Adams, Abigail Smith, 1927, Biographical Sketch

BIOGRAPHERS RATE the wife of our second President as the cleverest in our entire line of Executive helpmates. Her maiden name was Abigail Smith, and she was the daughter of a minister of Weymouth, Mass. She and the future President were married in 1764. When John Adams entered public life. Mrs. Adams remained home to rock the cradle, cook and patch for four little Adamses and to tend to the farm. Milking and churning, knitting and darning, teaching and praying, she supported the family, inspired her husband in his progress to the Presidency, and reared a son to follow in his father's footsteps. To Abigail Adams alone belongs the glory of having been the wife of one President and the mother of another. She died in 1818 in her seventy-fourth year.1. Brief Biographies of our Presidents and the First Ladies of the Land, 1927, American Weekly, Inc., page 3.