28th.
Attended Mr. Wibird’s1 meeting forenoon, and afternoon. His voice and look was as familiar to me, as if I had not been absent. Among the People that were grown up before I went away, there were few or no new faces in the house: but there were but few young People, that I could recollect, 6 years have very little effect upon the appearance of men, and women, but a surprising one, upon that of Children. But of all the persons I have seen none have so compleatly altered as my Cousin W. Cranch. I never can realize the idea, of his being the same little boy I left in 1779, and I am told that I myself have alter’d nearly as much. When the afternoon service was over I went with Mr. Tyler down to my father’s house,2 and no object ever brought to my mind such a variety of different Sensations. It reminded me of the days of my Childhood, most of which were past in it, but it look’d so lonely, and melancholy without its inhabitants, as drew a deep sigh from my breast. I paid a visit to the Library, and found it in pretty good order.
1. Rev. Anthony Wibird, minister at the First Church of Braintree (later Quincy) from 1755 until his death in 1800 (, 12:226–230).
2. This house on Franklin Street in Quincy is known today as the John Quincy Adams Birthplace and was JA’s and AA’s home from the time of their marriage in 1764. JA had given Tyler access to his law library in the house during his absence (, p. 25–26). For an illustration of the house and the John Adams Birthplace next to it, see , 1:facing 256; a description of the two houses is in HA2, “The Birthplaces of Presidents John and John Quincy Adams, Quincy, Massachusetts,” Old-Time New England, 26:79–99 (Jan. 1936). The two houses are now part of the Adams National Historic Site administered by the National Park Service.