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Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams (nee Smith) (November 11, 1744 – October 28, 1818) was the wife of John Adams, the second President of the United States, and is seen as the first Second Lady of the United States and the second First Lady of the United States though the terms were not coined until after her death.

Adams is remembered today for the many letters she wrote to her husband while he stayed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the Continental Congresses. John Adams frequently sought the advice of his wife on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics. The letters are invaluable eyewitness accounts of the Revolutionary War home front as well as excellent sources of political commentary.

Abigail was born in the parsonage of the North Parish Congregational Church at Weymouth, Massachusetts on November 11, 1744 to Rev. William Smith and Elizabeth Quincy Smith. By the calendar used today, it would be November 22. On her mother's side, she was descended from the Quincys, a well-known family in the Massachusetts colony, by whom she descended from King Edward I of England and King Edward III of England.^[1]^[2] Her father (1707-1783), a liberal Congregationalist, and other forebears were Congregational ministers, and leaders in a society that held its clergy in high esteem. However, he did not preach about the predestination, original sin, or the full divinity of Christ, instead emphasizing the importance of reason and morality.^[3]

Although she did not receive a formal education, her mother taught her and her sisters Mary (1741-1811) and Elizabeth (known as Betsy) to read, write, and cipher; her father's, uncle's and grandfather's large libraries enabled them to study English and French literature.^[3] As an intellectually open-minded woman for her day, Abigail's ideas on women's rights and government would eventually play a major role, albeit indirectly, in the founding of the U.S.^{[citation needed]}

Abigail Smith met John Adams in 1759, and the two were exchanging love letters by 1762. They married on October 25, 1764, just before Abigail's 20th birthday. John and Abigail Adams lived on a farm in Braintree (later renamed Quincy) before moving to Boston where his practice expanded. In ten years she gave birth to five children: Abigail (1765-1813), the future President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), Susanna Boylston (1768-1770), Charles (1770-1800), and Thomas Boylston (1772-1832), She looked after family and home when he went traveling as circuit judge. "Alas!" she wrote in December 1773, "How many snow banks divide thee and me...."

In 1784, she and her daughter Abigail, who was known in the family as 'Nabby', joined her husband and her eldest son, John Quincy at his diplomatic post in Paris. After 1785, she filled the role of wife of the first United States Minister to the Kingdom of Great Britain. They returned in 1788 to a house known as the "Old House" in Quincy, which she set about vigorously enlarging and remodeling. It is still standing and open to the public as part of Adams National Historical Park. Nabby later died of breast cancer.

As wife of the first Vice President, Abigail became a good friend to Mrs. Washington and a valued help in official entertaining, drawing on her experience of courts and society abroad. After 1791, however, poor health forced her to spend as much time as possible in Quincy. Illness or trouble found her resolute; as she once declared, she would "not forget the blessings which sweeten life."

When John Adams was elected President of the United States, she continued a formal pattern of entertaining, becoming the first hostess of the yet-uncompleted White House. The city was wilderness, the President's House far from completion. Her private complaints to her family provide blunt accounts of both, but for her three months in Washington she duly held her dinners and receptions. She mentioned that fires had to be lit constantly to keep the cold, cavernous place warm and she describes setting up her laundry in one of the great rooms.

The Adamses retired to Quincy in 1801 after John Adams' defeat in his bid for a second term as President of the United States. She followed her son's political career earnestly as her letters to contemporaries show.

Abigail Adams died on October 28, 1818 of typhoid fever, several years before her son became president, and is buried beside her husband in a crypt located in the United First Parish Church (also known as the Church of the Presidents).

Her last words were "Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long."

Adams was an outspoken proponent of married women's property rights and more opportunities for women, particularly in the field of education. Women, she believed, should not submit to laws not made in their interest, nor should they be content with the simple role of being companions to their husbands. They should educate themselves and thus be recognized for their intellectual capabilities, so they could guide and influence the lives of their children and husbands. She is best known for her March 1776 letter to John Adams and the Continental Congress, requesting that they

To this, John answered:...as to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh...Depend upon it, we know better Than to repeal our masculine systems...

Along with her husband, Adams believed that slavery was not only evil, but a threat to the American democratic experiment. A letter written by her on March 31, 1776 expained that she doubted most of the Virginians had such the "passion for Liberty" they claimed they did, since they "depriv[ed] their fellow Creatures" of freedom.^[3]

A notable incident regarding this happened in 1791, where a local slave came to her house asking to be taught how to write. Subequently, she placed the boy in a local evening school, though not without objections from a neighbor. Abigail responded that he was "a Freeman as much as any of the young Men and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? ... I have not thought it any disgrace to my self to take him into my parlor and teach him both to read and write." With this the neighbor dismissed his concerns.^[3]

Abigail Adams, as well as her husband, was an active member of the First Parish Church in Quincy, which became Unitarian in doctrine by 1753. In a letter to John Quincy Adams dated May 5, 1816, she wrote of her religious beliefs:

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?"^[3]

An Adams Memorial is proposed in Washington, D.C., honoring Abigail, her husband, and other members of their family. A cairn now crowns the nearby 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.

Passages from Adams letters to her husband figured prominently in songs from the Broadway musical 1776 (and the 1972 film of it, with Virginia Vestoff as Abigail Adams).

The First Spouse Program under the Presidential $1 Coin Act authorizes the United States Mint to issue 1/2 ounce $10 gold coins to honor the first spouses of the United States. Abigail Adams's coin was released on June 19, 2007, and sold out in just hours.

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