Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams's birthplace in Weymouth, Massachusetts

Abigail Adams was born on November 22, 1744, at the North Parish Congregational Church in Weymouth, Massachusetts, to William Smith (1707–1783) and Elizabeth (née Quincy) Smith.[2] On her mother's side, she was descended from the Quincy family, a well-known political family in the Massachusetts colony. Through her mother she was a cousin of Dorothy Quincy, who was married to John Hancock. Adams was also the great-granddaughter of John Norton, founding pastor of Old Ship Church in Hingham, Massachusetts, the only remaining 17th-century Puritan meetinghouse in Massachusetts. Smith married Elizabeth Quincy in 1740, and together they had three daughters; Abigail was the youngest, following her sisters Mary (1739–1811) and Elizabeth ("Betsy", 1742–1816).[3] As with several of her ancestors, Adams's father was a liberal Congregational minister: a leader in a Yankee society that held its clergy in high esteem. Smith did not focus his preaching on predestination or original sin; instead he emphasized the importance of reason and morality.[4] In July 1775 his wife Elizabeth, with whom he had been married for 35 years, died of smallpox. In 1784, at age 77, Smith died.

The Smith family were slaveholders and are known to have owned at least four people. A slave named Phoebe took a caretaking role to Abigail and other children; later on she would work as a paid servant for Abigail after she became free. Abigail would come to express anti-slavery beliefs as an adult.[5]

Abigail did not receive formal schooling; she was frequently sick as a child, something which may have been a factor preventing her from receiving an education.[6]^: 7 Later in life, Adams would also consider that she was deprived an education because females were rarely given such an opportunity.[6]^: 7 Although she did not receive a formal education, her mother taught her and her sisters to read, write and cipher; her father's, uncle's and grandfather's large libraries enabled the sisters to study English and French literature.[7][4] Her grandmother, Elizabeth Quincy, also contributed to Adams's education.[6]^: 8 As she grew up, Adams read with friends in an effort to further her learning.[6]^: 8 She became one of the most erudite women ever to serve as first lady.[8]

Abigail Smith Adams – 1766 portrait by Benjamin Blyth

John Adams – 1766 portrait also by Blyth

Abigail Smith Adams – 1800-1815 portrait by Gilbert Stuart

John Adams – 1800-1815 portrait by Gilbert Stuart

Abigail Smith first met John Adams when she was 15 years old in 1759. Meanwhile, John accompanied his friend Richard Cranch to the Smith household. Cranch was engaged to Abigail's older sister, Mary Smith, and they would be the parents of federal judge William Cranch. Adams reported finding the Smith sisters neither "fond, nor frank, nor candid."[9]

Although Abigails' father approved of the match, her mother was appalled that her daughter would marry a country lawyer whose manner still reeked of the farm. Eventually, she gave in, and the couple married on October 25, 1764, in the Smiths' home in Weymouth. William Smith, Abigail's father, presided over the marriage.[10] After the reception, the couple mounted a single horse and rode off to their new home, the saltbox house and farm John had inherited from his father in Braintree, Massachusetts[7] (a location that is now part of Quincy). The couple welcomed their first child nine months into their marriage.[7]

In 12 years, Abigail Adams gave birth to six children:

• Abigail ("Nabby"; 1765–1813)
• John Quincy (1767–1848)
• Susanna ("Susanna", nicknamed "Suky")[11] (1768–1770)
• Charles (1770–1800)
• Thomas (1772–1832)
• Elizabeth (stillborn in 1777)[12]

Her childrearing style included relentless and continual reminders of what the children owed to virtue and the Adams tradition.[13] Adams was responsible for family and farm when her husband was on his long trips. "Alas!", she wrote in December 1773, "How many snow banks divide thee and me." Abigail and John's marriage is well documented through their correspondence and other writings.[14] Letters exchanged throughout John's political obligations indicate his trust in Abigail's knowledge was sincere. Like her husband, Abigail often quoted literature in her letters. Historian David McCullough claims that she did so "more readily" than her husband. Their correspondence illuminated their mutual emotional and intellectual respect. John often excused himself to Abigail for his "vanity",[15] exposing his need for her approval.

John Adams moved the family to Boston in April 1768, renting a clapboard house on Brattle Street that was known locally as the "White House". He and Abigail and the children lived there for a year, then moved to Cold Lane; still later, they moved again to a larger house in Brattle Square in the center of the city.[16]

John's growing law practice required changes for the family. In 1771, he moved Abigail and the children back to Braintree, but he kept his office in Boston, hoping the time away from his family would allow him to focus on his work. Nevertheless, after some time in the capital, he became disenchanted with the rural and "vulgar" Braintree as a home for his family, and thus, in August 1772, Adams moved his family back to Boston. He purchased a large brick house on Queen Street, not far from his office.[17] In 1774, Abigail and John returned the family to the farm due to the increasingly unstable situation in Boston, and Braintree remained their permanent Massachusetts home.[18]

Abigail also took responsibility for the family's financial matters, including investments. Her investments made through her uncle Cotton Tufts in debt instruments issued to finance the Revolutionary War were rewarded after Alexander Hamilton's First Report on the Public Credit endorsed full federal payment at face value to holders of government securities.[19] One recent researcher even credits Abigail's financial acumen with providing for the Adams family's wealth through the end of John's lifetime.[19]

In 1784, Abigail and her daughter Nabby joined her husband and her eldest son, John Quincy, at her husband's diplomatic post in Paris. Abigail had dreaded the thought of the long sea voyage, but in fact found the journey interesting. At first, she found life in Paris difficult and was rather overwhelmed by the novel experience of running a large house with a retinue of servants. However, as the months passed, she began to enjoy herself: she made numerous friends, discovered a fondness for the theatre and opera, and was fascinated by Parisian women's fashions, although she ruefully admitted that she "would never be in the mode."

After 1785, she filled the role of wife of the first U.S. minister to the Court of St James's (Britain). In contrast to Paris, Abigail disliked London, where she had few friends and was, in general, cold-shouldered by polite society. One pleasant experience was her temporary guardianship of Thomas Jefferson's young daughter Mary (Polly), for whom Abigail came to feel a deep and lifelong love.

She and John returned in 1788 to their home in Quincy, Peacefield (also known as the "Old House"), which she set about vigorously enlarging and remodeling. It still stands and is open to the public as part of Adams National Historical Park.[20]

Abigail Adams in later life, painted by Gilbert Stuart

John Adams was inaugurated as the second president of the United States on March 4, 1797, in Philadelphia at the age of 61.[7] Abigail was not present at her husband's inauguration as she was tending to his dying 89-year-old mother.[7] When John was elected President of the United States, Abigail continued a formal pattern of entertaining.[21] She held a large dinner each week, made frequent public appearances, and provided for entertainment for the city of Philadelphia each Fourth of July.[22]^: 12[23]

She took an active role in politics and policy, unlike the quiet presence of Martha Washington. Abigail was so politically active; her political opponents came to refer to her as "Mrs. President".[7] As John's confidant, Abigail was often well informed on issues facing her husband's administration, at times including details of current events not yet known to the public in letters to her sister Mary and her son John Quincy.[22]^: 11 Some people used Abigail to contact the president.[22]^: 12 At times Abigail planted favorable stories about her husband in the press.[22]^: 12 Abigail remained a staunch supporter of her husband's political career, supporting his policies, such as passing the Alien and Sedition Acts.[22]^: 12

Adams brought the children of her brother William Smith, her brother-in-law John Shaw, and her son Charles to live in the President's House during her husband's presidency because the children's respective fathers all struggled with alcoholism. Charles's daughter, Suzannah, was just 3 years old in 1800 when Adams brought her to live in the President's House in Philadelphia days before Charles's death.[24]

With the relocation of the capital to Washington, D.C. in 1800, she became the first First Lady to reside at the White House, or President's House as it was then known.[25] Adams moved into the White House in November 1800, living there for only the last four months of her husband's term.[7] At this time, the city of Washington D.C. was wilderness, with the President's House far from completion. She found the unfinished mansion in Washington "habitable" and the location "beautiful"; but she complained that, despite the thick woods nearby, she could find no one willing to chop and haul firewood for the First Family. Abigail used the East Room of the White House to hang up the laundry.[26] Adams's health, never robust, suffered in Washington.

Abigail and John Adams moved back to Peacefield after John's presidency

After John's defeat in his presidential re-election campaign, the family retired to Peacefield in Quincy in 1800. Abigail followed her son's political career earnestly, as her letters to her contemporaries show. In later years, she renewed correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, having reached out to him upon the death of his daughter Maria Jefferson Eppes (Polly), whom Abigail had cared for and come to love when Polly was a small child in London, even though Jefferson's political opposition to her husband had hurt her deeply.[7] She continued to raise her granddaughter Susanna.[7] She also raised her elder grandchildren, including George Washington Adams and a younger John Adams, while their father John Quincy Adams was minister to Russia. Adams's 48-year-old daughter, Nabby, died of breast cancer in 1813,[27] after having endured three years of severe pain.

Abigail's grave at United First Parish Church, Quincy, Massachusetts

Abigail Adams became ill during her final years. She died in her home on October 28, 1818,[2] of typhoid fever. She was buried in what was to become the family crypt, which now also holds her husband John, their son John Quincy, and John Quincy's wife Louisa, located in the United First Parish Church (also known as the "Church of the Presidents") in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was 73 years old, exactly two weeks shy of her 74th birthday. Her last words were, "Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long." Less than eight years later, on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, her husband died of heart failure at the age of 90. He was buried next to his wife.

One of the last letters sent by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello to Abigail Adams, May 1817

Biographer Lynne Withey argues for her conservatism because she: "feared revolution; she valued stability, believed that family and religion were the essential props of social order, and considered inequality a social necessity".[28] Her 18th-century mindset held that "improved legal and social status for women was not inconsistent with their essentially domestic role."[29]

Adams was an active member of First Parish Church in Quincy, which became Unitarian in doctrine by 1753.[7] Her theological views evolved over the course of her life. In a letter to her son near the end of her life, dated May 5, 1816, she wrote of her religious beliefs:

I acknowledge myself a unitarian – Believing that the Father alone, is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ derived his Being, and all his powers and honors from the Father ... There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.[4]

She also asked Louisa Adams in a letter dated January 3, 1818, "When will Mankind be convinced that true Religion is from the Heart, between Man and his creator, and not the imposition of Man or creeds and tests?"[34]

Historian Joseph Ellis has found that the 1,200 letters between John and Abigail "constituted a treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in American history."[35] Ellis (2011) says that Abigail, although self-educated, was a better and more colorful letter-writer than John, even though John was one of the best letter-writers of the age. Ellis argues that Abigail was the more resilient and more emotionally balanced of the two, and calls her one of the most extraordinary women in American history.[35]

Memorials

External video
Abigail Adams by Gilbert Stuart
"First Lady Abigail Adams", First Ladies: Influence & Image, C-SPAN[36]

The Abigail Adams Cairn – a mound of rough stones – crowns the nearby Penn Hill from which she and her son, John Quincy Adams, watched the Battle of Bunker Hill and the burning of Charlestown. At that time she was minding the children of Dr. Joseph Warren, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, who was killed in the battle.[37]

One of the subpeaks of New Hampshire's Mount Adams (whose main peak is named for her husband) is named in her honor.[38]

In 2003, Adams was one of three women honored in a bronze sculpture as part of the Boston’s Women Memorial on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston. "Concert to celebrate 'Three Women' of the Boston Women's Memorial". Boston Globe.

In 2022, a seven-foot tall bronze statue of Adams was unveiled in Quincy, Massachusetts, on the Hancock Adams Common.[39]

An Adams Memorial has been proposed in Washington, D.C., honoring Adams, her husband, her son, and other members of their family.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Abigail Adams.

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Abigail Adams

Wikiquote has quotations related to Abigail Adams.

• Founders Online, searchable edition
• Adams Papers Editorial Project
• Works by Abigail Adams at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Abigail Adams at Internet Archive
• Works by Abigail Adams at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Adams family biographies – Massachusetts Historical Society
• Collection of Abigail Adams Letters
• The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters, Harvard University Press
• Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family, Harvard University Press
• Adams Family Correspondence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press
• Abigail Adams Birthplace – Museum in Weymouth, Massachusetts
• Ancestors of Abigail Smith
• Abigail Adams at C-SPAN's First Ladies: Influence & Image
• Michals, Debra. "Abigail Adams". National Women's History Museum. 2015.