“There to pursue their Studies of Latin and Greek”

John Adams wasted no time in reacting to Benjamin Waterhouse’s 13 Dec 1780 letter about educational opportunities in Leyden, quoted yesterday.

Five days later, the American diplomat packed his eldest sons, John Quincy and Charles, off to that Dutch university town with their occasional tutor, John Thaxter.

Even before knowing that they had settled in, Adams wrote home to his wife Abigail in Braintree:

My dearest Portia

I have this morning sent Mr. Thaxter, with my two Sons to Leyden, there to take up their Residence for some time, and there to pursue their Studies of Latin and Greek under the excellent Masters, and there to attend Lectures of the celebrated Professors in that University. It is much cheaper there than here: the Air is infinitely purer; and the Company and Conversation is better.

It is perhaps as learned an University as any in Europe.

I should not wish to have Children, educated in the common Schools in this Country, where a littleness of Soul is notorious. The Masters are mean Spirited Writches, pinching, kicking, and boxing the Children, upon every Turn.

The last paragraph looks like a comment on the Latin School on the Singel, where John Quincy had had such a poor experience in September and October.

This letter is our first sign that part of the pedagogy, and part of the problem, at that school was corporal punishment. Or, probably more accurately, even more corporal punishment than a New England family like the Adamses thought was just.

As Adams wrote, he and his wife were staying on friendly terms with James Lovell, a former usher at Boston’s South Latin School whose method of beating boys on the hand with his ruler was legendary. But whatever happened in Amsterdam was supposedly worse.

Another implication of this letter is that John Adams had not told Abigail anything about John Quincy’s problems at the Latin School. She may never have learned about those difficult fifty days and how her eldest son reportedly misbehaved to force his removal.

Fortunately, John Quincy liked the new arrangements in Leyden. The day after the party arrived, he told his father, “we went to hear a Medicinal lecture by Professor Horn, we saw several experiments there. In the afternoon we went to Hear a Law lecture by Professor Pessel.” The next day he reported: 

I have this day seen the master who is to teach us greek and Latin. He is to come to us twice a day; from twelve to one oclock and from five to six in the afternoon, so that I shall be two hours occupied with our master an hour at each lecture is two more and the rest of my time I shall be writing from Homer, the Greek testament, of Grammar, and learning lessons for our Master.

Thaxter engaged this man, an usher at the town’s high school, for thirty Guilders per month. The lessons were in French, as the boys had prepared for.

In addition, in January 1781 the university registered Thaxter, John Quincy, and Charles as students, the first two to study law and the youngest to study letters. Thaxter reported: “Ils travaillent avec beaucoup d’ardeur, et ils avancent très bien.” They work with lots of ardor and they progress very well.

Thus ended the only significant blot on John Quincy Adams’s scholastic career.

“Send my Children to me this Evening”

As I quoted yesterday, on 10 Nov 1780 Latin School rector Heinrich Verheyk sent American diplomat John Adams a letter stating that his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, was misbehaving in an attempt to get expelled.

John Adams responded immediately:

Sir

I have this moment received, with Surprise and Grief, your Billet.

I pray you Sir, to send my Children to me this Evening and your Account, together with their Chests and Effects tomorrow. I have the Honour to be, with great Respect, Sir, your humble servant,

He whisked both John Quincy and younger son Charles out of the Latin School at the Singel.

We don’t know what conversations took place in the Adams house that night. We do know that Adams already disagreed with how the school was placing John Quincy in a class with younger boys instead of letting him study Greek. So, while he may have been mortified at his son’s reported misbehavior, he sympathized with the motive behind it.

Adams cast about for a way for his boys to continue their education. John Quincy was thirteen, a year away from the age when many elite Massachusetts boys went to Harvard, and Charles was ten. They needed Latin and Greek for college. Adams was too busy trying to convince the Dutch republic to recognize the U.S. of A. to teach them himself. John Thaxter, who had tutored the boys in Braintree and aboard the ship to Europe, was still in Paris helping the American diplomats there.

Somehow Adams learned about another possible source of information: a young man from Newport, Rhode Island, named Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846, shown above as painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1775). He had started studying medicine as an apprentice at age sixteen and then sailed to Britain for more advanced training in March 1775, just before the Boston Port Bill took effect. Though Waterhouse spent the next three years in wartime Britain, he supported the independent U.S. of A.

In 1778 Waterhouse went to study at the University of Leyden, reportedly disconcerting the authorities by declaring himself a citizen of the free American states, which Holland had yet to recognize. After finishing a medical degree in 1780, he went back to Britain to visit his mentor there, then returned to Leyden to attend lectures on law and history. Perhaps on that trip he passed through Amsterdam, a little over twenty miles north of Leyden, and met the American minister.

Sometime in November or early December Adams asked Waterhouse if there were educational opportunities for his sons in Leyden. On 13 December the young doctor wrote back:

It so happened that I could not see the persons of whom I wished to enquire concerning the Schools, mode of education &c. untill yesterday, otherwise I should have written before.—

The Gentlemen from whom I have my information have each of them a young person under their care about the age of your eldest, and are well acquainted with every thing appertaining to education in this City, from conversing with them I am able to inform you that besides the publick-school which is a good one, there are private masters in the latin and greek, who at the same time they teach these languages, teach the greek and roman History. With boys who are far advanced in greek they read and explain Euripides, Sophocles and others.

The same person will if required repeat any of the Law-lectures to the pupil, and that indeed is what they are principally employed for, by those whose wives are to be Mevrouws [i.e., ladies].— There is a teacher of this kind in Leyden who is both an elegant schollar and a gentleman, such a one asks 20 ducats a year. . . .

In regard to living I am persuaded they can live here for much less than at Amsterdam. Three furnished rooms would probably cost 20 guilders a month. We find our own tea, sugar, wine, light and fire, and give one ducat a week for dinner, it is always the same price whether we go to the public-house, or have it brought from thence to our own rooms . . .

In respect to their being Americans or Sons of Mr. Adams they will never meet with any thing disagreeable on that head, where any profit is like to accrue little do the Dutchmen care for their political, or even religious principles—Turk, Jew, or Christian make no difference with them. I beleive we may say of them as they said of themselves at Japan when the Japonese enquired if they were christians—they answered, they were Dutchmen.

If the Gentlemen should come, I can insure them an agreeable Society and a genteel circle of acquaintance. If they should not, I hope at least they will come and pay us a visit, and I think I need not add how ready I should be to render them any service in my power.

Meanwhile, Adams had summoned Thaxter from Paris.

TOMORROW: A new arrangement.

Charles Adams’s Wish

On 16 July 1775, Abigail Adams had an urgent message to pass on to her husband John, then at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia:

Our little ones send Duty to pappa. You would smile to see them all gather round mamma upon the reception of a letter to hear from pappa, and Charls with open mouth, What does par say—did not he write no more. And little Tom says I wish I could see par.

Upon Mr. Rice’s going into the army he asked Charls if he should get him a place, he catchd at it with great eagerness and insisted upon going. We could not put him of, he cryed and beged, no obstical we could raise was sufficent to satisfy him, till I told him he must first obtain your consent. Then he insisted that I must write about it, and has been every day these 3 weeks insisting upon my asking your consent.

At last I have promised to write to you, and am obliged to be as good as my word.

Charles Adams was then five years old. His father did not use his influence to land him a spot in the Continental Army. But later in the war Charles did accompany his father and older brother John Quincy on a diplomatic mission to Europe.

The “Mr. Rice” who started all this heartache with an offhand joke to little Charles was Nathan Rice (1754–1834, shown above later in life), son of a Sturbridge minister who graduated from Harvard College in 1773. By then his widowed mother had married a man in Hingham, bringing the family to the South Shore.

In August 1774 Rice joined the Adams household as one of John’s law clerks alongside John Thaxter. Because their arrival coincided with the shutdown of the Massachusetts courts and Adams’s service at the First Continental Congress, those young men didn’t get to see much lawyering.

Thaxter transitioned into being the Adams family’s live-in tutor, also going on that mission to Europe. Rice joined the army in May 1775, serving in staff positions for most of the war, including as aide de camp to Gen. Benjamin Lincoln.

Rice settled in Hingham, having married Sophia Blake. He returned to the army during the Adams administration’s Quasi-War, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. In the 1810s, after raising their children, Nathan and Sophia Rice moved up to Winooski, Vermont. The house they built in 1818, remodeled extensively, became known as the “Mansion House”; there was a local dispute over removing it to build apartments in 2019, and I don’t know how that turned out.

“I have removed H——n out of the house”

As I quoted yesterday, in July 1775 John Adams sent his wife Abigail confirmation in writing that their tenant hand, an “old Man” named Hayden, should move out of the rooms he occupied in one of their Braintree houses.

Hayden had refused Abigail’s request, saying her husband would never have asked that of him. But that was just a delaying tactic.

John was still in Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress on 21 October when Abigail updated him on the effect of his letter:

Hayden does not stir. Says he will not go out of the parish [i.e., north Braintree, now Quincy] unless he is carried out—and here nobody will let him come in. I have offerd him part of the House that [a neighbor named] Field is in if he will but go out, but no where suits, and it is not to be wonderd at as he has wood at free cost and has plunderd pretty well from the family they live [with] many articles. I have a great mind to send a sheriff and put him out.

But she didn’t. For one thing, Abigail still needed men to work the farm, and the war made labor even more expensive.

Finally on 9 Apr 1778 Abigail Adams could write to her sons’ tutor, John Thaxter:

There is no reformation with regard to prices here, tho money grows scarcer, Labour is much more exorbitant than it was when you left us. The most indifferent Farmer is not to be procured under 10 and 12 pounds per month.

I know you will give me joy when I tell you that I have wrought almost a miracle. I have removed H——n out of the house, or rather hired him to remove and have put in a couple of Industerous young Fellows, to whom I let the Farm to the Halves.

In a letter to John that month, Abigail went into more detail about the new arrangements:

Many domestick affairs I wish to consult upon. I have studied for a method of defraying the necessary expences of my family. In no one Instance is a hundred pound L M better than thirteen pounds Six and Eight pence used to be, in foreign Articles no ways eaquel, in taxes but a fourth part as good. Day Labour at 24 shillings per day. What then can you think my situation must be?

I will tell you after much embaresment in endeavouring to procure faithfull hands I concluded to put out the Farm and reduce my family as much as posible. I sit about removeing the Tenants from the House, which with much difficulty I effected, but not till I had paid a Quarters Rent in an other House for them. I then with the kind assistance of Dr. [Cotton] T[uft]s procured two young Men Brothers newly married and placed them as Tenants to the halves retaining in my own Hands only one Horse and two Cows with pasturage for my Horse in summer, and Q[uinc]y medow for fodder in winter

Abigail had paid old Hayden’s rent for his first three months somewhere else—anywhere else.

I’ve quoted at extra length from those 1778 letters to show how Abigail Adams became more explicit about prices and economic trends over the course of the war. Eventually she was managing the Adams family’s finances, reporting to John on investments but no longer asking him for permission in advance.

Gen. Washington in Cambridge, 19 July

This Saturday, 19 July, Gen. George Washington will return to his Cambridge headquarters, at least in the form of reenactor John Koopman. He’s scheduled to be at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site from noon to 4:00 P.M., and that federal site is free to all visitors.

Abigail Adams had met the new commander a few days before he moved into that mansion, and on 16 July wrote to her husband John, assuring him that the Continental Congress had made the right choices:

The appointment of the Generals Washington and [Charles] Lee, gives universal satisfaction. The people have the highest opinion of Lees abilities, but you know the continuation of the popular Breath, depends much upon favorable events.

I had the pleasure of seeing both the Generals and their Aid de camps soon after their arrival and of being personally made known to them. They very politely express their regard for you. Major [Thomas] Miflin said he had orders from you to visit me at Braintree. I told him I should be very happy to see him there, and accordingly sent Mr. [John] Thaxter to Cambridge with a card to him and Mr. [Joseph] Read to dine with me. Mrs. [Mercy] Warren and her Son were to be with me. They very politely received the Message and lamented that they were not able to upon account of Expresses which they were that day to get in readiness to send of.

I was struck with General Washington. You had prepaired me to entertain a favorable opinion of him, but I thought the one half was not told me. Dignity with ease, and complacency, the Gentleman and Soldier look agreably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feture of his face. Those lines of Dryden instantly occurd to me

“Mark his Majestick fabrick! he’s a temple
Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine
His Souls the Deity that lodges there.
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God.”

General Lee looks like a careless hardy Veteran and from his appear­ence brought to my mind his namesake Charls the 12, king of Sweeden. The Elegance of his pen far exceeds that of his person.

Washington and his retinue never made it out to the Adamses’ home at Braintree, and it doesn’t look like Abigail ever visited the Cambridge headquarters, though John did. This letter did, however, eventually lead Abigail to a second meeting with Gen. Lee.

TOMORROW: Abigail Adams passes on a request for a commission.