Abigail Adams

Smith married Elizabeth Quincy in 1740, and together they had three daughters; Abigail was the youngest, following her sisters Mary (1739–1811) and Elizabeth ("Betsy", 1742–1816).

As with several of her ancestors, Adams's father was a liberal Congregational minister: a leader in a Yankee society that held its clergy in high esteem.

Smith did not focus his preaching on predestination or original sin; instead he emphasized the importance of reason and morality.

Abigail Adams was born on November 22, 1744, at the North Parish Congregational Church in Weymouth, Massachusetts, to William Smith and Elizabeth (née Quincy) Smith.

On her mother's side, she was descended from the Quincy family, a well-known political family in the Massachusetts colony.

Through her mother she was a cousin of Dorothy Quincy, who was married to John Hancock.

Abigail Smith first met John Adams when she was 15 years old in 1759.

Meanwhile, John accompanied his friend Richard Cranch to the Smith household.

Cranch was engaged to Abigail's older sister, Mary Smith, and they would be the parents of federal judge William Cranch.

Adams reported finding the Smith sisters neither "fond, nor frank, nor candid."

Although Abigails' father approved of the match, her mother was appalled that her daughter would marry a country lawyer whose manner still reeked of the farm.

Eventually, she gave in, and the couple married on October 25, 1764, in the Smiths' home in Weymouth.

William Smith, Abigail's father, presided over the marriage.

After the reception, the couple mounted a single horse and rode off to their new home, the saltbox house and farm John had inherited from his father in Braintree, Massachusetts (a location that is now part of Quincy).

The couple welcomed their first child nine months into their marriage.

In 12 years, Abigail Adams gave birth to six children:

Her childrearing style included relentless and continual reminders of what the children owed to virtue and the Adams tradition.

Adams was responsible for family and farm when her husband was on his long trips.

"Alas!", she wrote in December 1773, "How many snow banks divide thee and me."

Abigail and John's marriage is well documented through their correspondence and other writings.

Letters exchanged throughout John's political obligations indicate his trust in Abigail's knowledge was sincere.

In July 1775 his wife Elizabeth, with whom he had been married for 35 years, died of smallpox.

In 1784, at age 77, Smith died.

The Smith family were slaveholders and are known to have owned at least four people.

A slave named Phoebe took a caretaking role to Abigail and other children; later on she would work as a paid servant for Abigail after she became free.

Abigail would come to express anti-slavery beliefs as an adult.

Abigail did not receive formal schooling; she was frequently sick as a child, something which may have been a factor preventing her from receiving an education.

Later in life, Adams would also consider that she was deprived an education because females were rarely given such an opportunity.

Although she did not receive a formal education, her mother taught her and her sisters to read, write and cipher; her father's, uncle's and grandfather's large libraries enabled the sisters to study English and French literature.

Her grandmother, Elizabeth Quincy, also contributed to Adams's education.

As she grew up, Adams read with friends in an effort to further her learning.

She became one of the most erudite women ever to serve as first lady.

Abigail Adams (née Smith; November 22, [O.S. November 11] 1744 – October 28, 1818) 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 was a founder 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 were both married to a U.S. president and 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 her husband John Adams while he was in Philadelphia as a delegate in the Continental Congress prior and during the American Revolution 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 American Revolutionary War home front.

Surveys of historians conducted 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.

Adams was also the great-granddaughter of John Norton, founding pastor of Old Ship Church in Hingham, Massachusetts, the only remaining 17th-century Puritan meetinghouse in Massachusetts.