John and Abigail Adams exchanged more than 1,100 letters.

Famous Figures

F ew couples have written letters to each other more extensive, and more compelling, than John and Abigail Adams, America's second President and First Lady. The pair met in 1759, when Adams accompanied his friend Richard Cranch to see Cranch's fiancée Mary Smith, and her younger sister, Abigail. Although unimpressed by the 15-year-old Abigail on this occasion, calling the sisters neither "fond, nor frank, nor candid," Adams found himself smitten two years later by the young woman. Thus began a correspondence that spanned more than three decades, and offers a rare glimpse into the founding of the United States.

The early letters between the two lovers document their courtship; Adams addressed letters to "Miss Adorable," requesting "as many Kisses, and as many Hours of your Company after 9 O'Clock as [I] shall please to Demand." Even after the couple married in 1764, they continued to exchange letters regularly, as John was frequently away for work. In later years, the correspondence often turned to political matters, as John valued his wife as an intellectual equal and trusted adviser. In one 1776 letter, in the throes of the American Revolution, Abigail famously urged her husband to "remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors." The 1,160 letters the couple exchanged offer an incredible insight into this chapter of American history. All but one of the letters are kept in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society and are available online.

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By the Numbers

Women who were both the wife and mother of a U.S. President (Abigail Adams and Barbara Bush)

Songs in which John Adams is insulted in the musical Hamilton

Did you know?

John Adams was the first President to live in the White House.

When John Adams arrived at the White House (then called the President's House) in the summer of 1800, it was still a construction site. The nation's second President had to be temporarily put up in the Washington City Hotel nearby. (The first President, George Washington, lived in executive mansions in Philadelphia and New York.) It wasn't until that November that Adams moved into the new residence, and even then construction hadn't been finished. As Abigail Adams wrote, "Not one room or chamber is finished of the whole it is habitable by fires in every part, thirteen of which we are obliged to keep daily, or sleep in wet & damp places." In the end, John Adams lived in the White House for just over four months. The one-term President lost the 1800 election to Thomas Jefferson just one month after moving in, and remained in the capital until Jefferson's inauguration on March 4, 1801.