Diary of John Adams, volume 1

[Marginal Note in Winthrop’s <hi rendition="#italic" n="title">Lecture on Earthquakes</hi>.]<a xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" href="#DJA01d315n1" class="note" id="DJA01d315n1a">1</a> JA [Marginal Note in Winthrop’s <hi rendition="#italic" n="title">Lecture on Earthquakes</hi>.] Adams, John

Marginal Note in Winthrop’s Lecture on Earthquakes. 1

March 12th. 1761. Another Earthquake happened which may perhaps enable us to determine, whereabouts these Earthquakes orig-202inate, and what Course they take, for as all Canada is now in English hands, we may have Accounts from Montreal, Quebeck, Oswego, and the several Places upon the River St. Lawrence, at what time this Earthquake happened, its Direction and Degree of Violence.

At foot of p. 16 in JA’s copy of John Winthrop’s Lecture of 1755 (in Boston Public Library; see other marginalia by JA in this copy, following the entry of 5? Dec. 1758, above). At this point in his lecture Winthrop was reporting such scanty data as were available on the direction of movement of earlier earthquakes in America. On the back of the titlepage of his copy JA recorded, in a separate note, that the earthquake of 12 March 1761 occurred about 2:30 A.M., “resembling ’tho not quite equalling that which gave Occasion to this Discourse, in Violence, or Duration.”

[March? 1761.] <a xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" href="#DJA01d316n1" class="note" id="DJA01d316n1a">1</a> JA [March? 1761.] Adams, John

March? 1761. 1

Parson Smith’s Parsonage.

Vid. 6th. Wm. & M. C. 5. Page 60.—Charter Page 6th &c. from Index to Index. All Lands &c. which any Body politick, or Corporate, Towns, Colledges or Schools, do hold &c. by or under any Grant by any general Court, or by any other lawful Right or Title whatsoever; shall be by such Towns, Colledges or Schools, their respective Heirs, successors and assigns forever hereafter held and enjoyed,2 according to the Purport and Intent of such respective Grant, &c., not withstanding any Want of form.

Now in the Weymouth Case, there is a Deed to a Committee of the Town of Weymouth for the use of the Ministry, &c. and for a convenient settlement of Housing and Lands, for the Ministry, and for no other Use, Intent or Purpose whatsoever. Now I believe it must be agreed that that Committee and their Grant had no Intent or Design, of any thing but that the present Incumbent and his successors should enjoy that House and Land forever. And, it cant be thought that Either Party to that deed entertained a Thought of dividing that House and Land among 50 ministers, that shall happen to settle within the Borders of that Town, tho they may be Churchmen, Anabaptists, Quakers, Separatists, for every one of these sects, have a Minister who may be as well called one of the Ministry of Weymouth as Mr. Bayley can.3

First entry in D/JA/7, a “paper book” without cover, stitching, or docketing.

The words in brackets, inadvertently omitted in MS, have been supplied from the Massachusetts Charter of 1691 (Thorpe, Federal and State Constitutions , 3:1877).

James Bayley, Harvard 1719, was minister of the second or south parish of Weymouth from 1723, when Weymouth was divided into North and South Precincts, until his death in 1766. A dispute went on for many years over the interests of the two precincts in the original parsonage property. (Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates , 6:293–294; Weymouth Hist. Soc., History of Weymouth, 1923, 1:233–236.)

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