Abigail Adams: Quartz Character

The real history

Abigail Smith was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, in November 1744, the daughter of the Reverend William Smith. New England schools of the time were for boys, but she read widely in her father's large library. In 1764 she married John Adams, a young lawyer, and moved to his family farm in Braintree. They had six children, four of whom reached adulthood, including John Quincy Adams, who later became president.

When John left for the Continental Congress in 1774, and later for diplomatic posts in Europe, Abigail ran the farm, raised and taught the children and handled the family's money. Married women then had few property rights, yet she made investment decisions, traded war bonds and ran a small business importing goods from Europe. She also sent John reports on British military moves around Boston.

Letters held the marriage together. The couple exchanged more than 1,100 of them, and they give a close view of the Revolutionary era. In a letter begun at Braintree on March 31, 1776, she urged John and Congress to "Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors." She warned that women would not feel bound by laws in which they had no voice. John did not take the idea seriously.

After the war she joined John in Europe. When he became president in 1797 he wrote that he had never needed her advice more. As first lady she received official guests, defended his policies in her letters and helped plant favorable stories in the press. In November 1800 the couple became the first to live in the President's House in Washington. She died on October 28, 1818.

Sources

1. Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March to 5 April 1776, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society
2. Abigail Smith Adams, National Women's History Museum
3. Abigail Adams, White House Historical Association

Checked against these sources on October 2, 2026. Spot a mistake? Report an error. How we check facts.