The Biographical Dictionary of America/Adams, Abigail

ADAMS, Abigail, wife of John Adams, second president of the United States, was born in Weymouth, Mass., Nov. 22, 1744, daughter of William and Elizabeth Quincy Smith. Her father was for nearly half a century pastor of the Congregational church of Weymouth, and her mother a direct descendant of Thomas Shepard, the eminent Puritan divine of Cambridge, and a great grandniece of the Puritan preacher, John Norton, of the Hingham meeting-house, Boston. She had few educational advantages in the way of access to books, as they were kept from her owing to her delicate constitution. To in a measure compensate for this, she was instructed in the duties of the housewife and took great interest in home affairs. She became an adept in domestic economy, and added to it the rudiments of penmanship and arithmetic. As she reached womanhood her strength increased, and she took up French, Latin, and a well-directed course of reading, although this was only cursory before she became a wife. She was married to John Adams Oct. 25, 1764, and passed the next ten years as the frugal wife of a rising Braintree lawyer. To them were born, during this time, one daughter and three sons. The political events of the period marked the next decade of her married life as one of great anxiety. Her husband was absent most of the time, first as a delegate to Congress and afterwards on a diplomatic mission across the seas. The patriots led by her husband were urging the termination of the unhappy relations existing between the colonies and the mother country, by a declaration of independence. His earnest advocacy of heroic measures gained for him the appellation, "Colossus of Independence." No more positive and unyielding advocate of the measure sustained the course of John Adams than his patriotic wife, and while she had in full view the dire consequences of failure, yet her courage never faltered and her voice never uttered an uncertain sound. Alone with her children she passed the period of war, doing what she could for the patriot cause. In 1784 she undertook the long and dangerous voyage to Europe to join her husband in France, and then she accompanied him to London, as the wife of the first American minister at the court of St. James, and where as such she was not accorded decent courtesy. This rudeness greatly wounded her and increased her devotion to the new republic. Upon the accession of Mr. Adams to the presidency, his wife became the first mistress of the White House, and there the charm of house-keeping was not dispelled by the pride of position; She is the only woman in our history who has been the wife of one president and the mother of another. She resided at Braintree, Mass., after leaving Washington, but always retained an interest in public affairs. A memoir of her life, was published by her grandson Charles Francis Adams. She died at Quincy, Mass., Oct. 28, 1818.