The sarcophagi containing the bodies of George and Martha Washington are in the anteroom, behind which is the vault where the bodies of about thirty members of the family repose. On a tablet over the door are the words: "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
On the sarcophagus of Mrs. Washington is the inscription: "Martha, Consort of Washington; died 22nd of May, 1802; aged 71 years."
That of Washington is ornamented with the United States coat-of-arms upon a draped flag, and bears the all-sufficient word:
WASHINGTON.
John Adams, the second President, rests side by side with his son, John Quincy Adams, under the First Congregational Church, where they worshiped in their native town of Braintree, Massachusetts, now called Quincy. The tomb is in the front part of the cellar, under the porch. It is fourteen feet square, and is made of large blocks of granite, slightly faced. The door is formed by a granite slab, seven feet by three.
The bodies of the two Presidents and their wives are enclosed in leaden caskets and are placed in stone coffins, each hewn from a single piece of marble. In the church, on the right side of the pulpit, as seen from the pews, is a memorial tablet surmounted by a life-sized bust of John Adams. Below the bust is a Latin line:
Libertatem, Amicitiam, Fidem, Retinebis.
Above the tablet are the words:
Thy Will Be Done
The tablet is inscribed in two columns, the first testifying that "Beneath these walls are deposited the mortal remains of John Adams, son of John and Susanna (Boylston) Adams, second President of the United States." At great length it eulogizes his life and says of his death that "On the Fourth of July, 1826, he was summoned to the independence of immortality and to the judgment of his God."