Quincy, Massachusetts and John Quincy Adams Share a Namesake

Quincy, Massachusetts, and John Quincy Adams were named for the same man, Col. John Quincy, who lay dying when the future president was born. Twenty-five years later, the town took his name too.

A baby named at a deathbed

Charles Francis Adams told the family side of it in 1892, in a long study of the old town of Braintree, which Quincy was once part of. Colonel Quincy’s daughter married William Smith of Weymouth, and one of their daughters married John Adams in October 1764. “In July, 1767, as old John Quincy lay dying at Mount Wollaston, this grand-daughter of his gave birth to a son.” The baby’s grandmother asked that he “be called after her father.”

The boy grew up to be president. Long afterwards, he wrote about his name, and Adams quotes him: “It was filial tenderness that gave the name. It was the name of one passing from earth to immortality.”

Why the town got the name in 1792

Quincy used to be the north end of Braintree. Adams says that on February 22, 1792, the North Precinct “was set off, and ordered to be called by the name of Quincy.” Elias Nason, in his gazetteer of the state’s towns from 1874, gives February 23 and says the name was given “in honor of Col. John Quincy, who had owned the Wollaston Farm.” So do Henry Gannett’s 1905 government survey of place names and the GNIS database: both name the colonel.

Picking the name took some asking around. Adams quotes an older town history: the Rev. Anthony Wibird “was requested to give a name to the place. He refusing to do so, a similar request was made to the Hon. Richard Cranch, who recommended its being called Quincy, in honor of Col. John Quincy.”

Adams thinks he knows why. Cranch and John Adams were brothers-in-law, and “their wives were grand-daughters of Col. John Quincy. Hence, probably, the selection of the name.” Notice the “probably.” That part is his guess, not something the records say.

Not everyone wanted Quincy

As it turns out, there was another candidate. Gov. John Hancock, who signed the act, had been born in the North Precinct, and Adams writes that “there were those who did not forget” it. “They wanted the new town to be named after him.” They didn’t get their way, and Adams admits that “at the time, the choice was not wholly satisfactory.”

John Warner Barber’s 1839 book on the state’s towns tells a broader version. He says Quincy “received its name from the family of Mr. Edmund Quincy,” who was one of the early inhabitants of Boston and one of the first owners of Mount Wollaston. He doesn’t single out the colonel, but it’s the same family name either way.

Merry Mount, before all that

Long before there was a town to name, the place had a wilder reputation. Barber says Captain Wollaston settled there in 1625, and the spot was named Mount Wollaston after him. When Wollaston gave up and went to Virginia, Thomas Morton pushed out the agent he’d left in charge, took over, and renamed the place Merry Mount. Barber quotes an old account of the crowd “setting up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it.” Capt. Standish showed up with a small force and took Morton, who was carried to Plymouth and sent back to England.

If you look at the 1893 sheet with this article, you’ll find the captain’s name just above the big QUINCY label: Wollaston. Nason lists Wollaston among the town’s “postal centres” in 1874.

Sources & further reading

• Charles Francis Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, vol. 2 (Boston, 1892). John Quincy Adams named for his dying great-grandfather, Wibird’s refusal and Cranch’s suggestion (pp. 711-712); the act of February 22, 1792, the push to name the town for Hancock, and Cranch’s family ties (pp. 903-904).
• Elias Nason, A Gazetteer of the State of Massachusetts (Boston, 1874), pp. 423-426. Incorporated February 23, 1792, “in honor of Col. John Quincy, who had owned the Wollaston Farm”; Mount Wollaston and Merry Mount; Wollaston among the town’s “postal centres”; John Quincy Adams born here and “elected president of the United States in 1825.”
• John Warner Barber, Historical Collections … of Every Town in Massachusetts (Worcester, 1839), pp. 478-479. Wollaston, Morton and the maypole; the name “from the family of Mr. Edmund Quincy.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 256. “Named for Col. John Quincy.”
• GNIS feature 617701 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record: “Named for Colonel John Quincy.”