ADAM’S COTTAGE

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6442, 24 January 1924, Page 6

ADAM’S COTTAGE

’ AMERICANS BUY ANCIENT —— -•* 4 NORTHANTS CHAPEL, i , A fascinating story; comes , from Flore, a little village near Northampton, providing an historic link between the county and the United States. . ' In this typical English village is a tiny thatched house, with ancient leadpaned windows and yellow plastered walls. For generations it has been known as ‘‘Adam’s Cottage”, but why it was so called has been a mystery to most inhabitants. Now, however, researches have proved that it has most important associations with John Adams, the second President of the United States. His grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Adams, established a Quakers’ Meeting House there in 1662. He was ejected from his living, for holding Puritan principles. The cottage remained as a Quakers’ Chapel from 1662 to 1781, and the names of 35 Quakers have been found in the Friends’ register of Northampton and the Flore church register as being buried in the old-world garden attached to this cottage. 1 The first 21 on the list are named Adams, ancestors of the great American who succeeded Washington as President, but there is no headstone, no footstone, and no. memorial of any kind to mark their graves. This once hallowed ground is planted with vegetables, and the forebears 6f one who was America’s chief citizen now sleep in nameless graves beneath peas, potatoes, cabbages and fruit trees.

Besides the Adams family there gre several relatives of, the Pilgrim Fathers lying there.

The Sulgrave Institution in New York decided to buy the property in order to preserve it for the British nation.

; This was instantly arranged, arid the Americans propose to restore it to soinething like its original appearance as an old Quakers’ Meetirig House.

Fortunately, 1 many of the ancient features of the place, including the cupboard and the windows where their Bibles and hymn books were stored, are still in existence, and the institution appeals for the loan or purchase of the old ’ Quaker stools, forms, and books, particularly those, relics belonging to the Adams family.

It is a curious coincidence that at the village of Brington, a mile from Fibre, the ancestors of George Washington lived and died, and in Brighton church are their family vaults bearing above the arms of the Washingtons (the Stars and Stripes), which formed the motif of the national flag of America.

Not many miles distant in the same county is Sulgrave Manor, another ancestral home of the Washingtons, which was purchased for nearly £lO,000 several years ago, and now enshrines many precious relics of Washington, which makes it a Mecca of American pilgrims.

In another part of the same county is the village of Ectqn, where the ancestors of Benjamin Franklin flourished as bell founders and blacksmiths. . ‘ ?

As" the present President of the United States, Mr. Coolidge, was born in the daughter-town of Northampton, Massachusetts, efforts will be made to persuade him to pay a personal visit next summer to the county which has provided America with three of its greatest citizens.