The second column is inscribed to his wife with similar feeling.
John Quincy Adams's last resting-place is necessarily described with that of his father, John Adams. On the other side of the pulpit from the one where stands the tablet and bust of the elder Adams is another similarly dedicated to John Quincy Adams and his wife. It records that
Near this place reposes all that could die of John Quincy Adams.
After dwelling on his official achievements, it refers to him as:
A Son worthy of his Father, a Citizen shedding Glory on his Country, a Scholar ambitious to advance Mankind, this Christian sought to walk humbly in the sight of God.
The second column of the tablet similarly commemorates the virtues of his "partner for fifty years."
Thomas Jefferson's grave is at Monticello, the place of his residence. It is a little way from his old house, in a thick growth of woods, surrounded by about thirty graves, which are enclosed by a brick wall ten feet high. Until 1883 it was a neglected spot, desecrated and ruined by vandal relic-hunters. The mound was trodden level with the ground, and the inscription on the coarse granite obelisk was beaten off and unreadable except for the dates of birth and death.
In 1878 a movement was made in Congress to remedy this condition, but it was frustrated by the owner of the place, who claimed the grave and the right of way to it. An understanding was reached in 1883, and an appropriation of ten thousand dollars made for the erection of a suitable monument.
W.W. Corcoran, of Washington, endowed a professorship of natural history at the University of Virginia on condition that the university should take care of the grave. It is a place of exquisite natural beauty and grandeur, and is now marked by a fitting monument, inscribed as was the old one, a rough sketch of which was found. The inscription is as follows:
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia. Born April 2 (O.S.), 1743; died July 4, 1826.