JOHN ADAMS FREE-FRANKED ADDRESS LEAF

    ADDRESSED TO AN OLD CLASSMATE AND ONE OF THE FIRST BENEFACTORS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ADAMS, JOHN.  (1735-1826).  Second President of the United States; Signer of Declaration of Independence.  His Free-franking Signature, “J. Adams”, on the integral address panel from a letter, along with the word “Free” also penned in his hand.    One page, small octavo.  No place, no date.  Addressed to “Ward Nicholas Boylston, Esq., Princeton, Massachusetts”.  Adams has also added the word “Free” in his hand, in the upper right-hand corner.  Traces of previous mounting, not affecting signature, else fine condition.                                                                             

                  

$5800.00

 

WARD NICHOLAS BOYLSTON. (1747–1828) was a descendant of the physician Zabdiel Boylston; an American merchant;  philanthropist; and benefactor of Harvard University.   Boylston bequeathed to Harvard University, on behalf of his uncle, Nicholas Boylston, $23,200 as a foundation of a professorship in Rhetoric and Oratory, specifying that John Quincy Adams should be appointed professor. He continued to donate large sums of money to Harvard, and in 1810 gave them a valuable collection of medical and anatomical works and engravings. He donated funds for Harvard’s Boylston Medical Library and the Boylston Anatomical Museum, for various prizes for medical dissertations, and for the Boylston Medical Society.  He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1819.