Adams, Abigail
(b. November 11, 1744; d. October 24, 1818) Wife of President John Adams and mother of President John Quincy Adams, noted for her correspondence.
Abigail Smith Adams is best known for the letters she wrote for over a half century, but also she is historically visible because she was the wife of one president of the United States (John Adams, 1797–1801) and mother of another (John Quincy Adams, 1825–1829). The stream of her letters that began in the early 1760s and ended with her death in 1818 represents the most complete record that survives of a woman's experiences during the Revolutionary War era and subsequent decades in American history.
Abigail was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Her father was a Congregational minister and her mother descended from distinguished New England clergymen. Abigail's youth—indeed, most of her adult life—was spent in the countryside around Boston. As was typical for girls, she was educated at home. The great milestone in her young life was marriage to John Adams in 1764.
The Adams marriage coincided with the escalation of events that led to the Revolution, and during the next decade, while Abigail gave birth to four children (as well as others who did not survive to adulthood), John was lured into the politics that took him to distant places for the quarter of a century after 1774. This is significant, because Abigail remained at home in Braintree during the Revolutionary War, supporting her family and maintaining their farm. She also began to write the torrent of letters that have become the best surviving record of a New England woman's experience of the Revolutionary era.
For almost a decade Abigail took over John's role as breadwinner, supporting herself, her children, and her household. She managed their farm; she began a small business enterprise by selling locally items that John sent from Europe; she negotiated for and purchased property (in his name, since married women could not hold land in their own names); she speculated in currency and paid their taxes. She did all of this with the understanding that it was her patriotic duty in wartime. "The unfealing [sic] world may consider it in what light they please," she wrote to John in mid-1777. "I consider it as a sacrifice to my Country" (Butterfield, II, p. 301).
Abigail's experiences during the Revolution were typical of many women whose husbands served their country. She suffered many hardships. Soon after John
Abigail Adams.departed for Philadelphia, a dysentery epidemic struck, and everyone in Abigail's household, herself included, was afflicted. Both her mother and her servant Patty, whom she nursed for many weeks, died, but her critically ill son Tommy survived. Then, after British troops occupied Boston, she feared she would have to abandon her own home just outside the city limits. Fortunately, the battle resumed farther to the south, and she did not have to move her family.
In her famous letter of March 31, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was being drafted, Abigail reminded John to "Remember the Ladies" in the new "Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make." She specifically asked the Founding Fathers to remember women's rights when they wrote their laws. This was a bold statement for a woman to make, and her words have resonated for American women for more than two centuries. That same letter carried an indictment against the continuation of slavery in the new nation, as she reminded the Founders of the "principal [sic] of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us" (Butterfield, I, p. 329).
Abigail believed that another outcome of the Revolutionary War should be improved education for women. In the summer of 1776, she waged another brief campaign in a letter to John: "I most sincerely wish that our new constitution may be distinguished for Learning and Virtue. If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women" (Butter-field, II, p. 94).
The war ended in 1783, and in 1784 Abigail traveled to Europe to join her husband, who became the first American minister to the Court of St. James. Following the Adamses' return in 1788, John was elected vice president (1789–1797) and then president, so Abigail played a public role at the nation's early capitals. All the while, she wrote letters to family and friends that captured the events, the spirit, and the consciousness of her times.
The final decades of her life were spent in her beloved Quincy, where she took care of her household and her family, gardened, attended worship, observed political developments, engaged in social activities, and recorded all in letters. She died after a long illness on October 24, 1818.
Drinker, Elizabeth; Madison, Dolley; Republican Womanhood; Sampson, Deborah.
Bibliography
Butterfield, L. H.; Garrett, Wendell D.; Sprague, Marjorie E., eds. The Adams Family Correspondence. 6 vols. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963–1993.
Gelles, Edith B. Portia: The World of Abigail Adams. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
Gelles, Edith B. Abigail Adams: A Writing Life. New York: Routledge, 2002.
McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.
Withey, Lynne. Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams. New York: Macmillan, 1981.
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