The LuLac Edition #5, 696, June 27th, 2026

 

 

ABIGAIL ADAMS

CONFIDANT, CARETAKER, WIFE AND MOTHER OF PRESIDENTS

Abigail Adams was the wife and closest advisor of John Adams, the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. She is widely considered to be an influential figure in the founding of the United States, and was both the first second lady and second first lady of the United States, although such titles were not used at the time. She and Barbara Bush are the only two women in American history who both were both married to a U.S. president and were both the mother of a U.S. president.

Adams's life is one of the most documented of the first ladies. Many of the letters she wrote to John Adams while he was in Philadelphia as a delegate in the Continental Congress, prior to and during the Revolutionary War, document the closeness and versatility of their relationship. John Adams frequently sought the advice of Abigail on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics. Her letters also serve as eyewitness accounts of the home front of the Revolutionary War.

Surveys of historians conduct periodically by the Siena College Research Institute since 1982 have consistently found Adams to rank as one of the three most highly regarded first ladies by historians.

John Adams was inaugurated as the second president of the United States on March 4, 1797, in Philadelphia at the age of 61. Abigail was not present at her husband's inauguration as she was tending to his dying 89-year-old mother. When John was elected President of the United States, Abigail continued a formal pattern of entertaining. She held a large dinner each week, made frequent public appearances, and provided for entertainment for the city of Philadelphia each Fourth of July.

She took an active role in politics and policy, unlike the quiet presence of Martha Washington. Abigail was so politically active, her political opponents came to refer to her as "Mrs. President". As John's confidant, Abigail was often well informed on issues facing her husband's administration, at times including details of current events not yet known to the public in letters to her sister Mary and her son John Quincy.   Some people used Abigail to contact the president. At times Abigail planted favorable stories about her husband in the press. Abigail remained a staunch supporter of her husband's political career, supporting his policies, such as passing the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Adams brought the children of her brother William Smith, her brother-in-law John Shaw, and her son Charles to live in the President's House during her husband's presidency because the children's fathers all struggled with alcoholism. Charles's daughter, Susanna, was just 3 years old in 1800 when Adams brought her to live in the President's House in Philadelphia days before Charles's death.

With the relocation of the capital to Washington, D.C. in 1800, she became the first First Lady to reside at the White House, or President's House as it was then known.Adams moved into the White House in November 1800, living there for only the last four months of her husband's term. At this time, the city of Washington D.C. was wilderness, with the President's House far from completion. She found the unfinished mansion in Washington "habitable" and the location "beautiful"; but she complained that, despite the thick woods nearby, she could find no one willing to chop and haul firewood for the First Family. Abigail used the East Room of the White House to hang up the laundry. Adams’s health, never robust, suffered in Washington.

After John's defeat in his presidential re-election campaign, the family retired to Peacefield in Quincy in 1800. Abigail followed her son's political career earnestly, as her letters to her contemporaries show. In later years, she renewed correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, having reached out to him upon the death of his daughter Maria Jefferson Eppes (Polly), whom Abigail had cared for and come to love when Polly was a small child in London, even though Jefferson's political opposition to her husband had hurt her deeply. She continued to raise her granddaughter Susanna. She also raised her elder grandchildren, including George Washington Adams and a younger John Adams, while their father John Quincy Adams was minister to Russia. Adams's 48-year-old daughter, Nabby, died of breast cancer in 1813, after having endured three years of severe pain.

Abigail Adams became ill during her final years. She died in her home on October 28, 1818, of typhoid fever. She was buried in what was to become the family crypt, which now also holds her husband John, their son John Quincy, and John Quincy's wife Louisa, located in the United First Parish Church (also known as the "Church of the Presidents") in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was 73 years old, exactly two weeks shy of her 74th birthday. Her last words were, "Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long." Less than eight years later, on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, her husband died of heart failure at the age of 90. He was buried next to her in the family crypt in the United First Parish Church.