Adams National Historical Park, National Park Service

Adams National Historical Park is the National Park Service site in Quincy dedicated to the Adams family, whose members included John Adams and John Quincy Adams, the second and sixth presidents. Visitors can see the birthplace homes of both men, still in their original locations, and the National Park Service preserves and interprets the homes to inspire visitors with the example of the Adams family.

The birthplaces are known as saltboxes for their resemblance to the slant-lidded boxes colonial kitchens used for storing salt. The John Adams house, built in 1681, began with two rooms up and two down around a massive central chimney and later gained a lean-to. Behind the houses stretched the family farm, with livestock including oxen, horses, sheep, hogs and poultry, and a granite slab still covers the well that served both homes.

What to Know

• Congress took up legislation in 1978 to make the birthplaces a unit of the National Park Service.
• The City of Quincy and the Adams Memorial Society presented the birthplaces to the nation on May 1, 1979.
• From 1893 to 1940, the Quincy Historical Society ran the birthplaces as house museums.