John Quincy Adams (53 page)

Although there is no etymographic or etymological basis for it, the Adams and Quincy families and natives of Massachusetts have, for generations, pronounced “Quincy” as “Quin-zee.” In fact, the origins of the Quincy family lie in Cuincy (now pronounced “Kahn-see” but probably “Ku-whan-see” in old French) in northwestern Normandy, France, where a knight named “de Cuincy” (literally: “from Cuincy”) joined the 1066 invasion of Britain. Some of the “Quincys” evidently intermarried with Scots, whose burr may have corrupted the spelling of “Cuincy” to “Quincy” and its pronunciation to “Quin-zee.” By 1203, nine years before he appears at the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, Saer de Quincy (tr.: “sieur” or “sire”—i.e., master—of Quincy/Cuincy) appeared as co-commander of a fortress in Normandy with his Scottish cousin Robert Fitzwalter.

Harvard graduates included more state governors, state legislators, state and federal judges, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and Presidents than any other American institution of higher learning.

Today, Passy is a largely residential area adjacent to the heights of the Chaillot neighborhood overlooking the Seine on the Paris Right Bank opposite the Eiffel Tower.

Bonhomme Richard
was the French form of Benjamin Franklin's pseudonym. Later that summer, Jones would have to abandon the
Bonhomme Richard
in a sea of flames off the English coast after attacking the British
Serapis,
which was escorting a fleet of thirty-nine merchant ships. In the ensuing battle, the British commander struck his flag to surrender, and as flames consumed the
Bonhomme Richard,
Jones transferred his men to the
Serapis
and sailed it back to Lorient.

Deane returned to France later in 1780 and lived the rest of his life in exile, taking his son Jesse with him to Ghent, then London. Jesse Deane sailed home to America to stay in 1783, and Silas Deane died under mysterious circumstances aboard a Boston-bound ship in Deal, England, in 1789.

American Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale is said to have paraphrased Cato as he was about to be hung by the British as a spy: Hale's last words were said to have been, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

This large, rectangular stretch of open parkland reaches today from the front of the École Militaire to the Eiffel Tower but ran to the Left Bank of the Seine at the time John Quincy Adams describes.

“Dear God, your sister is beautiful. I've seen few women as beautiful as she.”

A two-wheel, one-horse carriage with a folding top for two people.

About $1,200 in today's money.

Scottish-born president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) and the only clergyman and only foreign-born delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence, Witherspoon was the most influential educator of his time. His students included one president (James Madison), one vice president (Aaron Burr Jr.), sixty members of Congress, and three Supreme Court justices.

“Altogether a fraternal visit.”

By 1899, John Quincy Adams had gained recognition as “father of German studies in America,” and as late as 1940, the Adams translation of
Oberon
continued to appear and draw praise for its “unusually scholarly and literary merit, remarkable for its . . . genuine artistry.”

To ensure the validity of the purchase, John Quincy later proposed a constitutional amendment, but Congress deemed it unnecessary.

John Quincy's annual salary was second only to that of the President of the United States, who was paid $25,000 a year. The vice president and cabinet officers were paid only $5,000 a year each; the chief justice of the Supreme Court, $4,000; and associate justices, $3,500 each.

The British first used rockets against France in 1805 and again in 1807 and 1813. Their first use in America came at the Battle of Bladensburg. Invented in China in the early thirteenth century, they were largely used for setting fire to ships in close-range naval warfare until British ordinance officer William Congreve (1772–1822) added such improvements as sheet-iron casings and elongated tail sticks that converted them into incendiary bombs. The Congreve rocket carried seven pounds of incendiary materials as far as 3,000 yards.

Oliver Goldsmith's “The Hermit.”