John Adams marries Catherine Hellen, Feb. 25, 1828
- This circa 1824 engraving by Francis Kearney released by the Massachusetts Historical Society shows John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States from 1824-1829. AP Photo
On this day in 1828, John Adams, 25, the second son of John Quincy Adams, the nation’s sixth president, and the grandson of his namesake, John Adams, the second president, married Mary Catherine Hellen, 22, his first cousin, in a private ceremony at what was then known as the Executive Mansion.
John Adams’s grandfather had married his third cousin, Abigail Smith. Historians remember Abigail Adams for the many letters she wrote her husband while he was in Philadelphia for the Continental Congresses.
Nine months and seven days after the wedding, Mary Catherine gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter, in the White House family quarters. Mary and John named the baby Mary, after her mother, with the middle name Louisa, after her paternal grandmother, Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams.
In 1853, Mary Louisa Adams also married a relative, her second cousin, William Clarkson Johnson. He was the son of her first cousin, Abigail Louisa Smith Adams, and he was the great-grandson of President John Adams. His father was Alexander Bryan Johnson, a New York banker who wrote 10 books on philosophy, religion and economic theory.
The wedding marked the first marriage between descendants of two presidents. While both Mary Louisa and William Johnson were descendants of President John Adams, only Mary Louisa was directly related to her grandfather, John Quincy Adams.
Mary Louisa Johnson died on July 16, 1859, in Far Rockaway, N.Y. Her husband lived until 1893 and died in New York City.
The Adamses were not the only presidential family to intermarry. In 1905, Franklin D. Roosevelt married Eleanor, his fifth cousin once removed. Her father, Elliott, was the brother of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Source: “John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life,” by Paul Nagel (1999)