In this house husband and wife celebrated their golden wedding, as John Quincy Adams was to celebrate his golden wedding many years later. Here, for many years, the son enjoyed being with the mother of whom he once wrote: "My mother was an angel upon earth. She was a minister of blessings to all human beings within her sphere of action.... She has been to me more than a mother. She has been a spirit from above watching over me for good, and contributing by my mere consciousness of her existence to the comfort of my life.... There is not a virtue that can abide in the female heart but it was the ornament of hers." And in this house the mother died, on October 28, 1818. John Quincy Adams lived there until his death, on July 4, 1826. VIII THE QUINCY MANSION, QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS THE HOME OF THREE DOROTHY QUINCYS Among the settlers to whom Boston granted large allotments of outlying lands were William Coddington and Edmund Quincy. In 1635 they went, in company with their associate settlers, to "the mount," which became Braintree, now Quincy. By the side of a pleasant brook, under the shade of spreading trees, Coddington built in 1636 his house of four rooms. Downstairs was the kitchen and the living room, while upstairs were two bedrooms. The upper story overhung the lower in the old manner, and a generous chimney, which afforded room for a large open fireplace, dominated the whole. This house became the meeting place for a group of seekers after religious liberty who were looked upon with suspicion in Boston--Rev. John Wheelwright, Sir Harry Vane, Atherton Hough, Ann Hutchinson, and others. In consequence of their views the company was soon broken up. Ann Hutchinson and Wheelwright were banished, while Coddington would have been banished if he had not gone hastily to Rhode Island. Edmund Quincy, who succeeded to Coddington's house, probably would have been banished if he had not died before the decree could be pronounced. For a season his widow, Judith, lived in the house, which, from that time, became known as the Quincy Mansion. With her were the children, Edmund and Judith. Judith, who married at twenty, and became the mother of Hannah (Betsy) Hull, whose dowry, when she became the bride of Judge Samuel Sewell, was her weight in pine-tree shillings, the gift of her father, the master of the colony's mint. Florence Royce Davis has written of the wedding: "Then the great scales were brought, amid laughter and jest, And Betsy was called to step in and be weighed; But a silence fell over each wondering guest When the mint-master opened a ponderous chest And a fortune of shillings displayed.