When you’re the holder of the highest office in the land, finding the free time to indulge in a hobby or a pastime to relax and free up some headspace is usually easier said than done. But throughout history—from horse riding to basketball, from dog walking to golf—the Presidents of the United States have found all kinds of ways to wind down after a long day as Commander in Chief.
Of all the presidents and their pastimes, however, perhaps the strangest is that of John Quincy Adams. A former Massachusetts senator and his predecessor President James Monroe’s Secretary of State, Adams was elected to office in 1825—becoming only the sixth president in US history and, as the eldest son of second president John Adams, the first relative of a former president to follow a family member into office.
Adams was reportedly a habitual early riser, writing in his diary in 1818 that, “I rise usually between four and five—walk two miles, bathe in Potomac River, and walk home, which occupies two hours.” And after his election to office, Adams kept to this standard morning routine as closely as possible, waking at or just before dawn down to the banks of the Potomac River to swim.
Swimming isn’t too bizarre a hobby, of course. However, skinny dipping arguably is.
According to several contemporary events and accounts—including one by legendary New York journalist Thurlow Weed — President Adams’ daily swims in the Potomac would be carried out completely naked. (“Adams seemed as much at home in that element as on terra firma,” Weed once wrote.) And, according to those same contemporary accounts, that predilection for being in the nude occasionally proved something of a problem!
The journalist Anne Royal allegedly once stumbled across President Adams enjoying his early morning constitutional and promptly took it upon herself to sit on his clothes, abandoned on the riverbank, and refused to move off them until the president had guaranteed her an interview. (Alas, it seems this tale at least—which is often claimed to have led to the first presidential interview with a female journalist in US history!—is likely apocryphal.)
On another occasion, Adams decided that he would not only take a dip in the water but would swim across the entire width of the Potomac, and so enlisted the help of a servant from the White House to row him across the river so that he could swim back. Midway over the river, however, the boat came into trouble and capsized, leaving Adams—who was already unclothed—to flounder his way back to the White House side of the river prematurely. As for the servant, he is said to have somehow managed to wriggle out of his heavy, waterlogged overcoat and trousers while in the water, for fear of them weighing him down, and likewise ended up washed up on the shore of the river beside the president, completely naked. Adams was left with little option but to give his clothes—which were still left on the shore—to the servant to wear so that he could run back to the White House and fetch him a new set before anyone noticed.