Abigail Adams

Madi Owen

Honors History

October 31, 2011

Reid Vaughan

Abigail Smith Adams

Abigail Adams was one of the strongest first ladies in American history. She is known for writing many letters to her husband, John Adams, while he was staying in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The letters are witnessing accounts of the American Revolutionary War.

Abigail was born to William and Elizabeth Quincy Smith on November 11, 1744 in Weymouth, Province of Massachusetts Bay. She had two sisters and one brother. Their names were Betsy, Mary, and Billy. She was often sick when she was little. When she grew up she was tall and slender, she had many striking features about her. She was shy, determined, quiet, and even stubborn. She had little education and learned mainly from her grandmother. She later educated herself in science.

She was 19 when she married John Adams on October 25, 1764. They married in her parent's home in Weymouth, Massachusetts and were wed by her dad Reverend Smith. After the ceremony they drove horse and buggy to a cottage that stood next to the one John had grown up in and it became their first home. She bore three sons and two daughters; Abigail (Nabby) Amelia Adams Smith (1765-1813), John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), Susanna Adams (1768-1770), Charles Adams (1770-1800), and Thomas Boylston Adams (1772-1832).

When her husband went to Philadelphia in 1774 to serve as his colony's delegate to the First Continental Congress, Abigail remained home. But, in 1774 her and her oldest daughter Nabby joined John and John Quincy at her husband's diplomatic port in Paris. They returned in 1788 to a house in Quincy which she set about enlarging and remodeling. Nabby died three years later to breast cancer after three years of severe pain.

When John was elected President of the United States, Abigail continued a pattern of entertaining. With the removal to the capital to Washington in 1800 she became the First Lady to live in the President's House, as it was known back then. The house was far from completion and was in complete wilderness. She found that the unfinished mansion in Washington "habitable" and the location "beautiful".

Abigail was very popular in the 17 and 1800's and she was important to many people. This was because she helped women's rights grow more. She did this because women were not treated as well as men were treated. She had a notable influence on her husband's career. She went with him on many of his journeys. She even gave him advice by writing to him when she was not with him. She took care o her family and wrote many letters in her spare time. Most all of her letters have been published by her grandson, Charles Francis Adams.

John frequently sought the