Biography

1744–1818, wife of President John Adams and mother of President John Quincy Adams, b. Weymouth, Mass. She was born Abigail Smith. A lively, intelligent woman, she was the chief figure in the social life of her husband’s administration and one of the most distinguished and influential of the first ladies in the history of the United States. Her detailed letters are a vivid source of social history. The correspondence with her husband was edited in a number of volumes by Charles Francis Adams; her letters as well as John’s, are included in The Adams-Jefferson Letters, edited by Lester J. Cappon (1959); letters to her sister, Mary Smith Cranch, are in New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1801, edited by Stewart Mitchell (1947, repr. 1973).
See biographies by J. Whitney (1947, repr. 1970), L. E. Richards (1917, repr. 1971), and C. W. Akers (1980). See also bibliography for Adams, John.

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