“For your mutual Happiness and...dedicated to the Public”: The Marriage of John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams

In the upcoming volume of Adams Family Correspondence we reach a pivotal moment in Adams family history—the marriage of Louisa Catherine Johnson to John Quincy Adams.

This partnership began quite simply on July 26, 1797. They were married before eleven o’clock in the morning at the Church of All Hallows, Barking, right by the Tower of London and immediately took a tour of country house near London, as JQA reported in his diary entry for the day. Louisa, who kept no diary at the time, wrote in her memoirs nearly thirty years later, and with the knowledge of what was coming quickly around the corner for the newlyweds—the embarrassment of her father’s financial failure—noted it simply, “On the Wednesday 26 of July 1797 I became a bride under as every body thought the happiest auspices—”

Two days after the wedding, the newlyweds sat down to compose a joint letter announcing their marriage to the distant John and Abigail Adams.

John Quincy opened the letter:

I have now the happiness of presenting to you another daughter.... My recommendation of her to your kindness and affection I know will be unnecessary. My sentiment of her merit, will not at this moment especially boast its impartiality, but if there be as I believe an inseparable chain of connection which binds together all the domestic virtues, I have the strongest pledge that she, who has in an amiable and respectable family, adorned the characters of a daughter and Sister, will prove an equal ornament to that of a wife.

Louisa, promising to always act worthily of their “esteem and tenderness,” concluded: “fulfillment of my duties either as wife or daughter, to be respected in these characters, and to meet the approbation of my Husband, and family, is the greatest wish of my heart— Stimulated by these motives (your affection the reward) will prove a sufficient incitement, never to sully the title of subscribing myself your, Dutiful Daughter.”

John Adams replied to the news of his eldest son’s marriage with his blessing: “I congratulate you and your Lady on this Event, which I hope will be for your mutual Happiness and..., for a long Course of years, dedicated to the Public— And may the Blessing of God Almighty be bestowed on this Marriage and all its Connections and Effects.” His blessing on this marriage, one that lasted over fifty years and combined the charm and sociability of Louisa to John Quincy’s dedicated and driven, if sometimes brusque demeanor, was more than fulfilled in the couple serving the public until John Quincy’s death in 1848.

**Image: JQA and LCA’s Marriage Certificate,  26 June 1797, Adams Family Papers.