerging profession of landscape gardening in the federal city.

Adams deserves mention for his contribution to the American aesthetic in the design of public spaces in the federal city. He continued in the work planned by

Jefferson to beautify the White House grounds. Although he did not leave sketches of his design intent as Jefferson had done, Adams discussed his ideas for the White House grounds, the new federal botanic garden, and Pennsylvania Avenue with nurserymen, landscape gardeners, and architects. His preference for a particularly American adaptation of the gardenesque and picturesque styles of design, without unnecessary

“embellishment” is described in his journals. 63 With knowledge of his design aesthetic we can see his influence on the architect Benjamin Latrobe and on the young nurseryman and student of landscape gardening, Andrew Jackson Downing.

Adams preferred a design style that was typical of the well-read and civic-minded men of the early nineteenth century who promoted public improvements and the beautification of town centers, major streets, and public buildings. These gentlemen who had visited the American public squares of Boston, Charleston, New Haven, New York, or Philadelphia understood the importance of landscaped town centers. These spaces were public garden areas, built to improve nature through the application of art and science. The garden makers and those who financed the work believed a well-designed public plaza, planted with specimen shade trees and interesting ornamental plants, would

63 Whately described the picturesque as a style of design that includes the greatest beauties of nature as a “landskip painter” would select them. J.C. Loudon describes the gardenesque style as imitating nature but trees and shrubs must be displayed individually, not massed like the woods. There should be room so the beauty of the individual tree or shrub can be enjoyed. Therese O’Malley, Keywords in American Landscape Design (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2010), 506, 297.

attract the public, improve commerce, enlighten the curious, and generally improve people’s morals.64 Adams’s interest in continuing the work on the beautification of the

President’s House and Lafayette Square was not unusual but his dedication to the effort, with a wholehearted study of botany, design, and a promotion for urban, native woodland tree planting shows an effort equaling the passion of Thomas Jefferson during his administration.

In order to promote support for his work, Adams shared his ideas with the landscape gardeners who made initial attempts at beautifying the avenues of the city and the grounds of the Capitol. The construction of the Capitol began to take shape before the Adams administration but took on a style appropriate for an American scientific garden, in the manner described by John Claudius Loudon, as Adams and Latrobe worked on the plan. This included clumps of specimen trees or ornamental shrubs placed at advantageous turns among curved pedestrian walks. The addition of bold blocks of colorful perennial flowers planted among the shrubs was also most likely discussed as this was the fashion and a style described by Loudon and admired by Adams in Germany.

Adams believed the garden was a place for discovery as well as enjoyment. He preferred places along the roads and walks of a public facility for strolling and places to rest and enjoy carefully crafted views of the native woods or significant public buildings.

Like Latrobe, he disliked the frivolous embellishments of clipped trees and topiary or urns and statuary for an American garden.65 His style can be understood through his description of a pleasure ground he visited at the Medford home of Peter Chardon

64 Therese O’Malley, “Art and Science in American Landscape Architecture,” 111.

65 Therese O’Malley, “Art and Science in the Design of Botanic Gardens, 1730-1830,” Garden History, Issues, Approaches, Methods (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1992), 293.

Brooks. Adams thought the Brooks estate had a proper balance of water and wood and local scenery with a focus on utility but the statuary was meaningless and detracted from the effect.

Friday before breakfast I took a walk with Mr. Brooks round his garden and grounds, which are laid out with great neatness, to much utility; not without ornament and although at great expense, with a very judicious economy. The Middlesex Canal forms a boundary to the garden and over it he has thrown a bridge of granite which gives him the benefit of a miles walk on the western border of the canal. He has flourishing thorn hedges both Virginian and English and the growth of the native is far more luxuriant .... He has a great variety of flowers and abundance of water .... a multitude of trees, forest and fruit – foreign and indigenous and a few marble statues from Italy. This and the prospects are the two points upon which I think the place susceptible of improvement. There are many Country Seats in this neighborhood of more splendor, magnificence and expense. I wish there were one with indications of mind and morals – a large and valuable library – Samples of painting and sculpture pregnant with Instruction. Interesting Portraits of our Countrymen, by native Artists. Historical Pictures, illustrations of memorable events in our History. 66

Although he was only a school boy during John Quincy Adams’s presidency, the work in ornamental shade tree planting in the federal city must have influenced the young

Andrew Jackson Downing. His father was a tree nurseryman and his brother worked in the business. Street tree planting was an ongoing project in the federal city in the 1830s.

(The trees Jefferson planted along Pennsylvania Avenue had a short life span. His plan for double allees of trees along the avenue was never completed. Other trees were casualties of abuse by animals or carriages.)

66 Noted on September 4, 1829, John Quincy Adams diary 36, 1 January 1825 - 30 September 1830, page 248 and 249 [electronic edition].

By the time Andrew Jackson Downing was a young nurseryman and horticulturist he did correspond with John Quincy Adams.67 Downing eventually married Adam’s grandniece, Caroline de Windt. It was through writing about appropriate designs for the suburban gardener that Downing became a popular landscape gardener. Downing’s work helped Americans understand the value of trees in the suburban landscape for both economic and aesthetic reasons.68 Eventually, by request of President Filmore, Downing was planning to design an appropriate landscape for the national mall between the

Capitol and the President’s House.

The American aesthetic reflected a transformation of the European garden designs. As it evolved, it showed sensitivity to ecological conditions. 69 This is seen in

Adams’s preference for local American trees to ornament public walks and the

President’s House grounds. Adams surely influenced Downing and other scientific gardeners in Washington. Downing adopted the picturesque style of John Claudius

Loudon for American ground, using native plants, wood, stone, and garden furnishings in his designs.70 Further research into the communications between Adams and federal city

67 See John Quincy Adams diary 45, 1 January 1845-10 August 1846, page 192 [electronic edition]. “My sister’s only daughter is married to John Peter de Windt of Cedar Grove, Fishkill Landing, NY and has a large family of children. Her eldest daughter Caroline is married to Andrew Jackson Downing of Newburgh, NY.” Note Andrew Jackson Davis, an architect, was Downing’s frequent collaborator. Both were business associates of Charles Francis Adams, advising him on the design of his home in Quincy, Massachusetts on the hill above Peace Field.

68 Phillip Pauly, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 89. Downing wrote on the benefits of recreational horticulture in gardening and horticulture magazines. An 1841 edition of Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture by Downing was dedicated to President John Quincy Adams.

69 Therese O’Malley, “Appropriation and Adaptation: Early Gardening Literature in America,” Huntington Library Quarterly 55, no. 3 (San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 1992): 427.

70 Thomas J. Schlereth. “Early North American Arboreta,” Garden History Society 35 (2007): 205. Downing submitted a plan for the Mall, the White House Grounds, and the new Smithsonian Institution grounds to President Fillmore in 1850.

landscape architects and designers would clarify the extent of Adams’s influence on their work.

Adams acquired many of his ideas on landscaping through study. He read articles of John Claudius Loudon, the Scottish landscape gardener and author as well as Thomas

Whately’s, Observations on Modern Gardening (1771). Here the British practice of gardening and the design theory is described in a tour-book format. The symbolic meanings and allegories to art and literature recalled in the use of clumps of woods, bodies of water, meandering paths, ornamental shrubs, bridge styles, statuary, and the garden “folly” is discussed for each country estate reviewed. Adams also read Edmund

Burke’s 1757 essay On the Sublime and Beautiful, an analysis of how to design a landscape with an element of discovery that would surprise and delight the viewer in the way a great painting would. Adams reviewed a work by Hermann Pückler-Moskau, a

German prince, travel writer, and landscape gardener, who distilled the design ideas of the best English landscapers and adapted a simple, dramatic style for estates in Germany.

(Perhaps Adams was influenced by his bold use of color with annuals or the use of avenues lined with trees of a single species.) Adams studied Phillip Miller’s Gardener’s

Dictionary (1771). It describes the pleasures and benefits of work in the garden and gives a short history of famous gardens. Miller took care of a collection of American trees sent to him from Pennsylvania by America’s first botanist, John Bartram.

To learn more on the conservation of forests, Adams read Humphrey Marshall’s book, the first work on native woodland trees published in America, Arbustum

Americanum (1785). Marshall influenced many members of the American Philosophical

Society, including Adams, who were concerned with the unnecessary extensive

deforestation to prepare farm land. Adams knew some gentlemen farmers believed forest depletion caused longer summers, later autumns, shorter winters, and lighter and less lasting snows. Benjamin Rush, for example, proposed that the lack of forests near

Philadelphia contributed to a decrease in air quality and more sickly people during hot summers.71 While reading on how to identify, grow, and care for trees in John Evelyn’s

Sylva (1641) Adams also found information on the cultural meaning of trees and the best uses of them in the park or wooded area of an estate. Evelyn urged his readers to conserve some wood for the ornament and service of their country. Similarly, in

Michaux’s North American Sylva (1817-1819) the best use of American native forest trees for the arts and commerce is described. Adams believed he could influence legislators to support the conservation of forested areas if he began the work by creating a few successful forest preserves.

A Federal Oak Forest Preserve and Cultivated Live Oak Farm

Perhaps Adams’s activities in the preservation of the nation’s forest resources were more significant than his landscaping at the White House. As president he put into action two projects toward initiating a program in national forest conservation. He began with a plan to create a cultivated forest of oak trees that would be used for timber production on land in Florida that had once been a military base. With the Naval Timber

Reserve Act of 1827, land was purchased in the new territory of Florida to preserve native oak trees. Adams considered that the timber was important for the country’s national defense as the wood was needed to build ships. Adams was aware of the value

71 Gilbert Chinard. “The American Philosophical Society and the Early History of Forestry in America,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 89, no.2 (July, 1945): 456.

of both American old growth pine and the various native, American oaks that were valued in Europe for their wood.72 Some American oaks lived for two centuries or more.

With its dense wood, it was considered a patriarch among trees in England and America, and oak wood was used for beams to frame buildings and planks for ship building. 73

Adams hoped his cultivated forest would be cared for by the next generation of federal officials. He explained his intent in a letter to Charles Francis Adams: “My passion is for hard, heavy, long-lived wood, to be raised from the nut or seed-requiring a century to come to maturity and then to shelter, shade or bear Columbia’s thunder o’er the deep for one or two centuries more.” 74

Adams also wanted to grow cultivated oaks from seed on 30,000 acres of land in a forest preserve in Santa Rosa, near Pensacola Bay, West Florida.75 The landowner,

Henry Marie Brackenridge, was a tree grower with a declining orange grove. He offered to sell his land and superintend the new live oak plantation with the condition that he could keep a small plot of his orange trees. In November of 1827, President Adams consulted Colonel Isaac Roberdeau of the topographical engineers who had returned from a survey of the Isthmus of Florida. The oak plantation was eventually funded and

72 At the time of the American Revolution Great Britain had used most of their old growth oak trees in ship building. The wood of younger trees was not as dense as the prized larger, old trees so its use to build ships for the British navy caused inferior ships that tended to rot. By the end of the eighteenth century Britain looked to America for timber. See Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 196. In America the black oak was more commonly used for shingles and rails, the bark of the chestnut oak was best used for tanning leather, the scarlet oak was used for cooperage, plows, wagons, and it made the best chairs. While white oak staves improved the flavor of wine in oak barrels, red oak was used to make barrels that held dry goods such as flour. See Shelia Connor, New England Natives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 65.

73 Nathan Bailey, Universal Etymological English Dictionary (London: 1759).

74 William R. Adams, “Florida Live Oak Farm of John Quincy Adams,” Florida Historical Quarterly 51, no. 2 (October 1972): 134.

75 Schlereth, “Early North American Arboreta,” 196-216, 205 and 209.

100,000 live oak acorns were planted.76 The trees were watered and pruned for uniform growth and straight trunks. Even after his presidency ended, Adams received letters on the progress of the preserve while tending his own oaks and apple saplings in Quincy,

Massachusetts. In August of 1830 Adams noted in his diary he had received reports the plantation of live oaks was doing well. With pride in his success, he was hopeful the project would one day prove profitable.

Continued Experimental Gardening at the Homestead Farm

Each season that John Quincy Adams and his family were in Quincy, they grew most of their food in the kitchen garden and tended to root crops or grains with the help of hired farmhands. They enjoyed all the traditional New England vegetables from the homestead garden: beets, cabbages, carrots, cucumbers, green corn, peas, potatoes, rhubarb, radishes, string beans, parsnips, raspberries, turnips and summer squash. 77

Adams decided to increase his experimentation with cultivated forest trees on a tract of land he inherited at Mount Wollaston after his mother’s death. He hoped to develop more vigorous trees than those that sprang up in the woods naturally. Perhaps it was his successful live oak experiment that encouraged him to try a tree nursery of native oaks in

Quincy.

In 1828 and 1829, Adams was surveying and inventorying the land he inherited.

He planned to lease some farmland to other farmers and to cultivate some fields on his land himself. At Peace Field improvements on the farm included renovating the house

76 Adams, “Florida Live Oak Farm of John Quincy Adams,” 129 and 138.

77 Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, 123. See also John Quincy Adams diary, November 23, 1827.

and experimenting with crops. He updated the fireplaces in the house with new soapstone linings and had custom bookshelves built all around the room in his study. He began a trial with Thayer’s Laghorn Wheat, which was successful until a summer storm crushed the crop.78 Perhaps he hoped to grow wheat to supply his son John’s grain mill in the City of Washington. He sprouted the seeds of all the best new fruits he tasted. If he created a self-imposed pressure to cultivate a new fruit variety not common in the

Boston area, this was also the focus of other gentlemen he knew in both the

Massachusetts Society for the Preservation of Agriculture and the Massachusetts

Horticultural Society.79

Adams found a pot with tamarind and persimmon seeds that was planted from the fruits of grafted trees in 1828. The seedlings sprouted a few months later, then some eventually produced flower buds, resolving a question of the fertility of the fruits of grafted trees. He could not find literature on this in his horticulture books. His delight with the success of the experiment must have made an impression on his niece, Abigail

Smith Adams. She documented the project by painting the seedlings in their pot.80 (See a copy of the watercolor in the Appendix, Figure 3.)

Adams began planting more trees at home in the 1830s. He felt there were not enough nurserymen or farmers growing woodland trees to replace those harvested from the previous generation of farmers. In the past he had been using the ruins of the old

78 Noted on July 30, 1830, John Quincy Adams diary 36, 1 January 1825 - 30 September 1830, page 510 [electronic edition].

79William C. Strong, A. B . Muzzey, and E. Lewis Sturtevant, History of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 1829-1878 (Boston: 1880), 129. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society excelled in trees, New York Horticultural Society in flowers, and the Boston Horticultural Society excelled in fruits.

80 Richard David Johnson. “Books in the Life of John Quincy Adams,” MA Thesis, University of Chicago, 1957, 26. This indicates Adams grew tender plants indoors at the White House like Jefferson did.

Vassall summer house at the end of the kitchen garden as a pit-house to start seedling trees. After reading an article on climate and horticulture from a local scientific journal he developed a tree nursery on the slope of the land north of the kitchen garden. Here his

“tree seminary” would be protected from the injurious effect of the dew on the seedlings.81

Some of the saplings would be transferred to the farm at Mount Wollaston. To that end, Adams leased a tenant house on the Mount Wollaston land to a young man,

Alphonsus Spear, for five years. Spear was to prepare the ground for a new orchard.

Meanwhile, Adams gathered seeds of the best specimens of local trees during regular walks. He stored them until he could revisit Mount Wollaston, then he planted rows of acorns, walnuts, apples and other seeds to begin a cultivated forest. He added to these rows each season he was in Quincy. He carried on in this way for many years as he collected oaks of local varieties and exotic seeds sent to him by friends. Over the years his brother and sons did their turn at this duty by either planting or tending to oak and apple sapling trees at the Mount Wollaston farm. Spear stayed on as well, to farm the land and tend to the trees.

In October of 1831 Mrs. Adams and her husband’s brother, Thomas, helped

John Quincy search for the best acorns on their different excursions and fishing trips. By

November Adams planted 100 trees at his Mount Wollaston farm with his hired assistants. He set out seeds of red oaks and black oaks, “Druid Gray” oaks, and what he

81 Noted on July 9, 1831, John Quincy Adams diary 38, 1 October 1830 - 24 March 1832, page 222 [electronic edition]. Adams read Frederick Daniel on climate in the sixth volume of the Transactions of the Horticulture Society and he read Dr. Well’s essay on dew.

called “Middle Pasture oaks.” 82 By the spring of 1833 he began to gather and plant horse chestnuts and elm seeds at both his Penn’s Hill Valley land and the Mount

Wollaston farm. Adams also noted he planted buttonwood (sycamore) and maple seeds from Philadelphia, and local hickory seedling trees.

Adams worked in the garden at Peace Field with his neighbor and walking partner, E. Price Greenleaf. Charles Francis Adams assisted on occasion. Greenleaf was adept at grafting choice cuttings of fruit trees on to a hardy rootstalk or a parent plant. He helped Adams with bud grafting, inserting a single branch bud of a select fruit tree on to a part of a vigorous growing stem of another tree.83 Over the years they worked to bud many varieties of fruit trees. He also planted from seed some Janneton and Jargonelle pears and local cherries given to him by Greenleaf. As the years progressed, Greenleaf continued to visit in autumn, at Adams’s request, to assist with grafting new fruits on to hardy tree stocks. Adams tried growing apricots, Catherine pears, Endicott pears, Marsh pears, Solomon Thayer nectarines, Sugar pears, Squantum pears, and Wollaston apples; he planted apricots and Perkins peaches from the stone. He listed White Heart and Back

Heart cherries and White mulberry as further propagation experiments from the seed.

Adams also tried growing various grape vines. He hoped to study entomology more closely, thinking of the field as an area of science, “which might be improved to great advantage by practical farmers.” 84

82 Noted on October 8, and other days that month in 1831. See John Quincy Adams diary 47, "Rubbish I," diary and miscellaneous entries, 11 June 1829 - 31 October 1833, page 252 [electronic edition].

83 Nagel, John Quincy Adams, 352. A sharp knife is used and a steady, firm, and dexterous hand is essential.

84 Noted on May 5, 1834, John Quincy Adams diary 39, 1 December 1832 - 31 May 1835, page 368 [electronic edition].

Along with his berry brambles and strawberry patches, Adams also tried strawberries in pots. He had always enjoyed strawberries and currants from his mother’s kitchen garden. In efforts to improve on what he brought to the table, and perhaps to show a new variety at the weekly horticultural society fair, Adams tried Downton strawberries, Kean strawberries, Red Garden strawberries, and White Garden strawberries. He planted them in different locations all over the farm, in different soils and exposures for sun in an effort to determine why some patches bore more fruit than others. (It is unclear whether he knew strawberry plants with male flowers, the pollinators, were needed in a strawberry patch even though they did not bear fruit.) 85

Adams also tried Perkins currants, red currants, and white currants in various years.

In August of 1833, Adams traveled to New Hampshire. He noted in his diary fields of Indian corn, oats, rye, flax, and buckwheat but few orchards and only moderate- sized forest trees. This must have increased his determination to plant trees for New

England. His thoughts on his seedling trees show a joy in his dedication:

No pane of life has ever yielded me so much quiet contentment as that which I enjoy with my family in health about me, totally uninterrupted by visitors and cultivating in such health as I have, my seedling plants and trees; laboring bodily from three to four hours a day upon horticultural experiments, all hitherto fruitless, but some few of them beginning to promise fruits. Alteri Seculo (to another world) is the motto of all my plantations; but I am yet sensible and conscious that this life of pleasure is not a life of profit. 86

The next season Adams planted more acorns and began planting different varieties of peach seeds. It is not redundant to describe a few more experiments here

85 Pauly, Fruit and Plains, 71.

86 Noted on June 22, 1833, John Quincy Adams diary 31, 1 January 1819 - 20 March 1821, page 167 [electronic edition]. John Clark of Concord was recognized by the agricultural society for his one acre plantation of two-year-old white oak saplings in 1829 but the ground was covered with grasses and weeds. See MHS Drawer D, the Massachusetts Agricultural Society.

because Adams was able to validate some hypothesis through them. He began by transplanting sapling trees from his nursery to other areas of the farm and orchard. He was reluctant to transplant his saplings to a field when they matured because he knew some would be lost due to the shock of the transplant. However, he was compelled to make room for further experiments with acorns and fruit stones. On June 18, 1834, he wrote, with blistered hands:

I have now so large a number of seedling trees of various kinds that I know not what to do with many of them. My nursery has the appearance of a little forest and there is no room for any new plantation there. Three large patches of my garden, one in the same condition and the forest trees are growing to a size which makes it necessary that they should be soon removed. In my new plantation under the northern fence of my eastern close, the oaks continue to come up daily. There are now 55 (oak saplings). 87

In 1836 his fruit trees were languishing. After returning from a visit to the elaborate country seat of Edward Biddle on the banks of the Delaware River near

Andalusia, Adams returned home to find no fruits on his trees. He saw no peaches or apricots, no nectarines or cherries. His Baldwin apple trees grown from seed were girdled by field mice. There were only a few plums on one tree in the garden! Adams also found mixed results at his Mount Wollaston farm that year. In July he noted six hundred, six-year-old trees that grew in two places, on an open field and in an area bordered with forest trees. His technique of letting seedlings sprout up in field grasses, which shaded the seedlings from the summer sun, seemed to be successful. (He had learned this from Heusler’s Farmers Works.) 88 Although many of the trees did not

87 John Quincy Adams diary 40, 1 June 1835 - 5 December 1836, page 18 [electronic edition].

88 Noted on July 20, 1836. Heusler was the first trained gardener to be employed in America. A native of Landau (Alsace Province) Germany, he came to America in 1780 after working and the King of

survive the winters well (they died back, then re-sprouted) the plantation with the border of forest trees around it, of oaks, chestnuts, and shagbark walnuts looked more promising.

Adams was not deterred from starting new experiments with Chinese mulberry,

Rohan potatoes, Russelton apples, winter apples, and his own “Woodhouse apple.” 89

And yet both Charles Francis Adams and his son Henry Adams were skeptical of the pomology efforts of their father and grandfather. Charles felt that his father knew more theory than practical gardening. Henry Adams, who fondly remembered the sights and smells of the farm as a young boy, noted being frustrated that his grandfather would save the best, ripest peaches and pears to rot on a shelf so he could collect the seeds to plant.

He thought Adams was more concerned with the process than with the results of gardening.90 Adams explained his enthusiasm for growing woodland and fruit trees in several letters to Charles Francis. In a private letter of May 11, 1828, sent from

Washington Adams wrote:

The cultivation of forest trees has scarcely received any attention in this country. Yet is it [sic] one of the most important branches of political economy. In the most powerful and distinguished European Countries it forms the subject of voluminous legislation; and in some is under the superintendence of a special ministerial department. Here we have almost totally neglected it. ... In my public station I have taken such measures as were practical to stir up the spirit of congress to some estimation of its importance.

Holland’s gardener. He was employed by John Tracy of Newburyport and Elias Haskell Derby of Danvers. Adams had visited these gardens as a law student. See also Strong, History of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 31.

89 A Chinese mulberry was acquired from “Mr. Coperwait’s” estate in Pennsylvania. “Mr. Cooper” gave him Rohan potatoes. “Mr. Colman,” the State Commissioner of Agriculture, gave him French and American potatoes. He was starting new, seedling Mazzard cherry trees. A large Russelton apple tree at Charles’s house was bearing fine apples and a Woodhouse apple tree near the summerhouse cellar also fruited well. Noted on Sept 3, 1844 and August 10, 1844. See also diary August 6, 1845. John Quincy Adams diary 44, 9 July 1843 - 31 December 1844, page 438 and 414 [electronic edition].

90 Joseph Whelan, Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 118, 119.

In another letter dated May 21, 1828 Adams wrote:

Your remark that my passion for planting has come upon me in my old age … is not altogether correct. I had the taste at an earlier period of life, but without the means of indulging it. I did not indeed at that time consider it as a subject of National interest; nor form projects in which it was connected with results to survive me for Ages. … Had it been otherwise I should certainly have had by this time a well grown forest. 91

If the neighboring farmers and out-of-town visitors thought Adams was a bit eccentric in his outdoor exercise, weeding and digging among his tree nursery, officials of the agricultural society did not. A select committee sent to review the farms of members of the Middlesex Agricultural Society visited John Quincy Adams’s farm in early1832. They reported that the plantations showed a serious effort and held promise for success. They noted a handsome mulberry hedge dividing his kitchen garden from other parts of the farm.

The plantation of Mr. Adams consists principally of an extensive sowing of the last spring. Mr. Adams was absent when the committee viewed. The trees appeared to the committee to be cultivated to serve not only for food for the silk worms but as a fence for subdividing his lands. They were in a fine healthy state and of good promise. 92

On another occasion in 1839, Colman, the Massachusetts Commissioner for

Agriculture, made some inquiries of John Quincy Adams’s farming activities. Adams was asked to fill out a printed sheet of inquiry related to farming. He noted his activities in farming were “all by proxy.” His farmer, J. Carr, would be able to answer the

91 Adams Family Papers, Microfilms of the Adams Papers. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954-. Reel 148, “Private” Letter book, 10 Feb. 1825- 13 March 1829., n.p.

92 Massachusetts Historical Society. Massachusetts Society for the Preservation of Agriculture Records. Folder IV, Drawer D, Box 21, Folder 16. Report from the Committee of the Middlesex Agricultural Society on various farms, October 13, 1832. The committee members were Luke Fiske, Jonathan Fries and James Brown.

inquiries in better detail. 93 Adams gave a similar questionnaire to Alphonsus Spear for the Mount Wollaston farm. Adams wanted the information to be thoroughly reported to the state. By this time he was proudly able to report that his efforts with forest trees at

Mount Wollaston were showing some success. 94 Six hundred trees, including ash trees, elms, English oaks, and Baldwin apples were growing well without cultivation. 95 In

October of 1839 Adams noted he even had a few fruits worthy of being exhibited at the

Massachusetts Horticultural Society horticultural exhibition. 96

In the 1840s Adams began a peach orchard at his Mount Wollaston farm. He also planned to enlarge his apple orchard there. He selected peaches from his nursery and new Baldwin Apples from 40 trees he grew from scions on dwarf root stalks. The scions were given to Adams by Reverend Edward Brooks of Medford. (Evidently Brooks sent his son to Connecticut to obtain cuttings from the original Baldwin apple for the trees at the Brooks farm.) 97 That summer Adams had to remove many apple saplings from his kitchen garden and transplant them in the orchard, to make room for vegetables for the table. In 1843 he tried planting Caplimonte pears and Dickinson’s pears. Again in 1843

Adams picked cherries from his own trees and preserved them in jars with rum.

93 Noted on June 12, 1839, John Quincy Adams diary 42, 1 January 1839 - 28 July 1840, page 111 [electronic edition].

94 Noted on July 7 and July 17, 1836. Mr. Biddle had a view of the river and a piazza supported by columns. His grounds had mature oak, ash, beech, and pine trees among others. He had two large, cold- greenhouses for the cultivation of at least six varieties of grapes.

95 Noted on July 20 and July 22, 1836, John Quincy Adams diary 48, "Rubbish II," diary and miscellaneous entries, 20 May 1820 - June 1843, page 641 [electronic edition].

96 Noted on October 7, 1839, John Quincy Adams diary 42, 1 January 1839 - 28 July 1840, page 227 [electronic edition].

97 Charles Hammond, “’Where The Arts and the Virtues Unite’: Country Life Near Boston, 1637- 1864,” Ph. D. Diss., (Boston University, 1982), 220.

Adams continued to plant tree seedlings through 1845. He nurtured an orange seedling, sprouted in a spot of good soil from a seed he had brought home in his pocket from Nicholas Biddle’s country seat at Andalusia. By October, before he headed south for Washington City, he had it dug up and planted in a pot that he brought indoors. He asked Mrs. Kirk, the wife of his farm hand, if she would take care of the potted orange tree over the winter. 98

Adams also grew flowers. He planted some seeds of a double flowering althaea to the east side of the house one year. He described viewing his parent’s althaea shrubs outside his office window almost annually during his summer residency from the 1830s through 1847. 99 Charles Francis continued to assist his father in the garden. They attended programs at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society together. One year John

Quincy longed for winter apple cuttings and Duares plums, seeds or cuttings, to plant in the fruit trials garden. He and Charles most likely had tasted them at the Horticulture

Society’s weekly show of the best fruits. Greenleaf continued to visit Peace Field at

Adams’s request. Together they increased the latest desirable varieties of fruits on the farm. Adams continued to be delighted by the annual display of ornamental flowers. In

1839, Adams wrote in a notebook:

This afternoon as I had sent to request he would, and bud several apple trees in the garden and nursery with Yellow Harvest buds which Mr. Loring gave me yesterday and with Spitzenburg buds which he brought with him. Also Sundry

98 Noted on Oct 3, 1839, John Quincy Adams diary 42, 1 January 1839 - 28 July 1840, page 160 [electronic edition].

99 Noted on May 22, 1839, See also July 24, 1830, August 9, 1834. John Quincy Adams diary 50, "Rubbish IV," diary and miscellaneous entries, 1 January 1827 - February 1848, page 614 [electronic edition].

Pear Stocks with Bartlett Pear buds. Yesterday morning appeared the first flower upon the eastern most Althea from my chamber window. 100

Gardening with Grandchildren

John Quincy Adams recorded family events and memories of the grandchildren’s activities in his diaries, mixed on the same pages as lists of new trials in the garden.

Adams noted in September of 1839 Charles’s oldest son (named John Quincy) was seven years old and in the tree seminary there were some vibrant peaches and Nova

Scotia plums. Alongside notes of his treasured seedling beds were records of seeds he planted with his granddaughters. Adams enticed Mary Louisa and Fanny (Georgiana

Frances) to garden with him. They each had their own a plot of seedling fruit trees marked with a wooden label. Various seeds were harvested and planted over the years as they tried to grow their own apple and plum trees. After Fanny died from a childhood illness, John Quincy could barely go to her special seed bed. He wrote:

there is a black currant bush and an apple seedling growing in the Georgiana patch where the violet blossomed through the whole last summer. I cannot approach the plant but with sweat and bitter tears. 101

In the late 1840s Adams’s attention turned toward astronomy but he continued regular exercise in his garden, weeding, watering, pruning, and harvesting fruits. He regretted he had not begun to plant native trees thirty years earlier to raise a forest of mixed red and white oaks, shagbark hickory, horse chestnut, white walnut, and mulberry

100 Noted on Aug 3, 1839, John Quincy Adams diary 33, "Diary in Abridgment," 1 December 1821 - 31 December 1838 (with gaps), page 567 [electronic edition]. Also see The Adams Papers, Microfilm Reel 203, July, 1835.

101 Noted on September 22, 1840, John Quincy Adams diary 41, 5 December 1836 - 4 January 1837, 29 July 1840 - 31 December 1841, page 104 [electronic edition].

trees. 102 After years of work he had expected better results with his seedling trees. In

June of 1843 he wrote in his diary:

I am ashamed that after fifteen years search for the secret of raising trees from the seed I am as ignorant of it as before I began. I now despair of producing any useful result from my labors in this respect. But I have many trees at different stages of their growth, which I may cherish into useful trees …. This thought of leaving them to grow till my grandchildren shall remember me in pinching shelter and shade under them but… I have never been able to impart my methods to any one of them. If I could I have not doubted that my successor would have improved the art of planting and the science of dendrology. Among the rest he would have discovered the folly of wasting time upon the cultivation of trees not suited to the climate, apricots, nectarines, cork, willow and live oaks, and he would have found the art of cultivating pears, plums and cherries in perfection which I have sought in vain. 103

On Adams’s 78th birthday (in 1845) Andrew Jackson Downing, now a successful horticulturist and author, sent Adams a copy of his newly published book, The Fruits and

Fruit Trees of America as a birthday present. Included in the package was a note by

Downing that requested Adams to send him two small seedling trees, raised by his own hand, in the autumn. Downing planned to plant them on his own grounds as a remembrance of Adams, a fellow experimental fruit cultivator.104

102 Noted on October 8, 1846, John Quincy Adams diary 43, 1 January 1842 - 8 July 1843, page 291 [electronic edition]. The other entry telling when he met and spoke to Mr. Lawrence on the subscription is several months later.

103 Noted on June 21 and June 22, 1843, John Quincy Adams diary 43, 1 January 1842 - 8 July 1843, page 553 - 554 [electronic edition].

104 David Schyler, Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996), 85, 201. See also John Quincy Adams Diary, July 11, 1845.

Chapter IV

John Quincy Adams and American Scientific Societies

John Quincy Adams’s activities in advancing regional agriculture in New England as a farmer and gardener, while acting as Secretary of State, President, and Congressman were begun through personal contacts among other farmers and gardeners. Adams also worked to promote advances in agriculture and horticulture through his contacts with the scientific societies in New England and in Washington. As historian A. Hunter Dupree has written, the social process of science must be noted and recognized as part of the story of the evolution of American science. 105 Adams’s diaries reveal his involvement in the social networks of gentlemen science, nurserymen, botanists, and market farmers in America. His work to support and promote innovation among various scientific societies deserves consideration and recognition as essential and – given Adams’s prominence – publicly visible parts of this story.

In the early national period, many scientific societies were formed though many were short lived. American sciences developed regionally over the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Local governments of major economic centers in Kentucky,

Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia worked with scientific societies to create and fund needed public improvements. Physicians and natural philosophers in America had looked to scholars and institutions in the Old World during the eighteenth century for training and literature on the latest discoveries. They

105 A. Hunter Dupree, “A History of American Science: A Field Finds Itself,” American Historical Review 71, no. 3 (April 1966), 872.

read foreign journals and sent their sons to college at European universities. Gradually

Americans were able to train scientists in American colleges and universities. 106 The scientific farmers, especially in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia focused their talents and funds toward developing new inventions of useful implements and crop innovation in agriculture.107 They provided meeting places for lectures and discussions and shared correspondence among members. They financed natural history excursions to benefit their state, and facilitated an interstate sharing of specimens and information. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were part of this network.

The American Academy and the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture

The initial effort to organize the scientific minds of Eastern Massachusetts was begun by John Adams with the founding of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

108 It began in 1783 with financial support through subscriptions. Additional funds were secured from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Academy promoted research to benefit the community in three main areas: astronomy (which included geologists studying the earth’s magnetism), natural philosophy (including agriculture), and medicine

(including anatomy and chemistry). Early work of the Academy included experiments with fertilizers on crops and encouraging new, improved breeds of oxen and cows. John

106 Michael Kraus, “Scientific Relations Between Europe and America in the Eighteenth Century,” Scientific Monthly 55, no. 3 (Sep., 1942): 260.

107 George H. Daniels, Science in American Society: A Social History (New York: Knopf, 1971), 109.

108 John C. Greene, American Science in the Age of Jefferson (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984), 64.

Quincy attended meetings with his father and was appointed corresponding secretary in

1802. 109

In the years just after the Louisiana Purchase, as the country’s natural resources were being explored, the fields of botany, chemistry, electricity, geology, medicine, natural history, and physics became more specialized. John Quincy’s focus in botany and the discovery of new resources in America was typical of many scientific gentlemen. Yet

John Quincy’s pursuits in agriculture differed from his father’s. Both Adams men agreed that advances in agriculture and botany had a large potential to help America become economically prosperous as the country was expanding. John Adams believed progress in America should be focused on research for the practical arts, directly relating to improvements in agriculture and fostered without European involvement. John Quincy, however, felt this work could not be done without the involvement of the European scientific community. He knew American Colonial science profited from early exchanges of information and natural history specimens among European scientists through the efforts of Benjamin Franklin. The Philadelphia nurserymen Humphrey

Marshall and Bernard M’ Mahon also promoted a sharing of specifically botanical information on both sides of the Atlantic. David Hosack, a nurseryman and botanist in

New York and Dr. Jacob Bigelow, a physician and botanist from Boston, were other

American naturalists exchanging information with botanists in Great Britain.110

109 Bruce Winchester Stone, “The Role of Learned Societies in the Growth of Scientific Boston, 1780-1848,” Ph.D. Diss., (Boston University, 1974), 119. See also Diary entry for May 25, 1802. John Quincy Adams diary 24, 1 March 1795 - 31 December 1802, page 368 [electronic edition].

110 John C. Greene, “American Science Comes of Age 1780-1820,” Journal of American History 55, no. 1 (June, 1968): 29, 31.

John Quincy Adams nonetheless thought that the ultimate benefit of any science was improvement of his nation. For this reason, he promoted advances in American science based on original research. Among some Philadelphia gentlemen of science there were concerns that discoveries in America should be described and published in America by American naturalists. Adams’s primary concern was simply to stimulate gentlemen to consider their participation in botany as educated and moral individuals with a responsibility toward improvement of themselves and their state. He believed those who made this effort became the best citizens of their country. Furthermore, Adams believed a republic of good citizens would be devoted to improve the condition and economic success of his country. 111 Historian Raymond Stearns explains these seemingly minor steps in original research among gentlemen of science were vital because they led to the formulation of fundamental scientific ideas.112

Adams’s early work with scientific societies began with invitations to the meetings from individuals he knew. He and Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, the Hersey

Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physics at Harvard College, kept in contact with each other as they followed scientific developments in New England.113 As members of some of the same scientific societies in New England, they discussed American advances in agriculture, botany, chemistry, and natural history. Adams and Waterhouse contributed their academic talents and social networks in their work among a few

111 Greg Russell, “John Quincy Adams: Virtue and the Tragedy of the Statesman,” New England Quarterly, 69, no. 1 (March 1996): 59-60. Russell quoted from Adams’s speech before the Cincinnati Astronomical Society in 1843.

112 Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America, 683.

113 Donald Goodfellow, “Your Old Friend, John Quincy Adams,” New England Quarterly 21, no. 2, (June 1948): 217.

significant scientific societies in New England. Such societies often helped support the work in agriculture and botany at universities with generous donations toward salaries and facilities. By 1802 there were twenty-one full-time academic positions in science at the various universities or colleges in America.114

Through association with his father and with Waterhouse, Adams became known and popular among the scientific community in New England. Samuel Flagg Bemis has noted John Quincy Adams belonged to or was a corresponding member of nearly every learned society existing during his life. (By the second decade of the nineteenth century scientific societies were functioning in every American state.) 115 Nine of these societies are discussed here, beginning with Adams’s involvement with a Boston natural philosophy club, the American Academy for Arts and Sciences, and the Massachusetts

Society for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences.

The Boston Natural Philosophy Society

As a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers in 1802, Adams attended meetings of the new Boston Natural Philosophy Society. This group was composed of

Harvard affiliates and John Quincy’s old college mates who once held an evening tea club called the Crack Brain Club.116 They focused efforts on the education and the dissemination of current news to members of the greater Boston area. As amateurs in

114 Linda Kerber, “Science in the Early Republic: The Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 29 no. 2 (Apr., 1972): 264.

115 Daniels, Science in American Society: A Social History, 148.

116 Nagel. John Quincy Adams, 132. See also Joseph Whelan, Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade, 117. Diary entries in November of 1802 mention Judge Davis, Mr. Elliot, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Gardiner, Dr. Kirkland, President of Harvard, Mr. John Lowell, Josiah Quincy, Mr. Spooner and others. Original members of the Crack Brain Club are mentioned in Adams’s diary entry on March 31, 1786.

science, their devotion to the cause is evident in their works. They invested substantial amounts of money and time creating a library and laboratory to perform their own experiments.117 They held weekly meetings to discuss American natural history observation (rather than study of plants and animals from European books on America), the latest American agricultural improvements, advances in chemistry, and experiments with electricity. Early in the formation of the Boston Natural Philosophy Society each member agreed to give three lectures on a topic for the other members at their regular meetings.

From the beginning, Adams was impressed with the group because of its focus on learning for the sake of acquiring new knowledge. At the end of the year it was Adams’s turn to deliver a series of five lectures on chemistry. He prepared his material on the history of the field of chemistry from Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry, a text not yet well known in America. Adams used the French version, from his own library, to prepare his remarks. 118 His lectures were well received by other members. In the spring of 1803, Adams attended a meeting at Dr. James Jackson’s home where Judge Isaac

Davis spoke on current research on two popular subjects; electricity and botany. Davis discussed advances in botany, including Erasmus Darwin’s theories. 119 After he became a senator, Adams was less involved with the Boston Natural Philosophy Society.

Gradually the group dissolved and a new Friday evening dinner club was formed with

117 Kerber, “Science in the Early Republic,” 267 and 272.

118 John Quincy Adams began his five weekly lectures Dec 1, 1802. He describes meetings in several diary entries, including an electrical experiment where gentlemen explode a frog. Linda Kerber thought Adams borrowed Duxbury’s book. She did not know Adams had his own copy and read Lavoisier’s text in French.

119 Stone, “The Role of Learned Societies,” 194. See John Quincy Adams Diary, July, 1803.

many of the same members. It included a similar agenda though there was a stronger focus on botany and a growing interest in horticulture.

Adams joined the Boston Athenaeum, a literary and scientific society, shortly after it was formed. This group built a library to benefit the merchants, learned gentlemen, and scholars. Annual dues funded their work. They subscribed to twenty-one

American and foreign journals and newspapers.120 When the Boston Natural Philosophy

Club terminated, the Boston Athenaeum absorbed their natural history collection and library. Adams was among the distinguished men who donated $150.00 toward the society’s library and the “philosophical apparatus,” which included microscopes, dissecting tools for botany and natural history study, and some chemistry equipment. 121

Adams informed Boston merchants and other gentlemen interested on the work of this society.

The historian George Daniels has mentioned the importance of the philanthropy among Boston area merchants toward the progress of science but he has not revealed the significant influence of John Quincy Adams on individual merchants in the Boston area.

John Lowell was among those who corresponded and confided in Adams on various issues including astronomy, botany, chemistry, natural philosophy, and European advances in these fields. Aside from sizeable donations to Boston-area scientific

120 Josiah Quincy, The History of the Boston Athenaeum, with Biographical Notices of its Deceased Founders (Cambridge, MA: Metcalf, 1851), 16–17. The Athenaeum was formed in 1804.

121 Quincy, The History of the Boston Athenaeum, 54. In August of 1809 Adams deposited his own library of 5,450 volumes with the Athenaeum for its use while he was away on a diplomatic mission in Russia.

societies, Lowell eventually left a legacy fund for the maintenance of an annual course of free lectures in the sciences in Boston. 122

The Boston Natural History Society and the American Philosophical Society

Adams received credentials as a United States Senator in February of 1803. He made plans to move with his family to Washington City and saw to the arrangements for his small children to boarded and be tutored. Then Adams attended the Harvard College commencement and delivered a short address as chairman of the Board of Overseers. He reported that his chief concern had been for advances in local agriculture and projects to benefit the working farmers in Massachusetts. The progress in internal improvements and agriculture was work that he felt should continue nationally, with cooperation among the states.123 These were precisely the ideas that Adams brought to Washington.

Adams continued to follow the news of the scientific societies in Boston,

Connecticut, New York, Philadelphia, as well as London and other European cities, when he could get their publications or newspaper accounts. Adams also began to regularly study technical texts in the sciences in the late evenings or after his early morning walks.

He continued a habit of nature observation. He recorded the time of the sunrise and sunset, the daily climate, and the first bloom of certain plants in his diary or “waste books.” He noted urban improvements in the federal city and sought to increase

122 Daniels, “Science in American Society,” 159. John Lowell (1799-1836) was a member of several scientific societies in the Boston area. His philanthropy included sizable donations to the botanic garden at Cambridge and the Harvard Astrophysical Observatory, two of John Quincy Adams’s favorite projects.

123 Quincy, Memoir of John Quincy Adams, 124.

awareness of the poor roads and unfinished canals for transportation of agricultural products.

Adams began to call on American gentlemen scientists while traveling seasonally between Boston and Washington through the Atlantic cities. He would continue this effort for four decades. Adams accepted invitations to tour gentlemen’s scientific cabinets or libraries. His access to these men aided his efforts to promote his ideas on internal improvements and invention in agriculture in the United States. Those seeking letters of introduction to scientists in Europe at botanic gardens, universities, or scientific societies likewise called on well-connected gentlemen like Adams.

John Quincy noted in his diary that his father attended a spring meeting of the

Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture (MSPA) in 1805, and reported the discussion revolving around the creation of a new Boston establishment of natural history. They proposed raising funds to endow a Harvard professorship in that field.

John Adams wholeheartedly supported this project and purchased memberships for himself, and his sons John Quincy and Thomas to help fund the work of the society.

(John Quincy did not want to show conflict of interest while holding an elected office and

Thomas, with a large family, did not have the fiscal means to join.) Within a month

William Dandridge Peck was established as the new Harvard Professor of Natural

History.

John Quincy Adams attended many meetings of this Boston Society of Natural

History (BSNH) and discussed these meetings with his cousin Josiah Quincy, another gentleman farmer who eventually became the second mayor of Boston and President of

Harvard College. A main goal of this society was the dissemination of information to

farmers in Massachusetts. Adams knew there was a theory, publicized especially by

Georges Louis Leclerc, le comte de Buffon, a French naturalist, that American animals were inferior in size to similar European animals. Buffon also believed European cultivated fruit trees did not produce well in America. (Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the

State of Virginia challenged many of Buffon’s beliefs.) Adams continued this work as he encouraged farmers to report their successes with animal breeding or crop production to the societies. He anticipated accurately that his reports would be publicized in the newspapers and society journals.

Adams, like his father, knew one proven method to advance education was to display native and cultivated plants in a scientific arrangement in a well-maintained botanic garden. A scholar would build the garden and teach botany. Many members of the MSPA and the BSNH concurred and raised funds for the project. Andrew Craigie donated some land where his summer house was in Cambridge. Professor Peck became the curator of a new natural history museum and the living collection of the Cambridge botanic garden.124 John Quincy Adams, Josiah Quincy, Rebecca Gore of Waltham and

Elizabeth Craigie of Cambridge were frequent visitors to the Botanic garden and purchased plants there during the years it remained active. 125

A second proven method used by Boston’s scientific farmers to stimulate interest in agriculture, animal husbandry, and horticulture was through the MSPA’s annual

124 Noted on April 13, 1805, John Quincy Adams diary 27, 1 January 1803 - 4 August 1809, page 156 [electronic edition]. See also Greene, American Science in the Age of Jefferson, 82.

125 Mrs. Elizabeth Craigie and Mrs. Rebecca Gore enjoyed the tropical plants in the greenhouse. See Charles Hammond, “’Where The Arts and the Virtues Unite’: Country Life Near Boston, 1637-1864” (PhD. Thesis. Boston University, 1982), 238 and 262.

horticultural fair and cattle show in Brighton.126 The MSPA awarded cash prizes at the fair to encourage the development of new technologies that would improve existing methods in animal breeding and crop production. Eventually a Rumford Prize was also given, through a generous donation by Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. He had become friends with Adams while the future president was in Europe. Rumford was most likely influenced by Adams’s enthusiasm for the development of scholarship in agriculture among members of the MSPA.

Adams found other ways to connect and integrate the work of New England scientific societies. In the spring of 1805, as Adams traveled south from Washington to

Quincy, he stopped in New York and Philadelphia. Adams recorded an invitation to tea with a Samuel L. Mitchill and his wife. During this visit Adams and Mitchill discussed new agricultural implements in France discovered by the American Minister, Robert R.

Livingston. In Philadelphia Adams noted he saw a variety of new scientific publications in the library of the American Philosophical Society. He also returned to Charles Wilson

Peale’s famous museum to see the latest natural history objects and paintings. As he promoted the work of Boston-area men of science, the gentlemen of Philadelphia sought his involvement in their work.

On this trip Adams learned that a few gentlemen of the American Philosophical

Society of Philadelphia decided to submit his name as a corresponding member. 127

Adams was thrilled at the opportunity to follow the news of this society and send papers

126 Bruce Winchester Stone, 129. Adams’s first mention of meeting Lowell at Judge Davis’s house to discuss scientific farming was May 27, 1806. See also Phillip J. Pauly. Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 56.

127 See John Quincy Adams, diary, March 23, 1805. Adams knew Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, an intellectual giant, professor of chemistry, and Democratic Congressman of New York; and Dr. John K. Mitchell, a surgeon who made three voyages to China and settled in Philadelphia in 1822.

on various topics to them from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the

Massachusetts Society for the Preservation of Agriculture, and the Boston’s Natural

Philosophy Society. Adams also became a corresponding member of French and Dutch scientific societies, and he followed the work of still others.

During the summer of 1805 Adams lodged with Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse in

Cambridge. As the first Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, Adams meticulously researched and prepared a new lecture each week for his students. When classes began, Adams presented morning lectures then regularly attended the natural history lectures by Waterhouse delivered in the late afternoons or evenings. Waterhouse performed practical demonstrations which made his lectures popular. One 1805 lecture he had attended, which Adams described in his diary, was Waterhouse’s description of the System of Botany of Carol Linnaeus. Waterhouse eventually copied and edited his lectures for publication in the hope it would benefit future scholars. The lectures certainly benefited Adams.

Secretary of State Adams Promotes Agriculture

In July of 1807, while attending his regular Wednesday evening club, Adams was introduced to several European botanists traveling in America. He was delighted to meet

Francois Andre Michaux, the botanist for Versailles. Michaux’s companion was a chemist and mineralogist, Silvain Gordon. The two men were collecting American trees for France and doing botanic research from Maine to Georgia. 128 Adams was aware of

128 Noted on June 29, 1807, John Quincy Adams diary 27, 1 January 1803 - 4 August 1809, page 300 [electronic edition]. Francois’s father, Andre, established and managed nurseries in America to cultivate plants that would be desirable for the King. He wrote Flora Boreali-Americana, describing

the craze for American plants in many gardens in Europe – he had seen such collections in private gardens in England and France. European botanists published the key works on American botany before American botanists of the later nineteenth century would begin to produce similar works of significance. That was why Adams kept himself informed of the work of Michaux and other traveling botanists in America and eventually purchased several of their books.

Adams recorded numerous other contacts with scientific gentlemen over the first three decades of the nineteenth century. In October of 1819 he traveled south to Washington with a few distinguished gentlemen of science. A diary entry retold their efforts to connect with Yale professors Jeremiah Day, Benjamin Silliman, and Yale’s treasurer,

James Hillhouse:

We arrived in New Haven at about three in the afternoon; and as we had three hours to wait for the arrival of the Boat from New York, … [we] took a Carriage with Mr. Gray and Mr. Goodhue and rode into the city of New Haven. We were unsuccessful in our attempt to find at the houses of President Day, Professor Silliman, and Mr. Hillhouse, nor could we procure a sight of the Yale College library; but with the aid of one of the students we did obtain access to the Cabinet of Mineralogy which belongs not to the college but to Col. Gibbs of Newport. 129

Adams noted a conversation with John C. Calhoun while attending a meeting of the Massachusetts Society for the Preservation of Agriculture at Thomas Law’s Maryland estate. Law was a British gentleman who had all the latest “knick-knack patent

American oak trees. Francois wrote Foret et Arboretum d’ Harcourt, a work on American trees and their use for commerce.

129 Noted on Oct 12, 1819, John Quincy Adams diary 31, 1 January 1819 - 20 March 1821, 10 November 1824 - 6 December 1824, page 184 [electronic edition].

machinery which farmers of England and this country have brought into fashion.” 130

Calhoun presented an address on this topic relating to manufacturing interests to the

Agricultural Society. Adams encouraged Calhoun to produce a written copy of his address to be published in John Stuart Skinner’s American Farmers Journal. Adams read this journal because it was popular with the working farmer. Here he would find advertisements by farmers and nurserymen, testimonials of trials by growers, and letters to the editor requesting advice for a plant or insect pest problem. Adams also submitted official government news to this journal.

Adams read other regional literature available to the average literate farmer such as almanacs, newspapers, farm journals. The forums addressed the reader’s inquiries on problems with soils or animal husbandry issues. Nurserymen advertised their seeds and plants, and posted reports on the growing conditions in different states. Adams realized many working farmers felt it was their duty to recognize and promote advances in farming and share this information in order to solve mutual problems. 131 Adams felt if he could not share in this work as a farmer due to official duties in Washington, he would collect and disseminate information among other farmers. He researched and wrote scientific reports for Congress to inform those who might be interested and to influence legislators. One of those reports is well known.

In the summer of 1820, Adams put aside his usual summer gardening activities and devoted all his energies toward preparing a scientific treatise, a report of weights and

130 Noted on May 20, 1820, John Quincy Adams diary 31, 1 January 1819 - 20 March 1821, page 350 [electronic edition]. Thomas Law was also a member of the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences of Washington.

131 Pauly. Fruits and Plains, 5 and 6.

measures, for Congress. The work in part was an effort to convince legislators the importance of federal assistance to American states to unify weights and measures among the states on order to promote fair commerce. As Josiah Quincy noted in his memoir, his cousin worked six months on this report. In it Adams described the origins of measures of surface, distance, and capacity and that of weight and the importance in the exchange of traffic of commerce. Quincy wrote, “It was not noticed in Congress, where ability was wanting, or labor refused to understand it.” 132 Adams’s interest in gardening and furthering studies in botany continued into the fourth decade of the nineteenth century.

He immersed himself in the study of horticulture during the last few years of the 1820s and continued this study through 1847, as time allowed.

Adams Builds His Horticultural Library

Adams began to read more scholarly works in agriculture, botany and horticulture. He stayed in contact with the Academy and surveyed the work of agricultural societies in part through the newspapers and trade journals such as that of the

Horticultural Society of London, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,

Papers on Agriculture by the Massachusetts Society for the Preservation of Agriculture, and the Journal of the Académie de Sciences of Paris. Both Adams and his father subscribed to the Boston based journal, Memoirs, of the American Academy of Arts and

Sciences, and Transactions of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia.

Adams also read Benjamin Silliman’s American Journal of Science and Arts, a more scholarly journal, begun in 1818 with a focus in chemistry and geology. Silliman was an excellent editor and solicited the best work from among many disciplines in the sciences

132 Quincy, Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams, 124.

for his journal. He also reviewed the news from the scientific centers throughout the states. 133 The American Journal of Science became one of the greatest single influences among the scientific community in the middle of the nineteenth century. 134

Adams’s reading is further evidence that he was no dabbler. He had been reading voraciously since he was a teenager, and continued to borrow and purchase books throughout his life. 135 The technical literature he read indicates determination to better understand agricultural improvement. These technical books include Hortus Medicinus by Clusius as well as an English translation of Linnaeus, A System of Vegetables (1782).

He also read The Gardener’s Kalendar by Phillip Miller, a classic farming manual in a monthly “to do” format, A Treatise on Fruit Trees by Thomas Hill, and The British Fruit

Gardener by John Abercrombie; the latter two were popular eighteenth-century manuals for farmers. Adams found the Catalogue of the Prince Nursery at Flushing, NY very interesting because it listed all the desirable forest and fruit trees for sale at the time. The

Prince Nursery, also known as the Linnaean Botanic Garden, was managed by three generations of the Prince family who pioneered in hybridizing new American varieties of fruits from seed. Their inventory of grapes, native magnolias, and other American forest trees, fruit trees, and exotics from Australia was regularly replenished as these were the most popular trees sold. 136

133 Simon Baatz, ‘Squinting at Silliman’: Scientific Periodicals in the Early American Republic, 1810-1833, Isis 82, no. 2 ( June 1991): 223-244.

134 Daniels, Science in American Society, 151.

135 See Johnson. “Books in the Life of John Quincy Adams.” He notes twelve libraries John Quincy Adams visited to borrow books during his travels.

136 The Massachusetts Historical Society, A History of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1829- 1878 (Boston: 1880), 28. The Prince Nursery was reported to have been spared from destruction by the British during the battles of the American Revolution out of appreciation for such fine establishment.

As President, Adams began to study technical works from various public and private libraries, including the Library of Congress. He ordered horticultural works to be delivered to his office from the State Departments based in London and Paris. In 1826 he read texts in French and Spanish about the cultivation of grapes, wondering whether grapes could be improved in America.137 Among American texts, Adams studied David

Hosack’s works on botany and horticulture and Jacob Bigelow’s American Medical

Botany, a several volume set. Hosack was a New York merchant and nurseryman who built a New York botanical garden. Adams and Hosack corresponded through the scientific societies in New York. Adams borrowed books, as well, from the Cambridge

Botanical Garden botanist, Jacob Bigelow’s personal library. At the time Bigelow was the Rumford Professor of Natural History at Harvard College and had a good knowledge of native plants of the Boston area. From his work Adams learned more about American trees and was able to identify the native dogwood growing in the Capitol Garden. 138

Adams also read popular books on farming and gardening, including Bernard

M’Mahon’s American Gardeners Calendar (1806) the first gardening book to offer professional advice for growing on American soils in American climates. Adams read

Richard Bradley, A New Improvement of Gardening and Thomas Andrew Knight’s essays including A Treatise on the Culture of the Apple. In the early nineteenth century,

Thomas Knight became known and respected as one of the best pomologists in England,

France, and Belgium. Knight corresponded with American scientific societies, including

137 Noted on May 24, 1827, John Quincy Adams diary 37, 11 November 1825 - 24 June 1828, page 201 [electronic edition].

138 Noted on April 24, 1827, John Quincy Adams diary 37, 11 November 1825 - 24 June 1828, page 180 [electronic edition].

the MSPA. His work helped standardize the names of fruits among British, French and

American fruit growers.139

Late in his life Adams continued to read European works on botany he borrowed from various libraries and learned societies. These included John Locke’s Outlines of

Botany, Martyn’s English version of Linnaeus’s System of Vegetables, and Rousseau’s

Letters on the Elements of Botany Addressed to a Lady. 140 In the last years of his life,

Adams read through several volumes of the botanical topics in Francis Bacon’s Sylva

Sylvarum, a several-volume work on natural history covering ten centuries. Three of the volumes were on vegetables and agriculture. 141 As a gardener in the 1840s Adams seemed most fascinated with George Heusler’s Farmers Works. He began to understand what we would call microclimates on his farm, and determined the best elevation and aspect for planting seedling trees to prevent frost damage after reading Heusler, evidence that he found use in whatever he had been reading.

The Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences

Adams joined the first scientific society in Washington City, the Columbian

Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences a year after it was formed. Members included congressmen, clergy, prominent citizens, cabinet heads, chief engineers of the

139 Pauly, Fruit and Plains, 65. Adams read about Thomas Knight’s methods in grafting fruit trees from the letters sent to the MSPA. See Adam’s diary entry of June 24 and June 25, 1831. One of Knights letters is found at the Massachusetts Historical Society in The Massachusetts Society for the Preservation of Agriculture Records, Folder IV Drawer D, Box 22, Folder 19.

140 Noted on June 11, 1827, John Quincy Adams diary 38, 1 October 1830 - 24 March 1832, page 219 [electronic edition].

141 See John Quincy Adams diary, July 30, 1844. He noted reading three volumes of this work in several diary entries in July and August, 1844.

Army and corresponding European members. The founder, Edward Cutbush, planned to write a history of the districts of the United States, their natural history, resources, imports, and exports, and to gather plants from around the country. 142 The society promoted the cultivation of coffee, sugar, dye products, the silkworm, the sunflower, and the white poppy among other plants. Their intent was to cultivate and distribute productive plants to farmers and to invite communications on agricultural subjects.

A major accomplishment of the Institute was obtaining federal funding and land for the establishment of a national botanic garden located near the Capitol. 143 Adams believed, like his colleagues of the Boston Natural History Society, that a public botanic garden in a democratic country was important so all interested citizens could visit to learn about plants. He and other members of the Columbian Institute continued to urge

Congress to support not just the creation of the garden but research on any plants showing potential to be commercially grown in America.

In June of 1820, Adams received a letter from his cousin Josiah Quincy, the corresponding secretary to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Boston, announcing that the society had elected him their president. John Quincy Adams accepted with a seriousness and earnestness characteristic of his temperament. He recorded his thoughts on that day:

142 John Oliver,“ America’s First Attempt to Unite the Forces of Science and Government,” ScientificMonthly 53, no. 3 (September 1941), 253. They formed in 1816, in association with the Metropolitan Society, a group who had a Cabinet of Minerals of the United States. Dr. Edward Cutbush and Thomas Law were founding members; Joel R. Poinsett, Charles Wilkes, and Richard Rush were also members.

143 Washington, Jefferson and Madison sought to build a botanic garden for the nation. When Madison’s presidency ended the project was finally funded through the efforts of the Columbian Institute. Andrea Wulf, Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 110.

Honours like these produce in my mind humiliation as well as pride. In this particular instance I am mortified at being raised to the head of a learned society with qualifications so inadequate to the station. . . . The Arts and Sciences have been the objects of my admiration all through life; I would it were in my power to say they had been objects of my successful cultivation. 144

Adams was also elected the third president of the Columbian Institute in 1823 and held the post for five years. 145 He and architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe worked together on the installation of the botanic garden using congressional funds. Latrobe’s skills as a naturalist, botanic illustrator, and landscape designer were crucial in the project. Adams donated a collection of native forest trees he had harvested from his tree nursery at the White House to be planted next to the scientifically arranged botanical specimens of the formal part of the garden. 146 This naturalized planting of local trees

(the fashion was to be planted in rows of a linear formation) was outside the botanic garden. In 1827 Adams designed a seal for the Columbian Institute and sent his drawing with notes toward a detailed rendering of it to the secretary of the organization for his opinion. Adams’s notes show his intent for the Institute to become a national organization. He made a copy of this sketch in his letter book which is included here in the appendix, Figure 5.

When the political climate changed in the federal city, Adams decreased his involvement with the Columbian Institute. One year when a committee invited him to

144 Noted June 4, 1820, John Quincy Adams diary 31, 1 January 1819 - 20 March 1821, 10 November 1824 - 6 December 1824, page 362 [electronic edition].

145 Richard Rathburn, The Columbia Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences: A Washington Society of 1816–1838, Which Established a Museum and Botanic Garden under Government Patronage, Smithsonian Institution, U.S. National Museum. Bulletin 101 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1817).

146 O’Malley, Art and Science in American Landscape Architecture, 120, 130.

deliver the anniversary discourse to the Institute, Adams declined. Adams found it difficult to correspond with a group his political enemies joined. He wrote in his diary about men who would “catch his words, garble, and misrepresent or falsify them and ruin his character in the press.” 147 With limited success in finding private sponsorship or additional federal funds after their initial charter expired, the Columbian Institute dissolved. Perhaps it was no coincidence that when Adams and his close associates decreased their support, the society floundered. Adams thereafter became involved with other scientific societies in the federal city.

The historian John Oliver acknowledges the leadership of John Quincy Adams with the Columbian Institute and other Washington city-based scientific societies, but does not mention Adams’s additional efforts among various other societies. In fact,

Adams worked through the groups and in his personal correspondence to unify the ongoing work among various states in support of natural history exploration. Adams’s position was unique in that he could also lobby individual members of Congress and urge the use of federal funds for this scientific work. Adams encouraged funds for professional geologists and astronomers to perform accurate surveys of physical features of the new territories and boundaries of existing states. He was also intensely interested in the botanical curiosities of the West and urged exploration of the Oregon Territories.

Adam’s life-long friend, Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, continued to correspond with

Adams in his advanced years. In 1833, Adams requested that his old friend send news on his project to publish a series of his lectures. Waterhouse sent a list of the lectures he finally compiled into a collection to Adams. He included a description of his own scientific approach toward the various fields of science he taught, and a printed broadside

147 Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 335.

of the lecture series. Waterhouse was pleased with his collection of lecture notes and knew Adams, one of the foremost promoters of science, would appreciate his sense of accomplishment. Waterhouse wrote, “I want to finish what I began. I dislike to leave a structure of twenty years labor half finished. It looks worse than the Bunker Hill

Monument.” 148 Perhaps Adams felt the same way about his tree experiments. He wanted some vigorous fruit trees and a woodlot of cultivated, native trees to pass on to the next stewards of the Peace Field and Mount Wollaston farms.

The National Institute and a National Congress of Scientists

Historian A. Hunter Dupree has argued that Adams believed a national scientific institution would come to fruition in the future, when the sciences were more extensively cultivated in the United States. It is evident he worked toward this goal. In fact, during his life, events began to unfold as he had hoped. In May of 1841 he had tripped and dislocated his shoulder. Undeterred, Adams continued to attend weekly special sessions of Congress, working steadfastly as the head of one critical committee to secure the proper use for the Smithson bequest. Meanwhile, local scientific gentlemen were working to form a new scientific society. By 1841 past members of the Columbian

Institute and the Historical Society of Washington both merged to form the National

Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences. Led by Joel Poinsett, the group grew to over 450 members. Adams described his part in how the events proceeded:

Judge William Cranch also put into my hands a report made by him for a Committee of the late Columbian Institute, upon a proposal made by the Secretary of War, Poinsett, that the rules of the Columbian Institute should merge themselves or be merged in the new National Institution for the Promotion of

148 The Adams Family, Microfilms of the Adams Papers (Reel 497), 324.

Sciences. The report will recommend the acceptance of their offer. The Charter of the Columbian Institute expired in May 1838 and there has not been in the body itself nor in the hands of Department who were members of it interest enough in the pursuits to which it was devoted, to procure or even so much as to apply for the continuance of its charter. 149

On April 4, 1844, the elderly and ailing Congressman John Quincy Adams attended America’s first scientific congress. The national meeting was coordinated by the

National Institute with President John Tyler’s support. Adams presided over the closing session in response to requests for him to speak. He originally declined due to his age and infirmities. He was worried he would not have the energy to write out his remarks or the strength in volume to deliver the comments, yet Adams managed to find the vitality to speak at the historic occasion. After decades of work to promote scientific research among the states, Adams announced that he was proud to have been a member of this first national congress of scientists. According to his diary, Adams’s remarks were delivered to his satisfaction and well received. The event has been described as a landmark in the scientific and cultural history of the United States. 150

After a few years the National Institute merged with the new Smithsonian

Institution. John Quincy Adams had worked regularly for over a decade as chairman of the Smithson Fund committee to find a fitting use for this bequest given to the United

States for the diffusion of scientific knowledge. Josiah Quincy wrote, “The subject weighed deeply on his mind. He worried about the funds being squandered by legislators

149 See F.R. Moulton. “The American Association for the Advancement of Science: A Brief Historical Sketch,” Science 108 (September 3, 1948): 217-218. See also John Quincy Adams’s diary, June 10, 1842.

150 John Oliver, “A Significant Decade in Science,” Scientific Monthly 67, no. 2 (August 1948): 83-86. See also John Quincy Adams diary, April 4, 1844.

he called ‘commorants’ or ‘wasted in electioneering bribery.’ 151 By 1846, Adams no longer chairman of the Smithson Fund committee, but he was pleased to hear the new institution was formed and would be guided by associates he knew in the National

Institute. The Smithsonian continued the work begun at the botanic garden in

Washington. It rescued deteriorating American natural history specimens in the U.S.

Patent Office that had come from the United States Exploring Expedition headed by

Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the U.S. Navy. The greatest contribution of the

Smithsonian Institution in the nineteenth century was the support of many projects of original research.152 The study and interpretation of the earliest herbarium and live plant specimens in the national collection was one such project.

By 1847, as Adams continued to work and focused on building astronomical observatories, he concurrently corresponded with astronomers, bridge and road engineers, horticulturists, inventors, landscape gardeners, geologists, natural history explorers, physicians, scientific farmers, and scientific instrument makers. Adams did not exclude correspondence with the yeoman farmer or the uninvited guests who just showed up at the President’s House Garden, or his beloved homestead farm, to look at his tree nursery experiments or ask for his autograph.

Louisa Catherine Adams was equally critical of her husband’s passions and proud of his achievements. Although there were times she thought his political activities were more vain-glory than virtuous, she supported his activities. In a letter to Charles Francis, after John Quincy had challenged a congressman in a heated debate, Louisa Catherine

151 Quincy, Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams, 292.

152 Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, 90.

wrote how John Quincy Adams was, “as sturdy as a white oak and not to be crushed by the reptiles who would destroy his talents. …” 153

Conclusion

Adams historian Mary Hargraves has written that John Quincy Adams had a primary concern to elevate the national stature in the international community – in foreign affairs, commerce, industry, science, and culture. 154 And yet few Adams historians or current scholars in the history of science have uncovered the specific details of Adams’s involvement in the development of a national scientific community in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. They have also misunderstood his reasons for gardening and serious botanical study. In reviewing the details of John Quincy

Adams’s life work in botany and horticulture, we see a dedicated contribution toward the evolution of an American science through his own gardening experiments and through focused promotion for advances in agriculture among the international scientific community.

Through his involvement with New England scientific societies he found he could not only share and promote their work, but also become an avid gardener and pomologist himself. His experiments with wheat, oats, rye, apples, pears, strawberries, and insect pests did not earn awards at horticultural fairs, but he could boast he was a participant in the work of advancing American agriculture in his home country and in Europe. His trials with native, woodland tree nurseries increased awareness for the value of forests.

153 Nagel, John Quincy Adam, 348.

154 Mary Hargraves, American National Biography Online. John Quincy Adams, n.p. 8/10/2012.

His promotion of ornamental trees for the landscaping of public streets and town centers inspired a new generation of landscape gardeners.

John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams passed the New England tradition of farming on to their son Charles Francis and many of his children. Today a few ornamental shade trees and a small orchard still stand as a testament to their skill; these include apples, beeches, oaks, pears, tulip poplars, sycamores, walnuts, and a grand old yellow wood tree, the focal point of the cut-flower garden of Abby Brooks Adams, their daughter-in-law.155 During difficult times, or while discussing family matters, father and sons or brothers and sisters have continued the family tradition of walking through the flower garden and fields to think and find peace.

155 The apples and pears were planted by his son but some could have been grown from scions of John Quincy Adams’s trees. Family tradition states the yellow wood tree was Mrs. Adams’s tree. It is not known if the tree commemorated the marriage of Charles Francis and Abby, the birth of a grandchild, or the summer Louisa Catherine resolved a year-long dispute with John Quincy over the death of their son, George Washington Adams. The tree was most likely planted by John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams together, in 1831, the first summer they lived together at Peace Field after his retirement from the Presidency.

Appendix

Figure 1. White Oak Leaf. An example of botanical illustration to identify the detailed parts of the leaf, painted by First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams, July 7, 1826. John Quincy Adams collected the leaf on a morning excursion in the City of Washington at Columbia College.

Source: National Park Service: Adams National Historical Park. Wilhelmina S. Harris, Furnishings Report of the Old House, volume 6: The Adams National Historic Site, Quincy, Massachusetts, 1966-1974 (US Department of the Interior: National Park Service, 1966). Note John Quincy Adams’s handwriting on the watercolor drawing.

Figure 2. Pin Oak Leaf and Fruit. An example of botanical illustration to show all the parts of the leaf, bud, and fruit of the twig, painted by Abigail Smith Adams while staying with the first family at the White House, in October, 1828. The specimen was collected by John Quincy Adams on a walk in the woods.

Source: National Park Service, Adams National Historical Park. Wilhelmina S. Harris, Furnishings Report of the Old House, volume 6, The Adams National Historic Site, Quincy, Massachusetts, 1966-1974 (US Department of the Interior: National Park Service, 1966).

Figure 3. Tamarind and Persimmon.

Several seedlings in one pot are shown, painted by Abigail Smith Adams, 1828. The Tamarind, a tropical fruit with a compound leaf, must have been grown indoors near a sunny window, in the same way Jefferson grew plants indoors at the White House. In 1827 and 1828, Adams took fruits from a branch of a grafted tree and planted the seeds to see if they would bear fruit. By 1830, Adams determined the seeds were not sterile. Abigail’s illustration documents one of Adams’s successful experiments in fruit tree propagation.

Source: National Park Service, Source: Adams National Historical Park. Wilhelmina S. Harris, Furnishings Report of the Old House, volume 6: The Adams National Historic Site, Quincy, Massachusetts, 1966-1974 (US Department of the Interior: National Park Service, 1966). See also Johnson, Books in the Life of John Quincy Adams, 26.

Figure 4. View of Mt. Wollaston “The seat of John Quincy (1689-1767) Esqr.” Watercolor by Eliza Susan Quincy,1822.

Josiah Quincy’s Farm. Note the boundary fence around the fields made of thorn shrubs, newly planted as an experiment of a live hedge rather than a stone wall to enclose the fields. The Boston Harbor Islands are in the distance. John Quincy Adams inherited land next to this farm with a similar view of the harbor. Here he grew the six hundred oaks and Baldwin apples under the care of Alphonsus Spear.

Source: Eliza Susan Quincy, A Portfolio of Nine Watercolor Views Relating to Certain Members of the Adams and Quincy Families and their Quincy Houses and Environment Done in the Year 1822 (Boston: Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 1975).

Figure 5. Sketch for a Seal for the Columbian Institute

Designed by John Quincy Adams and sent to the secretary of the Institute, Asbury Dickens. The stars in the seal represent the separate scientific work among the states. A circle of clouds was noted to be drawn in around the stars as an indicator the Institute was meant to coordinate the scientific research among the states.

Source: Adams Family Papers, Microfilms of the Adams Papers, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954- . Reel 201 “Miscellany “The Chaos” 1804-1827, Item 153.

Table 1. Books on Agriculture, Gardening, and Horticulture † Books from John Quincy Adams’s Library or his Father’s Library * Books John Quincy Adams Read from Other Libraries

Noted from Diary Entries, 1770-1780’s * Edmund Burke. On the Sublime and the Beautiful, 1757. * Carolus Clusius, Hortus Medicinus. * Carl von Linnaeus. A System of Vegetables,1782. † Christiano Wolfio. Institutions du Droit de la Nature et Desgens, 1772. † Christiano Wolfio. Jus Naturae. 1740. † Comte de Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon. Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle, 1782. * Guide D’Amsterdam (to the medicinal garden or hortus medicinus). * Humphrey Marshall. Arbustum Americanum, 1785. † Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia,1800. † Philip Miller. The Gardeners Dictionary,1763. † Phillip Miller. The Gardener’s Kalendar. 1765. † William Dandridge Peck. Natural History of the Slug Worm. 1799. * Swedish . Hof-calender for Aret, 1783 (Almanac). * Thomas Smith. The Scientific Library, 1818. † Thomas Whately. Observations of Modern Gardening, 1770.

1803-1825 * American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Transaction of the American Academy. * American Philosophical Society. Proceedings of The American Philosophical Society. * Eddy’s Lithography of Boston. *William Forsyth. Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees, 1804. † George Gregory. The Economy of Nature Explained, 1796. † Alexander Von Humboldt. Voyages Aux Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent. 1816. * Thomas Martyn. Thirty Eight plates… Adapted to the Letters on the Elements of Botany. * Peter Simon Pallas. Flora Rossica, 1790. * Pliny the Younger. The Natural History of Pliny. * Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Letters on the Elements of Botany: Addressed to a Lady. * The Edinburgh Review, Stewarts Philosophical Essays. * John Stuart Skinner. “The American Farmer” (weekly journal). † John Taylor. Arator: Being a Series of Agricultural Essays, Practical and Political, 1813.

1826-1830 † Jacob Bigelow. American Medical Botany, 1817-1821. (Several volume set). * Don Estabon Boutalan. Essays on the Cultivation of the Vine, Madrid, 1807. * Don Simon de Rosas Clements y Rubio. Essays on varieties of Grapes in Cultivation. Madrid, 1808. † Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau, Des Semis et Plantations des Arbre,1760. † Henri Louis Duhamal du Monceau. A Practical Treatise of Husbandry,1762. * Henri Louis Du Hamal du Monceau. Traite´ des Abres Fruitiers,1768. † John Evelyn. Silva, A Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber, 1620. † John Locke. Outlines of Botany, 1819. † John C. Loudon. Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum. (Chapter on Forest and Fruit Trees). † Bernard M ‘Mahon, American Gardeners Calendar, 1828.

† Andre Francois Michaux. Flora Boreali-Americana, 1805. * Francois Michaux. Histoire des Arbres Forestiers de l’Amerique, 1813. † William Prince. Catalogue of Fruit Trees, Flowering Shrubs, and Plants, for Sale by William Prince, at Flushing-Landing, on Long Island, Near New York, 1799. † Pierre Louis Du Couedic de Villeneuve. The Pyramidal Bee-hive, 1829.

1830-1847 †Francis Bacon. Sylva Sylvarum A Natural History in Ten Centuries. Fifth century of Experiments, an Enquiry of Plants or Vegetables. Eighth century of Experiments of Medicinal Earth, Sea Creatures. * Richard Bradley. A New Improvement of Gardening. † William Coxe, Travels and Memoirs, 1789. * Thomas Crickshank Forester. The Practical Planter Containing Directions for the Planting of Waste Land and Management of Wood: With a New Method of Raising the Oak. † John Frederick Daniel. (Article in Transactions on climate as it relates to horticulture). † H. A. S. Dearborn. (Articles on horticulture). † John D’Homerque. The Silk Culturists Manual. * Antoine Joseph De’zallier d’Argenville. Theory and Practice of Gardening, 1728 † Oliver Goldsmith. A History of the Earth and Animated Nature, 1804. * Fontey (Fonteyn?) A Forest Primer. † Thomas Hill. A Treatise of Fruit Trees, 1757. † David Hosack. David Hosack’s Herbarium and its Linnaean Specimens, 1810. † David Hosack. An Inaugural Discourse, Delivered Before the New York Horticultural Society, 1824. * G. James. EnglishTranslation of Antoine Joseph De’zaillier d’Argenville, Theory and Practice of Gardening, 1728. * Thomas Andrew Knight. A Treatise on the Culture of the Apple. † Thomas Andrew Knight. The Practical Planter. * George Heusler. Farmers Works - in four volumes. † Carl von Linnaeus. A System of Vegetables …. 1782. * Thomas Martyn. Flora Rustica: … Plants As Are Either Useful or Injurious in Husbandry, 1792-1796. † Herman Fürst von Pückler-Moskau. Tour in England, Ireland, and France…, 1833. * Sir Henry Stuart. The New Complete Guide to all Persona Who Have any Trade or Concern with the City of London ... Commissioners for Trade and Plantations,.., 1777. † John Wilmot. Horticultural Transactions, Volume I. * Henry Colman. European Agriculture and Rural Economy. † Andrew Jackson Downing. Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture, 1841. † Andrew Jackson Downing. The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America, 1846. † George Marsh. Conversations.

Source: Adams Family Papers, Microfilms of the Adams Papers, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society,1954-. Reels 201-204. See also John Quincy Adams diary [electronic edition] 51 volumes. See also Johnson, “Books in the Life of John Quincy Adams.” The list of volumes marked as being in the Adams library was verified by the Curator.

Table 2. Real Estate owned by John Quincy Adams in Massachusetts

Surveys of Mather Wirthington, in August and October, 1826 1. Homestead Dwelling House and Farm 9 Acres, 2 Quarters and 1 Rod, 2. Gull Island Salt Marsh Lot 10 Acres, 2 Quarters, 2 Rods 3. Farms Lot Salt Marsh 9 Acres, 2 Quarters, 2 Rods 4. Rock Island Marsh 2 Acres 1 Quarter, 28 Rods 5. Cove’s Marsh 13 Acres, 3 Quarters, 22 Rods 6. Borland Woodlot 27 Acres, 0 Quarters, 13 Rods 7. Old Adams Lot 3 Acres, 3 Quarters, 13 Rods 8. Ruggels and Thayer Lot 15 Acres, 2 Quarters, 32 9. Field Lot 14 Acres, 2 Quarters, 29 Rods 10. Foy Lot 17 Acres, 2 Quarters, 31 Rods 11. Savil Lot, 6 Acres, 0 Quarters, 28 Rods 12. Quincy Woodlot 8 Acres, 2Quarters, 2 Rods 14. Penn’s Valley Farms, dwelling House 91 Acres, 3 Rood, 15 Rods (Deed August 1803 Survey by Samuel Humphrey, Oct 1829) 15. School House Lot 24 Acres, 1 Rood, 35 Rods 16. Quincy Meadow 6 Acres 0 Roods, 14 Rods 17. Goose Pasture, Braintree 9 Acres, 0Roods, 1 Rod 18. Lawyers Common 43 Acres, 3 Roods, 22 Rods Three Town Woodlots 45 Acres, 8 Roods, 22 Rods 19. Town River Marsh Lot 7 Acres, 1 Rood, 5 Rods 20. Cherry-Tree Salt Marsh Lot 4 Acres, 1Quarter, 4 Rods 21. Parry Ferry Salt Marsh Lot, Milton 2 Acres, 2 Roods, 20 Rods 22. Penn’s Hill Altherton /Verchild Lot 48 Acres, 48 Acres 0 Roods, 6 Rods 23. Four Basswood Trees Lot 18 Acres, 1 Rood, 29 Rods 24. White Oak Tree Lot 4 Acres, 0 Rood, 25 Rods Surveys by Samuel Humphrey 25. Savil and Will Lot 11 Acres, 1Quarter, 20 Rods 26. Mount Wollaston Farm 386 Acres, 1 Quarter, 6 Rods 27. Two Lots of Cedar Swamp, Randolph 12Acres 28. Braintree Farm of T.B. Adams 29. Medford Farm of T.B. Adams 30. Benjamin Bass Farm House and Land

Source: Garden Book, Schedule of Estate, Real Personal and Mixed Belonging to JQ Adams 6 August 1832. Microfilms of the Adams Papers, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954-. Reel 203.

Table 3. Plants Grown at the Adams White House Garden and Tree Nursery

Trees & Shrubs Fruits/ Vegetables Flowers Herbs & Weeds

Althaea (Rose of Sharon) Pippin Apple African Marigold Bindweed Catalpa Amisted Apricot Aster Basil Cherry Henderson Apricot Anemone Betony Chestnut Artichoke Anthemis (Daisy) Cardamon Honey locust Barley Balsam Impatiens Catnip Linden Beans Balloon Flower Comfrey Maple-Leaved Sweet gum Celery Carnation (Pinks) Echinacea Mimosa Black Currants Chrysanthemum Elderflowers Palma christi Dates Coreopsis Foxglove Pennsylvania walnuts Endive Coxcomb Amaranth Groundsel Red Mulberry Fig Dutch Flowers Hackweed Chestnut oak Everlasting Pea French marigold Mouse-ear Cork oak Orange Foxglove chickweed Post oak Raspberry Germander Pennyroyal Rock oak Scarlet strawberry Greenbriar Rose Smilex Willow oak Sweet Pea Hollyhock, red single Southernwood White oak Spinach Hollyhock, white dbl. Sympaticum Persimmon Squash Wild Indigo Thyme Shagbark hickory Tamarind Larkspur Red pepper Sycamore Lamium Vervain Tulip Tree Laurel Rose Wild bugloss Tupelo Love-Lies-Bleeding Wild sorrel Walnut Lupine Woodsorrel Martina Wormwood Marvel-of-Peru Mock Orange Morning glory Moth Mullein Poppy Potentilla Stock Sweet William Snapdragon Veronica Verbascum Wallflower Whortleberry

Totals: 23 19 37 23

Source: Adams Family Papers, Microfilms of the Adams Papers, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954- . Reels 148, 201, 203. See also John Quincy Adams diary [electronic edition] 51 volumes. See those covering the years 1825-1829. See also Frederick L. Kramer. The White House Gardens: A History and Pictorial Record (New York: Great American Editions, 1973).

Table 4. Tree and Fruit Varieties Planted by Adams at Peacefield and Mount Wollaston

Trees Apples Peaches, Pears, Plums Other Fruits White Ash Andover Apple Early Ann Peach Croft Apricot American Boxwood Baldwin Apple Nutmeg Peach Dbl Flowering Apricot White Beech Beverly Apple Perkins Peach Townsend Apricot Black Birch Black Spot Apple White Magdalen Peach Black Heart Cherry English Boxwood Carnation Apple Bartlet Pear Mazzard Cherry Butternut Crimson Face Apple Brattle Pear Red Cherry Wild Cherry Dexter Red Apple Catherine Pear White Heart Cherry Ebony Dexter White Apple Caplimonte Pear Black Currant Lignum vitae Double Stock Apple Citron des Carmar Pear Red Currant Elm English Jennaton Apple Dickinson Pear White Currant Hickory Greening Apple Endicott Pear Athenian Crabapple Pignut Hickory Greenleaf Red Apple Early Wilding Pear Chinese Dbl Flower Crab St. Domingo Mahogany Golden Russeten Apple Germain Pear Greening Crabapple Pennsylvania Maple Hingham Apple Janneton Pear Homestead Hill Rock Maple Large Sweet Autumn Jargonelle Pear Crabapple Satinwood Payson Apple Marsh Pear Town Crabapple Mahogany Bay Permain Apple Purple Pear Penn’s Hill Crabapple American White Oak Penn’s Hill Red Streak Trask Pear Siberian Crabapple Botany Bay Oak Pippin Apple St. Michaels Pear Whiting Crabapple Cork Oak (Spain) Seek-No-Further Apple Squantum Pear Purple Grape Druid Grey Oak Red Streak Apple Sugar Pear Medford Grape English White Oak Purple Spot Apple Solomon Thayer Perkins Grape Greenleaf White Oak Red Bullet Apple Nectarine Hazel Hardwick Black Oak Red Wedge Apple Alberge Plum Nectarine Harmon Chestnut Oak Rosebud Apple Boehner Plum Thayer Nectarine Live Oak Rock Ruby Apple Duares Plum Mulberry Middle Pasture Oak Russet Apple Flushing Plum Chinese Mulberry Pin Oak Spitzenburg Apple Greengage Plum Donton Strawberry Red Oak Thayer’s Dwarf Apple Greenleaf plum Kean Strawberry Willow Oak Trowbridge Apple Horse Plum Railway Strawberry Pine Washington Apple Nova Scotia Plum Red Garden Strawberry Palm Whitewedge Apple Washington Plum White Garden Pecan Whiting Apple Strawberry Poplar Winter Apple Wild Strawberry Sycamore Wollaston Apple Orange Tulip Woodhouse Apple Quince Black Walnut Yellow Harvest Apple Pennsylvania Walnut Shagbark Walnut White Walnut English Walnut Willow

42 Trees 37 Apples 32 Peach, Pear, Plum 36 Other 147 Total Varieties

Noted from 1801 through 1847 from his diaries, letters, “Miscellany” and “Waste books.” Adams Family Papers, Microfilms of the Adams Papers, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954- . Reels 40, 148, 201-204. See also John Quincy Adams diary [electronic edition] several volumes, especially the 1830s.

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