United First Parish Church

The United First Parish Church, organized in 1639 as part of the original Braintree settlement, is among the oldest continuous congregations in the United States. The current granite edifice on Hancock Street was completed in 1828, designed by Alexander Parris (who also designed Quincy Market in Boston), and replaced an earlier wooden structure on the same site. The church’s Unitarian congregation has maintained the building and its presidential crypt ever since.

John Adams and his wife Abigail are interred in a granite crypt beneath the church, as are John Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa Catherine Adams. The crypt was not the original burial location for either president — John Adams was first buried in a churchyard on the site, and John Quincy Adams was brought to Quincy from Washington following his death in the Capitol building in 1848. The transfer of John Quincy Adams’s remains to Quincy and their interment with his parents made the church the only site in the United States where two presidents and their first ladies are buried together.

The church played a role in the Adams family’s civic identity across multiple generations. Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams were active members of the Quincy congregation, and Charles Francis Adams — John Quincy’s son and the family’s diplomat and editor — served as a church trustee. Tours of the crypt are offered regularly through the National Park Service as part of the Adams National Historical Park program.