The Quincy Family

Eliza Susan Quincy (1798-1884) spent her life preserving the memories and belongings of her ancestors at Historic New England’s Quincy House, in Quincy, Massachusetts. She took particular care with those of her grandfather, Josiah Quincy Jr. (1744-1775). 

Josiah Quincy Jr. was a gifted orator and author who criticized British Parliament’s unconstitutional oppression of the American colonies. He spent a year in England meeting with authorities to clear up any “gross misrepresentations and falsehoods” spread by former Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson about the “state of rebellion” among colonists. In 1775, Quincy Jr. set sail for Boston with information that could be delivered only by word of mouth, claiming, “my going now must be of great advantage to the American Cause.” He never made it home, dying of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-one while nearing the coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, just days after the events at Lexington and Concord set in motion the battle for American independence.  

Quincy Jr.’s contributions to the American cause would, within a few decades, be eclipsed by those of his friends and fellow patriots. Eliza Susan Quincy was zealous in her efforts to keep his legacy alive, working with her father to publish the Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy in 1825. She believed, had Quincy Jr. lived, “he would have held the first rank among the statesmen” of the United States.