The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum
We continue to the Old State House where the Declaration of Independence was read aloud from the balcony in 1776. “It’s remarkable that I’m standing in a place where people heard this expression of freedom and liberty for the first time,” says Boston by Foot tour guide Scott Fein. It’s also where the 1770 Boston Massacre took place when British troops fired on an angry crowd of colonists, the event noted with a sidewalk history marker. Faneuil Hall, anchoring Boston’s popular market complex, is where colonists first protested “no taxation without representation” in 1764 relating to the Sugar Act, and the Stamp Act the following year. We also enter the city’s North End and pass by the Paul Revere House, Boston’s oldest building still in existence dating back to 1680, and the North Church where lit lanterns in the church tower signaled the British invasion during Revere’s famous 1775 midnight ride. Revere is buried in the Granary Burying Ground, also the final resting place of Sam Adams, John Hancock, the parents of Benjamin Franklin, and other patriots. From downtown Boston, I drive about ten miles south on I-93 to Quincy, to the birth homes of father and son Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, part of the Adams National Historical Park. Surrounded by piled-stone and wooden fences, the
modest colonial homes sit only 75 feet apart on their original foundations and have been restored and rebuilt throughout the years. John Adams’ birthplace with its worn wooden facade dates back to 1681, where the second U.S. President was born in 1735. John and wife Abigail Adams moved into the adjacent home in 1764, where sixth U.S. President John Quincy Adams was born in 1767. The layout of both homes consisted of a ground floor parlor and hall. They have fireplaces and simple wooden tables and chairs, as there’s little evidence today of exactly how the homes may have looked. In John Quincy’s birthplace, John Adams set up his law office in one room, which has a replica of his standing desk. The actual desk is now in the nearby mansion-like Old House at Peace field, purchased by John Adams in 1788, and home to four generations of the family until 1927. The adjacent Stone Library holds more than 12,000 books, manuscripts, and documents from both presidents, with the buildings open for tours from spring through fall. No trip to explore the Adams’ legacy would be complete without a stop in central Quincy’s United First Parish Church, known as the Church of the Presidents, the final resting place for the two presidents and their wives. John Quincy commissioned the columned
BOSTON TO PROVIDENCE
COAST TO COAST MAGAZINE SUMMER 2025 | 20
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