1Abigail Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 15 March 1787 (Adams Papers)
I would not omit writing you, because you seem to think you have been agrieved. I do not recollect what I wrote you, but I have Some Idea, that it was an enumeration of the various accidents you had met with, and advising you to more care and attention in future. I had no occasion to chide you for want of application to your studies, because your uncles your Aunts & your Brothers had been...
2John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 3 May 1788 (Adams Papers)
We have mutually been deficient in those attentions, which absent connections ought always to preserve towards one another: the fault has been the greatest on my side, as I was under the additional obligation of setting a good example; but I feel myself at this time peculiarly bound to write to you, to apologize for the rough expressions which upon several occasions I used while I was with...
3John Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 2 September 1789 (Adams Papers)
I have this morning received your manly letter of 25 th Ult.— I had long intended to write you but as you observe avocations have always intervened. Public business my son, must always be done by somebody.— it will be done by somebody or other— If wise men decline it others will not: if honest men refuse it, others will not. A young man should well weigh his plans. Integrity should be...