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INTRODUCTION 
Abigail Adams was an extraordinary person. In many 
respects she was the quintessential woman of the American 
Revolutionary era, but in virtually every facet of life she 
excelled her contemporaries. Through her unique partner- 
ship with her husband, John, Abigail Adams became one 
of the most influential women in all of American history. 
Through her voluminous correspondence, this fascinating 
personality reveals the hardships women confronted during 
the years of America's founding. 
To truly understand Abigail Adams, we must dismiss 
the myths about her. She was not the lone pioneer farm 
wife who planted the crops, milked the cows, slopped 
the hogs, and cooked over the hearth. She was the man- 
ager of a household-a rather strong-willed manager at 
that. Abigail Adams never lived a day without slaves or 
servants: slaves in her parents home, and servants-black 
and white, women and men, free and indentured-after 
she married John Adams. While at home in Braintree or 
Quincy, Massachusetts, she usually had two indoor house- 
hold servants (a cook and a maid) and two or three hired 
hands who planted, weeded, and harvested the crop, cared 
for the livestock, ran the household dairy, pressed the cider, 
brewed the beer, repaired the buildings, and participated in 
the never-ending New England activity of building stone 
fences. While abroad she managed eight to ten servants; 
while her husband was vice president or president, she 
supervised a dozen servants-a cook, a laundress, several 
maids, a major domo, a stable hand, and a driver. While 
alone in Massachusetts, she bought household necessities, 
invested money, paid taxes, bought land, rented out real 
estate in Boston and Braintree, invested in public securities, 
became a de facto merchant by selling goods sent her by 
her husband from Philadelphia and Europe, cared for the 
sick in the family (including servants), contributed to the 
needy, educated the children herself and later placed them 
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