Mothers and Sons: Abigail Adams and John Quincy Adams

The hand that rocks the cradle

As a lesson in the demands of revolution, Abigail Adams stood with her 7-year-old son Quincy Adams and watched the Battle of Bunker Hill. “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill,” 1786, by John Trumbull. Gift of Howland S. Warren, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Public Domain

Abigail Adams was one of only two first ladies who were both wife and mother to a president. (The other was Barbara Bush.)

Abigail Smith Adams (1744–1818) was the daughter of William Smith, a Congregational minister, and his wife Elizabeth, who hailed from the prestigious Quincy clan, a family well-known in the Massachusetts colony for its involvement in politics. Schooled at home by her mother, and given free run of the large libraries belonging to relatives, including that of her father, the largely self-educated Abigail became one of our most erudite first ladies in our history.

A Marriage of Heart and Mind

In 1764, Abigail married her distant cousin, John Adams, a lawyer and part-time farmer whose star was on the rise. To this couple were born six children, four of whom found the grave before their mother’s own death from typhoid.