de Quincey Family - Genealogy

Nine miles south of Boston airport on the shoreline of Quincy Bay, here in the 1620s Thomas Morton set up his Maypole in the area known as Mount Wollaston, which later became part of a new town named Braintree.

  Settlers poured in and among them were two Puritan emigrants Edmund Quincy and Henry Adams. Descendants of these two men contrived, individually and jointly, to make a good deal of American history in the following three centuries.

Henry Adams left Somerset as a maltster, an occupation his children carried on until well within the memory of the boy John Adams who became President.

Edmund Quincy on the other hand, brought with him six servants with his family as a companion to the great Puritan divine John Cotton. He was at once made a freeman, admitted to the First Church of Boston, chosen to sit in the first General Court and granted tracts of land at ' The Mount ' by the time of his death at 35 years he owned a good part of the shoreline of Quincy Bay. According to a family story circulated early in the 18th century he '' Purchased the Quincy Farm (about 400 acres)from the Indians for three loaves of bread''. It is doubtful if Chickatabut, the Moswetuset sachem of those part's was all that gullible, but it is clear that Edmund knew the right people.

  In 1647 Judith Quincy married John Hull, mintmaster and maker of pine tree shillings in which their daughter Hannah's weight is said to have been measured out as a dowry when she married Judge Samuel Sewell.  see Robert Sewell's web Site (www3.sympatico.ca/robert.sewell ). Edmund II, became a colonial grandee, holding all the usual offices and a least one unusual one - membership in the Council of Safety which briefly governed the Colony after Governor Andros was deposed in 1689.Edmund married Ist Joanna Hoar (1625-1680) son Daniel (1651-1690) whose son John Quincy was the grandfather of Abigail who married John Adams 2nd President of the United States and whose son John Quincy Adams was the 6th President.

Edmund Quincy III (1681-1738) Harvard 1699, Justice of the Peace, Colonel of Militia, representative in the-General Court, Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature, he left an estate of over £14,000. married Dorothy Flynt daughter of Rev. Josiah Flynt, children, - Edmund IV (1703-1788) Dorothy I (1709-1762) Josiah I (1710-1784).

Edmund IV who became known as ''Justice'' Quincy   married Elizabeth Wendall their daughter Dorothy married John Hancock (first man to sign the declaration of Independence).