American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  But Thomas’ ventures soon expanded even further. He began to invest in enterprises run by established Boston merchants, inspired by the example set by an older bookseller by the name of Daniel Henchman. Henchman had a reputation for both boldness and independence—he had printed the Bible for distribution without the required approval of the king—and enjoyed a growing fortune built on his daring investments.

  Thomas saw Henchman as not only a potential partner for ambitious ventures but also a possible father-in-law; he had met and admired Henchman’s daughter, Lydia, and soon sought her hand in marriage. The couple were married in 1730. Thomas was twenty-seven and Lydia was sixteen. It was by all accounts a happy marriage for both Lydia and Thomas, and both son-in-law and father benefitted from their commercial connections.

  Within just a few years, Thomas had moved well beyond books and was exporting rum to Newfoundland, oil to London, and fish to Spain. He’d invested in his own ships, commissioning the building of the Thomas and the Lydia for shipping goods from America to be sold in the West Indies and bringing goods from London to be sold in America. His stores and warehouses still sold books but also just about everything else anyone might want. The umbrella under which all his enterprises operated was called the House of Hancock.

  By the year 1737 Thomas had become so wealthy that he was able to build a mansion for himself and Lydia on Beacon Hill. He bought land all around it to create an estate of rolling meadows, overflowing flowerbeds, and row upon row of fruit trees, including plum, peach, apricot, nectarine, pear, mulberry, gooseberry, and cherry. Most of the plants and trees were imported from England, but Thomas also sent out notices for sea captains to be on the lookout in any country they visited for “any small thing to beautify my garden.”4

  The furnishings for inside the house were also largely imported from England: not only the chairs, tables, and settees for the many rooms but also the glass for the mansion’s fifty-four windows, the stone hearths, tiles for the fireplaces, customized wallpaper, and intricately carved and twisted balusters for the wide staircase in the vast entrance hall. The house itself was built of granite culled from quarries in Braintree. Granite stairs led from street to home, and above the front entranceway, a large stone balcony gave out on the Boston Common. Thomas said of his new estate, “the Kingdom of England don’t afford so fine a Prospect as I have.”5

  As happy as Lydia and Thomas were together, and as wealthy as they were, they were unable to fulfill one of their most ardent wishes: to have a child. After Thomas’ brother John died, it seemed the natural course of things to take on his oldest son as their protégé and adopted son. They would bring John Hancock to Boston to be educated, loved, and launched into the world as a representative of the House of Hancock.

  It would not have taken long for young John to pack up his belongings in Lexington; little that he had there, where he lived off the frugal generosity of his grandfather, would be needed in Boston. For John’s mother, Mary, the decision to let her son go to Boston was an easy one. Her own prospects were dim, living as she did with her father-in-law; she knew that if her son John got on well under the tutelage of Uncle Thomas, he would help out his two siblings in a way that the old bishop could not. She bid her son to do his best and write often, and promised there would be visits between the families. Thomas promised the same, and John took his leave of Lexington.

  * * *

  News of young Hancock’s move to Boston quickly traveled to the village of Braintree. Already aware of the division separating him from the Quincy boys, John Adams, son of Deacon Adams, now had to accept that his childhood companion John Hancock was vaulting up into a higher social register—but through no action of his own. What was the use of hard work if a mere schoolboy could be lifted to wealth in one morning, while John Adams had only the prospect of farming and local government—the summit of his father’s achievements—to look forward to?

  Envy would plague John Adams throughout his life, both driving him forward and driving him mad: “The Scituation that I am in, and the Advantages that I enjoy, are thought to be the best for me by him who alone is a competent Judge of Fitness and Propriety. Shall I then complain? Oh Madness, Pride, Impiety.”6

  Henry Adams, great-great-grandfather to John, had come to the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1632, from the village of Braintree in Essex, England. He settled his family in what was then called Mount Wollaston. Henry’s son Joseph was the only one of his eight children to remain living in the small village; but Joseph’s sons all remained in and around Braintree, and in 1691, his son John was born. Adams bought his own farm in 1720 (making him a freehold farmer, in that he owned his own lands) and then became a deacon at the North Parish Church. At the age of forty-three, he married for the first time. Susanna Boylston was fifteen years his junior and the daughter of a prominent Boston family.

  Susanna Adams moved from Boston to Braintree to live with her new husband in his simple five-room farmhouse. He’d been happily ensconced there for years, but as their family grew—John born in 1735, Peter born in 1738, and Elihu born in 1741—and as Deacon Adams’ responsibilities multiplied, the house grew tight with both bodies and tension.

  Adams not only served as deacon of his church and as a town selectman but also worked all winter long as the local shoe cobbler, led the village militia, and managed a farm through his own work and the work of tenant farmers. People were always coming and going in the Adams house, with customers arriving for their shoes, selectmen convening for a meeting, parishioners seeking help, or militiamen showing up to plan out monthly exercises.

  Deacon Adams felt impelled to care for all the people of his village, including the indigent. At times he brought destitute and homeless people into the farmhouse to live until they could get on their feet again. A hired girl lived in with the family, and “there was nearly always an Adams or Boylston cousin, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or friend staying the night.”7 There was never room enough for everyone in the home, or for everything going on there, or any space at all that allowed for just a little peace and quiet.

  Susanna, raised in a fine house in Brookline, had led a more cosseted life as a girl than the one she took on as a woman. It was perhaps from his mother that John Adams Jr. inherited his peculiar and lasting quality of peevish superiority. Like Susanna, John often felt himself to be better than his peers, smarter and worthier; again, like his mother, he was particularly irked by the fact that his peers so often failed to recognize his incredible talents.

  The role of farmer’s wife in a small village never suited Susanna Adams and she sought to maintain what status she had by controlling the family finances. Arguments between husband and wife were frequent, especially “frets, squibs, scolds, rages, raves” over money. Young John spent many hours of his youth wandering the hills of Braintree on his own or with his friends, eager to be out of his chaotic and often acrimonious home. As he described it later, “Passion, Accident, Freak, [and ill] Humour” governed in the Adams household.8

  And yet John had many happy childhood memories, spent “in making and sailing boats and Ships upon the Ponds and Brooks, in making and flying Kites, in driving hoops, playing marbles, playing Quoits, Wrestling, Swimming, Skaiting and above all in shooting.”9 When he was still just a boy of eight or nine, his schoolteacher, Joseph Cleverly, forbade John from bringing his gun with him to school. John left the firearm hidden away close by the school and picked it up after class, proceeding to shoot at crows and squirrels all the way home.

  John later credited both his parents with teaching him important lessons for life, but he especially idolized his father: “In wisdom, piety, benevolence and charity … I have never known his superior.”10 When at age ten John professed his desire to leave school and become a farmer, his father, who harbored high hopes for his firstborn, said nothing to discourage his young son. Instead, he sent John to spend a day in muddy fields, where he was tasked with cutting thatch, a laborious and painful undertaking.

  When hi
s father asked him if he was now ready to pursue his studies, John answered that as raw as his fingers were, and as sore his back, school was simply a terrible chore for him. His father shook his head and sent John back to school the next day; John went but “was not so happy as among the Creek Thatch.”11

  According to John, the fault lay in his teacher: “Mr. Cleverly was through his whole Life the most indolent Man I ever knew.… His inattention to his Schollars was such as gave me a disgust to Schools, to books and to study.”12 When John at age fourteen again asked his father for permission to leave school and become a farmer, his father replied, “I have set my heart upon your Education.” He asked John why he would not study harder and go to college. John answered simply: “Sir I don’t like my Schoolmaster. He is so negligent and so cross that I never can learn anything under him.”13

  Father and son soon reached an agreement: if Adams could find a new school for John, the boy promised to “apply myself to my Studies as closely as my nature will admit, and go to Colledge.”14 And so, at age fourteen, John was sent as a day student to a local school for boarders run by Joseph Marsh.

  The kindly and intelligent Marsh was finally able to inspire John Adams in his studies; his father “soon observed the relaxation of my Zeal” for guns, and “my daily increasing Attention to my books.”15 As a reward for his hard work, Marsh gave John a small book containing Cicero’s orations. On the flyleaf, John wrote his name six times, as if to make sure of his possession of the treasured tome; he would keep it his whole life.

  Later, he wrote to a friend that there was nothing like reciting Cicero to make one feel better: “It exercises my Lungs, raises my Spirits, opens my Pores, quickens the Circulations, and so contributes much to Health.”16

  * * *

  John Hancock’s education since being taken under the wing of Thomas and Lydia had been one of both privilege and expectations. The best of all was given to him—the finest clothes, a carriage for his own use, a magnificent bedroom, the huge manicured yard, and indeed the entire Boston Common at his door to play in. A private tutor was brought in to teach John, as his health was delicate (and would be all his life), and then at the age of eleven, he was enrolled in the Boston Latin School, run by the demanding taskmaster John Lovell. There he learned Latin, Greek, a bit of history and arithmetic, and the most important skill of all, handwriting. The last hour of every schoolday, a day which began at 7:00 a.m. and ended at 5:00 p.m., was spent in perfecting penmanship. This was his favorite hour at school; time spent at arithmetic came in a close second.

  John used his great skill at writing to pen letters to his mother in Lexington, and to his sister and grandmother. When his grandmother fell ill, John offered to send a gift of “two oranges and six lemons.”17 Citrus was a treasure beyond measure in those days, and his offer underlined both his generosity (thanks to his uncle) and his kindness (which he would demonstrate all his life).

  Thomas Hancock was well pleased with his nephew’s growing talents. Good handwriting and agility at sums were both important to the career Thomas had in mind for John. More skills would be learned at Harvard, which John began to attend in the fall of 1750, and Thomas also began to bring his nephew with him to the offices of the House of Hancock and down to Clark’s Wharf. (Early in the 1750s, Thomas renamed the wharf after himself, and it would from then on be known as Hancock’s Wharf.) It was on the docks of Boston that John became enthralled with the work of his uncle, all the ships coming and going, with their wares from all over the world.

  The business of House of Hancock had continued to expand, particularly in the field of government contracts. Much money was to be made in supplying everything the British army might need, from tents to building materials, food and drink, guns and ammunition, clothing and backpacks, horses and wagons. Thomas had taken the time to study the needs of the military, and now as he and John walked the docks, he explained to his nephew the ins and outs of outfitting an army.

  The House of Hancock supplied the British in Canada as they built up their troops and forts; an even more lucrative contract for the firm had been providing goods and arms to the British forces in King George’s War in Canada. When the French and Indian War began in 1754, supplying the British and Americans in their fight against the French would bring even more profit to the firm.

  * * *

  Under the tutelage of Joseph Marsh, it took John Adams less than a year to be fully prepared to sit for Harvard’s entrance exams. In June 1751 notice of the exams was published in the local papers: they would be held in early July. John was all set to go when at the last minute, Marsh told John he couldn’t accompany his student to Cambridge—John would have to face the examiners on his own. John was terrified; he set out on “a very melancholy journey” and, despite all his preparations, arrived in Cambridge certain that he would fail in the exams.

  Presenting himself at Harvard Hall, he was brought into the examination room. He seated himself in a chair facing Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard, along with four other men, all tutors of the college. Henry Flynt, cousin to the Quincys, was one of the tutors. John took a deep breath and began the examination, first taking on a Latin translation (fortunately, he was allowed the use of a dictionary as an aid to his memory) and continuing from there. In the end, he acquitted himself well, “was declared admitted,” and given a “Theme … to write on in the Vacation.”18

  Deacon Adams, overjoyed, happily sold off ten acres of his farm to pay the college tuition, and John began his classes in the fall of 1751. He was fifteen, the oldest freshman in his class. Both the Quincy boys and John Hancock were already at Harvard, after being prepared at the elite Boston Latin School. Edmund Quincy was a senior, and Samuel Quincy and John Hancock were sophomores.

  It was a time of reunion for the boys from Braintree. Samuel and Edmund Quincy, John Hancock, and John Adams renewed their childhood friendships. They socialized together, talking politics—Ned, as Edmund Quincy was called, was already a fiery proponent of the rights of colonists—and playing cards. But a sense of social distinctions lingered—or at least so John Adams imagined. Class rankings at Harvard at the time were based on social standing, and despite the boost Adams received for having the Boylston name on his mother’s side, all the Quincy boys and John Hancock would consistently be ranked above him—and the fact of it, inked on paper for the world to see, rankled.

  John Adams had worked hard for his place, but the economic fortunes of others seemed to count for more than his own meritorious efforts. He would just have to work harder, he decided. He knew those boys weren’t better than him, and he would show the world it was so.

  3

  Worldly Goods, Heavenly Debates

  We are on the waves sometimes to heaven,

  and then sunk down to the bottom.

  —JOHN ADAMS

  In the early 1750s, the village of Braintree was once again rocked by religious scandal, similar to charges of heresy and sedition brought against Anne Hutchinson and her followers 114 years before. It all began when the North Parish Church found a new minister in 1745, to replace Reverend Hancock. They hired a recent graduate from Harvard, a young man by the name of Lemuel Briant. For close to a century Harvard had been turning out ministers, and the congregation of Braintree was certain that the revered college knew what it was doing by now.

  But Harvard had been changing over the past few decades and Lemuel Briant was a product of those changes. By the early eighteenth century, the concept of determining one’s own destiny—not leaving it to God alone to decide—had become acceptable and widespread. Educated New Englanders studied, or at least heard about, the works of John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon, and were convinced that human reason and private judgment had as much power over their lives as the church and its dogma.

  Even Harvard, venerable stronghold of Congregationalism, had become a place that allowed debate over questions of theology and included the masters of the Enlightenment on its readings lists. Under Presid
ent John Leverett, who stepped to the helm in 1708, Harvard changed from a college charged solely with training young men for the Congregational ministry to become an institution where students were educated for a variety of callings. Leverett made it a practice to call his graduates “Sons of Harvard,” whereas previous presidents had always referred to them as “Sons of Prophets.”1

  The new liberalism worried many of the traditional Puritan preachers of Massachusetts. They became convinced that their congregations were turning away from the colony’s original values of piety, simplicity, and frugality and turning toward sin and ultimate damnation. These preachers railed from their pulpits against society’s changing values and protested what they saw as moral laxity in their congregations.

  Following the teachings of George Whitefield, an evangelical minister from England, the conservative preachers of New England began a movement in the early 1740s that came to be known as the Great Awakening but at the time was called the New Lights ministry. The New Lights ministers wanted to bring their parishioners back to strict adherence to Calvinist Protestant doctrine and sought to do it through scaring them with lurid visions of hell.

  As Jonathan Edwards preached in a sermon he gave in western Massachusetts in 1741, “There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of: there is nothing between you and hell but the air; ’tis only the power and meer pleasure of God that holds you up.”2

  Arriving in Braintree in 1745, Reverend Lemuel Briant took over the North Parish Church just as the influence of the New Lights ministers was reaching its peak in Massachusetts. Still a young man, just twenty-four, he took on the older, more conservative ministers of Massachusetts, immediately inserting himself—and the North Parish Church—into the controversy swirling around the New Lights.