The marriage of the young people on October 25, 1764, excited much comment. In Puritan New England the profession of the law was not a popular calling, and many of the people thought Abigail Smith was "throwing herself away." Parson Smith was equal to the occasion; as he had helped his eldest daughter out of a similar difficulty by preaching on the text, "And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her," so, on the Sunday after Abigail's marriage, he announced the text, "For John ... came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil." The year of the marriage witnessed the beginning of John Adams' fight for independence. For it was the year of the iniquitous Stamp Act. In his diary he wrote: "I drew up a petition to the selectmen of Braintree, and procured it to be signed by a number of the respectable inhabitants, to call a meeting of the town to instruct their representatives in relation to the stamps." The following year, when a meeting was held in Braintree to take action in consequence of the failure of Great Britain to heed the protest against the Stamp Act, he wrote: "I prepared a draught of instruction at home, and carried them with me. The cause of the meeting was explained at some length, and the state and danger of the country pointed out. A committee was appointed to prepare instructions, of which I was nominated as one. My draught was unanimously adopted without amendment, reported to the town, and accepted without a dissenting voice.... They rang through the state and were adopted in so many words ... by forty towns, as instructions to their representatives." Less than two years later, on July 11, 1767, in the town close by his own birthplace, to which John Adams had taken his bride, John Quincy Adams was born. The delights of the new home have been pictured in a pleasing manner by Daniel Munro Wilson: