Abigail Adams

Born November 22, 1744
Weymouth, Massachusetts
Died October 28, 1818
Quincy, Massachusetts

Second First Lady of the United States, women's rights advocate

Abigail Adams, one of the most well-known women of the eighteenth century, was the wife of one United States president and the mother of another. During her husband's long absences from home, she successfully managed her family's affairs and ran their farm. In a new country based on the principles of equality and independence, this American patriot loved and loyally supported her own country and sowed the seeds for the movement to make women full citizens of the United States.

Abigail Adams was born Abigail Smith on November 22, 1744, to William Smith, a Protestant minister, and Elizabeth Quincy Adams. Both were from wealthy, educated New England families. Adams was a shy but stubborn child who suffered several illnesses during her early years. Her strict mother taught Adams to be charitable, and they often went together to bring food and clothing to the area's needy families.

Adams's father loved learning and gave all of his children full run of his large library. There the young girl learned about poetry, history, drama, religion, and political matters. She educated herself and became one of the best-read women of the time. Her poor spelling and handwriting, however, showed that she was self-taught.

Abigail Adams grew into a tall, slender young woman with a long nose, sharp chin, and piercing eyes. She first met twenty-three-year-old John Adams see entry , a lawyer, when she was fifteen. They began sharing their love for knowledge, and before long he was sending her letters addressed to "Miss Adorable." The couple married on October 25, 1764. For more than fifty years, they remained best friends, and John always relied on his wife's advice.

Family endures constant separations

The couple's first home was a small farm in Quincy (then called Braintree), Massachusetts. Adams stayed at home, overseeing servants and running the household, while John Adams traveled to Boston and other parts of New England building his career as a lawyer and judge. The Adamses had five children, "Nabby" (Abigail), John Quincy, Susanna (who died at the age of thirteen months), Charles, and Thomas.

In 1763 the British began to demand that the American colonists start paying high taxes to help pay off British war debts. The colonists resisted. They believed that to be taxed by the British Parliament—a government body in which they had no representation—was unfair and made them little more than slaves. John Adams was a primary force in the movement toward the Revolutionary War, which finally erupted over this and other issues in 1775.

In 1768 Adams moved his family to Boston, the most active center of revolutionary activity. There Abigail Adams socialized with the city's most important families. Six years later John was elected a delegate to the First Continental Congress, a six-week meeting at which representatives from the colonies discussed what to do about their problems with the British. John's role as a delegate meant even longer separations.

Takes charge at home, writes letters

Although she missed John terribly when he was away on business and political trips, Abigail Adams stood behind his efforts and ambitions. She took on the responsibility of making most of the family decisions herself, including those that pertained to money.

The family's life gradually changed, as the American movement to gain freedom from Great Britain grew stronger. Adams wrote frequent letters to her friends and family in which she frankly expressed her opinions. The letters have been preserved and are honored as some of the best of her time. Their subjects range from politics, manners, and education for women to marriage, health care, and the relationship between religion and morality (what is right versus what is wrong).

Abigail and John Adams often wrote to one another about their feelings and ideas. Quoting William Shakespeare in a letter to her husband, Abigail Adams wrote: "My pen is always freer than my tongue." In later years, Abigail Adams expressed her political opinions in letters to such fellow patriots as Thomas Jefferson see entry, a highly respected lawyer from Virginia who became the third president of the United States. She and Jefferson carried on a long correspondence in which they treated each other as equals. Her letters have been described as newsy, flirtatious, and full of ideas.

Adams's letters gave accounts of the history of the young country and the problems that its people faced on the road to independence. She wrote to John Adams of the conflict between their neighbors who supported Britain and those who supported the revolution. She also wrote about housing colonial soldiers on their way to attack the British, and of her own constant fear of attack by British soldiers.

Hard times for Abigail Adams and America

Women had to undergo many hardships as the Revolutionary War stretched on from 1775 to 1783. Adams's letters told of how she dealt with such difficulties as wartime shortages and the high cost of food and other goods, lack of help to run the family farm, and, especially, loneliness. At one point, her husband served as a diplomat in Europe, representing the United States in its dealings with countries there. In order to make ends meet, Adams was forced to sell or trade the tea, handkerchiefs, and other items her husband sent her from Europe.

She once told John that, because of the loss of his companionship for half of their marriage and his reduced time for moneymaking, she believed she had struggled and sacrificed more on behalf of the American cause than most women in the country.

Impressions of France

Throughout her life Abigail Adams furthered her education and developed her mind. For example, in 1784 she went with her husband to Paris, France, where for eight months he represented the U.S. government in its dealings with France. While there, Abigail Adams paid close attention to French manners and morals and observed French culture.

From an early age, Adams's family had taught her to be careful with money. She was amazed by the number of servants that upper-class Europeans needed to maintain a large house and the time and money they spent on looking fashionable. She disapproved of the behavior of the wealthy French people, telling her friends that they mainly pursued luxury and pleasure, and she disliked Paris, calling it "the dirtiest place I ever saw."

Life in London society

In 1785 Abigail Adams accompanied John Adams to England, where he served as the first U.S. minister to the court of George III see entry, king of Great Britain. As an official representative of her country, Adams carried out her duties— mostly entertaining—with intelligence and dignity. Among the people the Adamses encountered in England were former colonists who had fled America to escape revolutionary activities. These Loyalists (people who were loyal to England) felt deeply resentful toward representatives of the new American government. They wrote critical newspaper articles about John and Abigail Adams and made them feel unwelcome, although officials of the British government and members of royalty generally treated them with courtesy. In London, her son, the brilliant John Quincy Adams, later an American president, served as his father's secretary.

Champions women's need for education

Abigail Adams believed strongly that education was as important for women as for men. She thought it was necessary if they were to do a proper job in raising children, running their homes, and being good mates. Indeed, during her stay in London she took the opportunity to study science, an area about which most women were taught little. Adams frequently wrote in her letters about the need for women to be educated.

At the same time, Adams understood the limited role that women of her time were allowed to play in American society. For example, a woman was expected to marry, and after marriage all her belongings became the possessions of her husband. She had no rights even to her children. Only after the death of her husband could she make decisions for herself.

Abigail Adams apparently accepted her role as a woman but not without voicing certain criticisms. She believed that women, like men, had the right to independence. She objected to the legal codes that prevented married women from owning property.

As early as 1776, Adams had made a very strong appeal for women's rights in a letter she wrote to her husband, who was then involved with drafting the Declaration of Independence. She begged him in doing so to "remember the ladies … and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors."

Life in Washington, D.C.

In 1788 Abigail and John Adams returned to a fine new house in Quincy, Massachusetts, that served as their main residence for the rest of their lives, except when John held national political office. Abigail Adams continued to support her husband who, in 1789, became vice president of the United States under George Washington see entry. She developed a friendship with First Lady Martha Washington, using the experience she had gained visiting the European royal courts to help with official entertaining.

In 1791 health problems forced Abigail Adams to return home to Quincy. But she temporarily returned to the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in 1797 when her husband defeated Thomas Jefferson and became the second president of the United States. As First Lady, Abigail Adams resumed formal entertaining. Conditions in Washington were then quite primitive: the city was located in a wilderness, and the White House was still under construction. She shared her complaints with her immediate family but conducted her duties at dinners and receptions with dignity.

Adamses return home after loss of election

President John Adams frequently consulted with his wife about important matters, both personal and governmental. Many of the political ideas held by Abigail Adams were rather conservative. She wanted to preserve existing traditions and tended to resist changes. John and Abigail Adams's conservative attitudes were unpopular among many American citizens, who believed that America should welcome foreigners and encourage freedom of the press. Their attitudes may have contributed to John Adams's defeat by Thomas Jefferson in the presidential election of 1800.

Following John Adams's defeat in the election, he and Abigail Adams returned to their home in Quincy, where they lived together for eighteen years, without the strain of politics. Still, there were hardships. The Adamses suffered the loss of their daughter, Nabby, to cancer, and Abigail Adams had to bear her own long-term illnesses.

On October 28, 1818, seventy-three-year-old Abigail Adams died at home of typhoid fever, a highly infectious disease usually transmitted by impure food or water. Her husband remained heartbroken for the next eight years, but had the satisfaction of seeing their son, John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), become the sixth U.S. president in 1824. After John Adams died in 1826, he was buried next to Abigail Adams in Quincy's United First Parish Church.

Renewed interest in Abigail Adams was sparked in 1875 when her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, published The Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail During the Revolution. Today readers still enjoy learning about the customs, habits, and manners of their daily life as well as the details about the American Revolution the letters reveal.

For More Information

Adams, Charles Francis. The Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife Abigail During the Revolution. New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1875.

Akers, Charles W. Abigail Adams: An American Woman. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

Beller, Susan Provost. Woman of Independence: The Life of Abigail Adams. White Hall, VA: Shoe Tree Press, 1992.

Bober, Natalie S. Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution. New York: Atheneum Books, 1995.

Butterfield, L. H., March Friedlaender, and Mary-Jo Klein, eds. The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762–1784. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Gelles, Edith B. Portia: The World of Abigail Adams. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Levin, Phyllis Lee. Abigail Adams: A Biography. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.

Meeker, Clare Hodgson. Partner in Revolution: Abigail Adams. New York: Benchmark Books, 1998.

Withey, Lynne. Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams. New York: The Free Press, 1981.

Adamses Inoculated for Smallpox

In 1721 an American doctor named Zabdiel Boylston (1679–1766) introduced the process of inoculation for smallpox to Boston. A smallpox epidemic was raging throughout the city and beyond its borders, and inoculations were the best-known way to ward off this serious disease. Smallpox causes fever, vomiting, skin eruptions, and sometimes death and is easily passed to others. Inoculation for smallpox involved injecting a serum with the disease into a person's body in order to cause a minor form of the disease so that the person then could build up protection against getting it.

In 1776, just as America was declaring her independence from Great Britain, another smallpox epidemic broke out in Boston. Many patients were inoculated and then quarantined in hospitals and other sites to keep them away from others who did not have the disease. Most patients recovered after the three-or four-week isolation period and were protected from getting the disease again.

During the outbreak, people who wanted to leave Boston were required to undergo a "smoking." It was thought that exposing them to a room filled with dense smoke for a period of time would clear them of the smallpox germs. People with the disease who remained in the city were permitted to wander freely, attending church and visiting friends and family. In fact, patients were instructed to get as much fresh air as possible, as this was wrongly thought to be a way to help cure the disease.

In July 1776 Abigail Adams and her children went to the home of a relative and were inoculated. She brought with her straw beds, sheets, bedspreads, money for medical fees, and a cow to supply fresh milk. After the inoculations, Adams and her family suffered from sore eyes, weakness, fever, nausea, and headaches. It took some of them up to six weeks to recover from being inoculated. Two of the children tolerated the ordeal quite well, but two had to be inoculated a second time when the first shot failed to produce results. Adams's daughter Nabby got much sicker than anyone else, and her son Charley had to be inoculated a third time. When he finally did get the disease, he was extremely ill. Fortunately, the boy recovered. The whole process lasted two months and proved very difficult for everyone. Finally protected against the disease, Abigail Adams was able to travel about Boston freely, gathering the latest information and gossip, which she sent to her husband, John, who was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the new nation's business.