Abigail Adams - Marriage and Children

Marriage and Children

As third cousins, Abigail and John had known each other since they were children. In 1762, John accompanied his friend Richard Cranch to the Smith household. Cranch was engaged to Adams' older sister, Mary. John was quickly attracted to the petite, shy, 17-year-old brunette who was forever bent over some book. He was surprised to learn she knew so much about poetry, philosophy and politics, considered unusual for a woman at the time.

Although Adams' father approved of the match, her mother was appalled that her daughter would marry a country lawyer whose manners still reeked of the farm, but eventually she gave in. The couple married on October 25, 1764, five days before John's 29th birthday, in the Smiths' home in Weymouth. Then Rev. Smith (the bride's father) performed the nuptials.

After the reception, the couple mounted a single horse and rode off to their new home, the small cottage and farm John had inherited from his father in Braintree, Massachusetts. Later they moved to Boston, where his law practice expanded.

In 10 years, she gave birth to six children:

• Abigail ("Nabby") (1765–1813)
• John Quincy Adams (1767–1848)
• Grace Susanna ("Susanna") (1768–1770)
• Charles (1770–1800)
• Thomas Boylston Adams (1772–1832)
• Elizabeth (stillborn in 1777)

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." She raised her two younger sons throughout John's prolonged absences. She also raised her elder grandchildren, including George Washington Adams and a younger John Adams, while John Quincy Adams was minister to Russia. Her childrearing style included relentless and continual reminders of what the children owed to virtue and the Adams tradition.