Francis William Pitt Greenwood (1797–1843), Unitarian minister, was born in Boston. In 1814 he graduated from Harvard University, after which he remained in Cambridge an additional three years to study theology. Greenwood became the pastor of Boston’s New South Church in 1818 but left about a year later due to poor health. He traveled to Europe and then spent two years in Baltimore, where he edited the Unitarian Miscellany. Beginning in 1824 he was a minister at King’s Chapel in Boston, serving as head pastor from 1835 until his death. Greenwood published frequently throughout his career (Greenwood, Sermons [1844], esp. vii–lv; Sprague, American Pulpit description begins description ends , 8:485–92; Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel from the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day [1896], esp. 2:443–53; Harvard Catalogue description begins Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates, 1636–1925, 1925 description ends , 191, 924; Boston Atlas, 3 Aug. 1843).

In letters this year to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, Adams also compared his health at my age to that of other luminaries, observing on 16 Apr. 1819 “that Newton, Franklin and Saml Adams before my age were weeping, bedridden, helpless imbeciles,” and on 25 Sept. 1819 that “I am Older than Voltaire was when he died—and worn out with Cares and labours” (MHi: Lb in Adams Papers).