If anyone was raised to take on the role of the president of the United States, then that person was John Quincy Adams. He came from the town of Braintree, Massachusetts, which his ancestors had settled, and generations of Adams would come to prosper. His father, John Adams, studied law at Harvard College, and married Abigail Smith in 1765. On July 11th, 1767, the couple gave birth to their second child, John Quincy Adams. John Quincy grew up with much happening in nearby Boston to interest and educate him. Revolution against Great Britain was on the minds of many, including his cousin, Samuel Adams, a leader of this uprising. At the age of eight, John Quincy watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from his house. John Quincy "represented the hopes and pride of his father." His father the second president our country would know, the stage was set for John Quincy to lead a successful political career. .
With his father away on business often, the Adams children were raised by the strong-willed Abigail. She had high hopes for her oldest son, who was tutored personally by his father's law employees, and would become an avid reader and writer early on. With his father becoming more and more involved in the political scene, John Quincy successfully begged his father to take him overseas to Europe at the age of ten, where the elder John was helping to negotiate a settlement to the war. John Quincy attended some of the finest schools during his stay in Europe, learning much French and continuing reading extensively. When Adams was fourteen, he was hired as the private secretary to the American minister to Berlin, Francis Dana. In 1784, father and son returned to Massachusetts, where the younger John felt he was ready for college. He entered Harvard to study law and graduated second in his class of fifty-one in 1787. Adams served as a law clerk while being trained as an attorney and, although he found he disliked practicing law, John Quincy opened a law office on Court Street in Boston in 1790.