Who is John Adams

No man ever did more to make his na- tive land strong and independent than John Adams, who became the second president of the United States. When John Adams was born, on October 19, 1735, the American states were merely colonies under the rule of the King of England, and no one had dreamed of a nation called the United States. Then the dream was born, and after many struggles and hard- ships it came true. John Adams played an important part every step of the way.

 As a young man, he pre- dicted freedom for his country. He was at the first Continental Con- gress, met to unite the colonies. He helped to write the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signers. Having helped to make the United States possible, he served it first as vice-president —the first man to hold that office—and then as president. John Adams lived ninety years, the long- est life among all pres- idents of the United States. Late in this long life, he found that his great work had been forgotten by many of the peo- ple; he was jeered at by crowds and cursed in newspapers. Sad and bitter, after his term as president he retired to his farm in Massachusetts to live his life out. But in later years he found him- self again loved and respected by the American people, and he died a con- tented man. his early years John Adams was born at Braintree, Massachusetts, a farming community about twenty miles south of Boston.

The Adams family was descended from a Puritan who had come to Massachusetts from England 100 years before that. John Adams' father was a farmer, who made a good living and had gone to col- lege at Harvard; the Adams family were members of the Con- gregational Church, as were most of the peo- ple in that region. In later years, John Adams changed to the Unitarian Church. As a boy and later as a man, John Adams was small; but he was strong, for boyhood on a farm means hard work and develops a sturdy body.

Young John was serious, too, and a good student. He graduated from Harvard when he was 20 years old, taught school for a year at Worcester, Massachu- setts, studied law, and in 1758, when he was 23 years old, became a lawyer at Braintree. He was quite suc- cessful as a lawyer. When he was 29 years old, he married a girl from nearby Weymouth, Massachusetts, Abi- gail Smith, who was to become famous as a fitting wife for a great president. In 1768, when he was 33 years old, he moved with his wife and baby son, John Quincy Adams (who also was one day to be president), to the big city of Bos- ton, to practice law there.