Francis Dana Archives - New England Historical Society

John Quincy Adams’ diary must have been irresistible reading for his bad boy brother Charles.

John Quincy started his diary at the age of 12 because his father insisted on it. He made his first entry on the eve of his voyage to Paris with his father and Charles, then nine.

Bad boy brother Charles and John Quincy Adams in their youth.

On Nov. 19, 1779, John Quincy wrote, “This morning at about 11 o’clock I took leave of my Mamma, my sister, and brother Tommy and went to Boston with Mr. Thaxter, in order to go on board the frigate the Sensible of 28 pounders.”

John Quincy had already accompanied his father once on a diplomatic mission to France during the American Revolution. He had been sturdier and older than Charles, described as “charming,” “sensitive” and “delicate.”

Story of a Bad Boy

The second diplomatic mission starting in 1779 turned out a disaster for young Charles. The Sensible headed into a gale and then sprung a leak. The captain enlisted passengers, including John Quincy, to take turns pumping the ice water out of the ship. The Sensible limped into El Ferrol, the first friendly port it could find, on the northwestern tip of Spain. The Adamses then traveled 1,000 miles overland in a journey John Adams called the worst experience of his life. After a brief time in Paris, they went on to the Netherlands, where John Adams negotiated a loan from the Dutch to the continental American government.

John Adams upon completion of the Treaty of Paris. Courtesy Harvard Art Museums.

John Quincy and Charles enrolled in a Latin school in Amsterdam where the tutors beat them regularly. Their father found out and sent them in December 1780 to another school, the prestigious Leiden University. John Quincy, though, left for St. Petersburg in July as secretary to Francis Dana. The boys’ father realized Charles was terribly homesick and sent him back to Massachusetts.

Charles left London with a chaperone in August of 1781, but his ship didn’t get far. Needing repairs, it went into drydock in Spain. The Adams family didn’t know what happened to him and thought he’d been lost at sea. He arrived home five months later, but by some accounts he had returned a lost boy.

Little survives of the notoriously voluminous Adams’ family papers when it comes to Charles’ disappearance in Spain. Or much else about Charles.

John Quincy kept up his diary for a few months after he embarked on the Sensible, but stopped writing during and after Charles’ departure.

A Sad End

Five years later, in July 1786, Charles had finished his first year at Harvard. He had already started getting into trouble at Harvard, drinking heavily and disturbing the peace.

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy had just been admitted as a junior to ‘the Seat of the Muses,’ as his father called his alma mater. He had started keeping his diary again, and on July 27, 1786, he wrote about something else his bad boy brother had done.

“I perceive Charles has been guilty of a trick which I thought he would despise; that of prying into, and meddling with things which are nothing to him: and ungenerously looking into Papers, (which he knew I wished to keep private,) because I could not keep them under lock and key. If he looks here, he will feel how contemptible a spy is to himself, and to others.”

Charles did graduate from Harvard, and his parents sent him to New York to study law. He lived with Baron von Steuben, believed to be gay, and found him fascinating. Eventually he married, but he had extramarital affairs and failed at the law. Some historians believe Charles was gay as well.

His father later disowned him as a “a mere rake, buck, blood and beast.” Charles died at 30 of cirrhosis of the liver while living in poverty apart from his wife and two daughters.

John Quincy had another bad boy brother: Thomas. The baby of the family, Thomas ended up living with his parents, along with his wife and seven children. He couldn’t support himself or his family, and he vanished for days on drinking binges. He died at 59.

Like Father, Like Son

John Adams famously wrote to his eldest son that he’d only have himself to blame if he didn’t rise to president of the United States. “You come into life with advantages which will disgrace you if your success is mediocre,” he wrote. “And if you do not rise to the head not only of your profession, but of your country, it will be owing to your own laziness, slovenliness, and obstinacy.”

Some speculate that John Adams’ two youngest sons failed under the pressure of his demands.

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams also demanded a great deal of his sons. And like his father, he would have one son who would make him proud and two who would disappoint him.

George Washington Adams

George Washington died at 28, a dissolute drunk who fathered an illegitimate child and may have committed suicide. John lived until 31, but led no happier or soberer a life than his older brother. Only the youngest, Charles Francis Adams, would win acclaim as a diplomat and historian.

John Adams II

This story last updated in 2023.

With thanks to J.L. Bell and his Boston 1775 blog and Steven Lee Carson, Adams Family (History Net).

John Adams’ daughter in 1785 dumped the charming rake Royall Tyler to marry a dashing military hero. She may well have regretted her choice, but her secretive nature prevents us from knowing.

Abigail, or ‘Nabby,’ was the only daughter of John and Abigail Adams who lived to adulthood. She was handsome, not beautiful, and reserved. When she was 16 years old, Royall Tyler came to Braintree to practice law. He won, then lost, her heart.

What Nabby couldn’t have known was that her husband-to-be, William Stephens Smith, was a has-been at 30, and Royall Tyler would become a successful politician, professor and literary celebrity.

Royall Tyler

The dashing Royall Tyler

Royall Tyler was born June 18, 1757 in Boston, the son of a wealthy merchant. His father died when he was young. He studied at Harvard, where he squandered half his inheritance on drinking, partying and gambling. He also fathered a child with a cleaning woman.

After college, he studied law under Francis Dana, for whom a young John Quincy Adams had worked when he served as minister to Russia. Tyler then moved to Braintree, where he lodged with Abigail Adams’ sister and brother-in-law, Mary and Richard Cranch.

He soon grew friendly with John Quincy Adams and his sister Nabby, who at 16 was eight years younger than he.

Tyler cut a dashing figure. He was handsome, well-mannered and dressed stylishly.

Abigail Adams found Royall Tyler charming, and believed him when he told her he had reformed. She wrote to her husband, then in Europe. The young man had ‘a sprightly fancy, a warm imagination and an agreeable person,’ she wrote, though she admitted Tyler was ‘rather negligent in pursueing (sic) his business … and dissipated two or 3 more years of his Life and too much of his fortune to reflect upon with pleasure; all of which he now laments but cannot recall.’

She also told John Adams that Royall Tyler was courting his daughter.

Reformed Rake

John Adams exploded in writing at the news. He wrote Abigail a letter in January 1783:

I confess I dont like the Subject at all. . . . My Child is a Model, as you represent her and as I know her, and is not to be the Prize, I hope of any, even reformed Rake. . . .

But Tyler persisted and John Adams eventually relented. By the spring of 1784 he won Nabby’s heart and the approval of her parents. The Adams family expected them to marry.

Nabby’s letters are lost, and she never mentioned Royall Tyler in her letters. Still, it’s possible from her mother’s writing to glean what happened.

Stories about Tyler’s college days resurfaced in Braintree, and the Adamses came to think of him as an insincere flatterer.

Nabby Adams

In 1784, Nabby sailed for Europe with her mother to join her father and oldest brother, John Quincy.

Nabby wrote letter after letter to Royal Tyler. Ships from America kept arriving without letters from him. She kept to herself her ‘fear, suspicion, doubt, dread and apprehension.’

Finally, her mother broached the subject with her. Nabby asked Abigail whether she thought someone they knew was a man of honor. Abigail responded:

I replied yes a Man of strict honour, and I wisht I could say that of all her acquaintance. As she could not mistake my meaning, instead of being affected as I apprehended she said, a breach of honour in one party would not justify a want of it in the other. I thought this the very time to speak. I said if she was conscious of any want of honour on the part of the Gentleman, I and every Friend she had in the world, would rejoice if she could liberate herself.

Nabby decided to dump Royall Tyler.

In the summer of 1785, Nabby told her mother about the break-, up, asking that ‘neither the Name or subject may ever be mentiond to her.’ She sent Tyler a Dear John letter in September that year.

Consolation

Nabby’s letter devastated Royall Tyler. He took lodgings with the Palmer family in Boston, where he was consoled by Betsey Palmer. He took so much consolation from Betsey he fathered a child with her – and possibly two — while her husband was away.

Tyler then married Betsey Palmer’s daughter Mary, and they had 11 children. He took part in suppressing Shay’s rebellion, which took him to Vermont. There he became chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court and a professor of jurisprudence at the University of Vermont.

Royall Tyler became a literary celebrity as well. He wrote a comedy, The Contrast, performed in New York City before George Washington and members of the first Congress. He wrote a satirical newspaper column, published a novel, the Algerine Captive, authored legal tracts, plays, a musical, two long poems, essays and a travel narrative.

Tyler later said he only regretted his youthful profligacy to the extent it hampered his ambition later in life.

William Stephens Smith

When Nabby Adams broke up with Royall Tyler, she had her eye on someone else: Col. William Stephens Smith, secretary to the American delegation to London.

Smith was the son of a wealthy New York merchant, a Princeton graduate and a veteran of the Revolution where he had served on George Washington’s staff. When she married him, Nabby had on idea of the downward spiral his career would take.

They married in 1786 and returned to New York, where they had four children.

Smith received appointments to several federal posts, but he dabbled in Latin American coups and speculated recklessly in land. By 1809, the family lived on a small farm in western New York State. The rest of the Adams family viewed him as hopelessly improvident.

Nabby discovered a small lump on her breast, which turned out to be an aggressive form of breast cancer. In 1811 she returned to Boston and had a mastectomy without anesthetic.

She survived the operation and returned to New York. The cancer returned, though, and she told her husband she wanted to die in her father’s house. Her wish was granted on Aug. 15, 1813.

This story was updated in 2022.

Francis Dana

John Quincy Adams’ Bad Boy Brother Charles