First Lady Louisa Adams Sends Warm Wishes to Her Just-Born Namesake, In a Letter Also Signed by John Quincy Adams

A rarity: John Quincy Adams has free franked the address panel, thus the handwriting and signatures of both J.Q. and Louisa Adams on the same piece; This is just the second Louisa Adams ALS as First Lady that we have ever carried

Louisa Catherine Adams Boyleston was born on January 10, 1827 to John L. Boyleston and his wife Sally Brooks. John’s father was Ward Nicholas Boyleston, a cousin of John Adams who was a Loyalist during the Revolution but returned to America in 1800. He was a major benefactor of Harvard College, and established a professorship in Rhetoric and Oratory there in 1804, specifying that John Quincy Adams should be appointed professor. He donated funds for Harvard’s Boylston Medical Library and the Boylston Anatomical Museum, and for various prizes for medical dissertations. The Boylestons named their newly born daughter after the First Lady, Louisa Catherine Adams.

This was an honor the First Lady did not often receive, and she responded warmly. Autograph letter signed, Washington, February 28, 1827. “The President yesterday received a letter from you my Dear Sir in which you tell him that you had done me the honor to name your little granddaughter after me. I hasten to express my sense of the compliment that offered and to congratulate you on her birth, wishing her with great sincerity as large a portion of happiness as falls to the lot of mortals. The compliment was unexpected and very gratifying in consequence of an assurance made to me by Mr. Adams last evening altogether flattering to me that I was a favorite of yours and on this ground I felt the distinction very deeply.

“Present me kindly to Mr. Boyleston and to the other parents of the little Louisa Catherine Adams Boyleston and accept the sentiment of esteem and affection of Louisa C. Adams.”

Handwritten letters of Louisa Adams as First Lady are rare, this being only the second we have handled in our 30 years in the field.

Making this all the more interesting and uncommon is that the letter bears a free frank of her husband, John Quincy Adams, as President. Thus both John Quincy Adams as President and Louisa Adams as First Lady appear on the same piece. The frank also bears a postmark of Washington, February 28.