John Adams frequently sought the advice of Abigail on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics.

[3] 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.

"[9] Although Abigail's father approved of the match, her mother was appalled that her daughter would marry a country lawyer whose manner still reeked of the farm.

[10] 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[7] (a location that is now part of Quincy).

In 1771, he moved Abigail and the children back to Braintree, but he kept his office in Boston, hoping the time away from his family would allow him to focus on his work.

[17] In 1774, Abigail and John returned the family to the farm due to the increasingly unstable situation in Boston, and Braintree remained their permanent Massachusetts home.

Her investments made through her uncle Cotton Tufts in debt instruments issued to finance the Revolutionary War were rewarded after Alexander Hamilton's First Report on the Public Credit endorsed full federal payment at face value to holders of government securities.

[19] One recent researcher even credits Abigail's financial acumen with providing for the Adams family's wealth through the end of John's lifetime.

At first, she found life in Paris difficult and was rather overwhelmed by the novel experience of running a large house with a retinue of servants.

However, as the months passed, she began to enjoy herself: she made numerous friends, discovered a fondness for the theatre and opera, and was fascinated by Parisian women's fashions, although she ruefully admitted that she "would never be in the mode."

In contrast to Paris, Abigail disliked London, where she had few friends and was, in general, cold-shouldered by polite society.

One pleasant experience was her temporary guardianship of Thomas Jefferson's young daughter Mary (Polly), for whom Abigail came to feel a deep and lifelong love.

She and John returned in 1788 to their home in Quincy, Peacefield (also known as the "Old House"), which she set about vigorously enlarging and remodeling.

[7] When John was elected President of the United States, Abigail continued a formal pattern of entertaining.

[21] 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 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.

Adams's 48-year-old daughter, Nabby, died of breast cancer in 1813,[27] after having endured three years of severe pain.

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.

[28] Her 18th-century mindset held that "improved legal and social status for women was not inconsistent with their essentially domestic role.

She is known for her March 1776 letter to John and the Continental Congress, requesting that they, "remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.

If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

In a letter she wrote on March 31, 1776, Adams doubted that the majority of White people in Virginia had such "passion for Liberty" as they claimed they did, since they "deprive[d] their fellow Creatures" of freedom.

[4] A notable incident regarding Adams's views on race happened in Philadelphia in 1791, when a free black youth came to her house asking to be taught how to read and write.

After attending a 1785 production of Othello in London, Adams wrote in a letter of her "disgust and horror" at seeing the play's titular protagonist, a Black man, touching the character of Desdemona, a White woman.

Historian Annette Gordon-Reed stated that Adams's views on race were in line with a "typical white person of the 18th century".

Ellis argues that Abigail was the more resilient and more emotionally balanced of the two, and calls her one of the most extraordinary women in American history.

At that time she was minding the children of Dr. Joseph Warren, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, who was killed in the battle.

[4] Virginia Vestoff played Adams in the original 1969 Broadway production of 1776 and recreated the role for the film version in 1972.

Adams is a featured figure on Judy Chicago's installation piece The Dinner Party, being represented as one of the 999 names on the Heritage Floor.

Since 1982, Siena College Research Institute has periodically conducted surveys asking historians to assess American first ladies according to a cumulative score on the independent criteria of their background, value to the country, intelligence, courage, accomplishments, integrity, leadership, being their own women, public image, and value to the president.