ued until
Seventeen Hundred Ninety-two, when one John Adams was Vice-President of
the United States. Now this John Adams, lawyer, was the son of John Adams,
honest farmer and cordwainer, who had bought the Penniman homestead, and
whose progenitor, Henry Adams, had moved there in Sixteen Hundred
Thirty-six. John Adams, Vice-President, afterwards President, was born
there in the Penniman house, and was regarded as a neutral, although he
had been thrashed by boys both from the North and from the South Precinct.
But at the last, there is no such thing as neutrality.

John Adams sided with the boys from the North Precinct, and now that he
was in power it occurred to him, having had a little experience in the
revolutionary line, that for the North Precinct to secede from the great
town of Braintree would be but proper and right.

The North Precinct had six stores that sold W.I. goods, and a tavern that
sold W.E.T. goods, and it should have a post-office of its own.

So John Adams suggested the matter to Richard Cranch, who was his
brother-in-law and near neighbor. Cranch agitated the matter, and the new
town, which was the old, was incorporated. They called it Quincy, probably
because Abigail, John's wife, insisted upon it. She had named her eldest
boy Quincy, in honor of her grandfather, whose father's name was Quinsey,
and who had relatives who spelled it De Quincey, one of which tribe was an
opium-eater.

Now, when Abigail made a suggestion, John usually heeded it. For Abigail
was as wise as she was good, and John well knew that his success in life
had come largely from the help, counsel and inspiration vouchsafed to him
by this splendid woman. And the man who will not let a woman have her way
in all such small matters as naming of babies or towns is not much of a
man.

So the town was named Quincy, and brother-in-law Cranch was appointed its
first postmaster. Shortly after, the Boston "Centinel" contained a
sarcastic article over the signature, "Old Subscriber," concerning the
distribution of official patronage among kinsmen, and the Eliots and the
Everetts gossiped over their back fences.

At this time Abigail lived in the cottage there on the Plymouth road,
halfway between Braintree and Quincy, but she got her mail at Quincy.

The Adams cottage is there now, and the next time you are in Boston you
had better go out and see it, just as June and I did one bright October
day.

June has lived within an hour's ride