Bibliography

In his Diary, Abigail Adams’s grandson, Charles Francis Adams, the family editor and biographer, writes of his “mixture of feelings” as he looked over the old papers left behind by Abigail and her husband John and learned “the secret history of the lives of a single couple.” By August 1, 1833, he had made out “a pretty complete set” of his grandparents’ letters to one another. He found his grandfather’s letters amusing “from the short concise and humorous style” in which they were written. His grandmother’s interested him for their “gravity.” He thought her a “thorough politician. She passed her life in the midst of one of those crises in Society,” he said, “when the old work was pulled down and the new one put up.”1

Charles Francis Adams published the first edition of Abigail’s letters in 1840. Ever since, recycled or newly disclosed, her letters have appeared under varying auspices, in juxtaposition to her husband’s, within her daughter’s Journal and Correspondence, interspersed with The Adams Jefferson Letters, among New Letters written to her sister Mary. With the comparatively recent, superbly documented ongoing publications of The Adams Papers (the monumental work of successive editors), the scope of Abigail Adams’s correspondence with family, friends, and statesmen, published thus far through 1782, is increasingly illuminated.

The Adams Papers owe their origin to the Adams Manuscript Trust, which was created in 1905 by Charles Francis Adams’s son and namesake to preserve as an entity the disparately owned family papers. That year they were moved from the family’s Stone library, adjacent to their house in Quincy, to the Massachusetts Historical Society. Since their gift by the Trust to the Society on April 4, 1956, about one-quarter of the intended one-hundred-volume work has been published to date. A microfilm edition of The Adams Papers, 609 reels encompassing three generations who lived from 1639 to 1889, was published in four installments, from 1954 to 1959. This includes Diaries (Part I), Letterbooks (Part II), Miscellany (Part IV), Letters Received, and Other Loose Papers.

Abigail Adams’s letters are embedded in the latter, “loose” category, interfiled chronologically amongst the other “loose” and disparate correspondence pertaining to the lives of all the members of the Adams family. Unlike Abigail, John purposefully copied his letters into letterbooks. As far back as July 2, 1774, John advised Abigail to keep his communications “safe, and preserve them,” aware that they might “exhibit to our Posterity a kind of Picture of the Manners, Opinions, and Principles of the Times of Perplexity, Danger and Distress.”2

Abigail, by contrast, professed “alarm” when she learned that her daughter, Nabby, not only preserved her letters but collected them for her daughter Caroline. Abigail was quite positive that Nabby might, due to her “affection and … partiality” for her mother, “stamp a value upon them which never can be felt by those less interested in them.” Her letters, Abigail said, were written “without regard to style;” and as they were scarcely ever copied over, “they must be very incorrect productions, and quite unworthy preservation or perpetuity.” Furthermore, Abigail cautioned Nabby; “do not let them out-live you; you may select a few perhaps worth transmitting, but in general, I fear, they are trash.”3 Again approached about her correspondence, Abigail told Francis Adrian Van der Kemp: “You terrify me my dear Sir when you ask for letters of mine to publish!”4 Dwelling on this matter further, Abigail wrote a friend on January 28, 1818, “A pretty figure I should make … Heedless and inaccurate as I am, I have too much vanity to risk my reputation before the public.”5

Despite Abigail’s protests and her grandson’s destruction of countless letters,6 their abundance, both published and microfilmed, is surprising. Even more so is the existing realm of her still unpublished (and unfilmed) papers. It is these papers and companion resources that have been essential to rounding out Abigail’s long, arduous, and valuable life. The following bibliography lists only principle sources, unpublished and published, for quotations and content of Abigail Adams.

Manuscript Sources

Adams Papers, Microfilms, 1639–1889, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 1954–1959, 609 reels.

Infinitely smaller but significant collections also held by the Massachusetts Historical Society include:

The De Windt Collection: Letters from John Quincy Adams to his son George from St. Petersburg, 1811–1813, on the subject of religion. Also, letters from Abigail Adams to Abigail Adams Smith, and William Stephens Smith.

The Norton Diaries: background material on Abigail Adams’s maternal forebears.

The Robert Treat Paine Collection: letters from Abigail Paine to her brother.

The Smith-Carter Collection: numerous letters from Abigail Adams to her maternal uncle, Isaac Smith, and his son Isaac Smith, Jr.

The Smith-Townsend Collection: letters from Abigail Adams to her cousin, William Smith of Boston; to her niece Betsy Cranch of Haverhill.

The Abigail Adams Letters at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, include unpublished correspondence between Abigail Adams and her sister Mary Cranch, some especially relevant to Abigail Adams Smith’s blighted romance with Royall Tyler.

The Houghton Library at Harvard University holds several letters from Abigail Adams to Mrs. Catherine Johnson, mother of Louisa Catherine Adams, among others of interest.

The New-York Historical Society has several letters from Abigail Adams to Cotton Tufts; also John Adams to Tufts and to a grandson-in-law.

The Shaw Family Papers at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., include Abigail Adams’s correspondence with her sister, Elizabeth Shaw (later Peabody), with her nephew, William Smith Shaw, and with her niece, Abigail Adams Shaw, who married Joseph Barlow Felt.

The Simon Gratz Collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has Abigail Adams’s letter of April 3, 1813, to James Munroe and several to Richard Rush.

Published Sources

Adams Family Correspondence. Edited by L. H. Butterfield. 4 vols. to date, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1963–73.

The Adams-Jefferson Letters. Edited by Lester J. Cappon. 2 vols. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959.

Adams, Abigail. Letters of Mrs. Adams. 3rd ed. in 2 vols. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841.

———. New Letters of Abigail Adams. Edited by Stewart Mitchell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947.

——— and John Adams. The Book of Abigail and John. Edited by L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Adams, Charles Francis. An Autobiography. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916.

Charles Francis Adams. Diary of Charles Francis Adams. 6 vols. to date. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1964–. Vol. 1–2, edited by Aida Dipace Donald and David Donald; vols. 3–6 edited by Marc Friedlander and L. H. Butterfield (1974).

Adams, Charles Francis. Three Episodes of Massachusetts History. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1892.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. Boston: The Massachusetts Historical Society, 1918; Sentry ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961.

———. Mt. Saint Michel and Chartres. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913.

Adams, Henry, II, ed. John Adams’s Book: Being Notes on a Record of the Births, Marriages and Deaths of Three Generations of the Adams Family, 1734–1807. Boston: Boston Atheneum, 1934.

Adams, John. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams. Edited by L. H. Butterfield. 4 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Atheneum, 1964.

———. The Earliest Diary of John Adams. Edited by L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1966.

———. Letters of John Adams Addressed to his Wife. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. 2 vols. Boston: Freeman and Bolles, 1841.

———. The Works of John Adams. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. 10 vols. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850–1856.

———. Statesman and Friend: Correspondence of John Adams with Benjamin Waterhouse 1784–1822. Edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1927.

——— and Abigail Adams. Familiar Letters of John Adams and his Wife Abigail Adams, during the Revolution. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1875.

——— and John Quincy Adams. The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams. Edited by Adrienne Koch and William Peden. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.

Adams, John Quincy. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874–77.

———. The Diary of John Quincy Adams. Edited by Allan Nevins. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1929.

——— and Charles Francis Adams. The Life of John Adams. 2 vols. (1871). Reprinted, New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1968.

Adams, Mrs. John Quincy (Louisa Catherine). Narrative of a Journey from St. Petersburg to Paris in February 1815. Scribner’s Magazine, October 1903, 34:449–463.

d’Antique, Le Comte. De Boulogne à Auteuil, Passy et Chaillot à Travers les Ages. Paris: Lapina, 1922.

The American Revolution: Two Centuries of Interpretation. Edited by Edmund S. Morgan. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.

Aurora.

Bancroft, George. History of the United States of America. 6 vols. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897.

Bartlett, Joseph Gardner. Henry Adams of Somersetshire, England and Braintree, Mass. New York: privately printed, 1927.

Bemis, Samuel Flagg. The Foundation of American Diplomacy, 1775–1823. New York, London: D. Appleton–Century Company, Inc., 1935.

Blake, John B. Public Health in the Town Of Boston, 1630–1822. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.

The Boston Gazette, or Country Journal.

Brodie, Fawn. Thomas Jefferson. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974.

Brown, Alice. Mercy Warren New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896.

Callender, James Thomson. The Prospect Before Us. 2 vols., Vol. 2 in two parts. Richmond: M. Jones, S. Pleasants, Jr., and J. Lyon, 1800–1. 1:67.

Chamberlain, Mellon. John Adams, the Statesman of the American Revolution. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1898.

Commager, Henry Steele, ed. Documents of American History. 9th ed. in 2 vols. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973.

Crowley, John Edward. This Sheba, Self. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974.

Dickinson, John, Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania, Boston. Printed by Mein and Fleming, 1768.

“Silas Deane Papers, 1774–1790.” Collections of The New-York Historical Society 19–23. 1886–1890.

“DuPont and Talleyrand, 1798.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 49:63–5. November 1915.

The Essex Gazette. Salem, Massachusetts.

Fordyce, Reverend James, D.D. Sermons to Young Women. 2 vols. London, 1767.

———. The Character and Conduct of the Female Sex. London, 1776.

Franklin, Benjamin. The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Albert Henry Smyth, 10 vols. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905–07.

Frothingham, Richard. Life and Times of Joseph Warren. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1865.

———. The Rise of the Republic of the United States. Tenth ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1910.

Garraty, John A. The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877. 2nd ed. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1971.

Grandmother Tyler’s Book: The Recollections of M. P. Tyler (Mrs. Royall Tyler), edited by Frederick Tupper and Helen Tyler Brown, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1925.

Gross, Robert A. The Minutemen and their World. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

Hamilton, Alexander. The Papers of Alexander Hamilton. Edited by Harold C. Syrett. 26 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–.

Hosmer, James K. Samuel Adams. New York: Chelsea House, 1980. Pp. 68, 119.

Howe, John R., Jr. The Changing Political Thought of John Adams. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966.

Howe, Mark Antony De Wolfe, ed. The Articulate Sisters, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946.

Hutchinson, Thomas. The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay. Edited by Lawrence Shaw Mayo. 3 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936.

Jefferson, Thomas. The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Adrienne Koch and William Peden. New York: The Modern Library, 1972.

———. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University. Edited by Julian Boyd. 21 vols. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1950–. 20:291, 293.

Johnson, Allen and Dumas Malone, eds. Dictionary of American Biography. 20 vols. New York: Scribner, 1928–1936.

Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts. 1715–. Boston. Reprinted in the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1919–.

Keller, Rosemary Skinner. Abigail Adams and the American Revolution: A Personal History. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1977.

Koch, Adrienne, ed. The American Enlightenment. New York: George Braziller, 1965. Pp. 246–250.

London Chronicle.

London Gazette.

Lunardi, Vincenzo. An Account of the First Aerial Voyage in England in a Series of Letters. London, 1784.

Macaulay, Catharine Sawbridge. History of England, from the Accession of James 1 to that of the Brunswick Line. 8 vols. London, 1763–1783.

Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the President: First Term. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970.

Massachusetts Centinel.

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter.

Mercure de France.

Morgan, Edmund S. The Challenge of the American Revolution. New York: W.W. Norton, 1976.

———. “The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. series, 24 (January 1967).

Morris, Richard, ed. Encyclopedia of American History. Bicentennial ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.

Morrison, Samuel Eliot. The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis. 2 vols. Boston and New York: The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1913.

Musto, David F. “The Youth of John Quincy Adams.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, August, 1969. Vol. 113, no. 4, pp. 269–82.

Oliver, Andrew. Portraits of John and Abigail Adams. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1967.

Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. Philadelphia, 1776. Reprinted in The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine. Edited by Philip S. Foner. Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1948. Pp. 3–46.

Porter, Robert Ker. Travelling Sketches in Russia and Sweden. 2 vols. London: Richard Phillips, 1809.

Public Advertiser.

Pulley, Judith. The Bittersweet Friendship of Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams. Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 108 (July, 1972). Pp. 193–216.

Quincy, Edmund. Life of Josiah Quincy. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868.

Quincy, Eliza Susan (Morton). Memoir of the Life of Eliza S.M. Quincy. Boston: J. Wilson and Son, 1861.

Quincy, Josiah. Memoir of Josiah Quincy, Junior of Massachusetts: 1774–1775. Edited by Eliza Susan Quincy. Boston: J. Wilson and Son, 1874.

Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640–1793. Edited by Samuel Bates. Randolph, Massachusetts: D.H. Huxford, 1886.

Report of a TRIAL: Miles Farmer, versus Dr. David Humphreys Storer,… Relative to the Transactions between Miss Eliza Dolph and George Washington Adams, Esq. son of the Late President of the United States. Reported by the Plaintiff, Boston. Printed for the Reporter, 1831.

Roof, Katherine Metcalf. Colonel William Smith and Lady. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929.

Schouler, James. History of the United States of America under the Constitution. Rev. ed. in 7 vols. (1880–1894). Reprinted, New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1970.

Sibley’s Harvard Graduates. Massachusetts Historical Society. 17 vols. 1873–.

“Smallpox Inoculation in Colonial Boston.” Journal of the History of Medicine.

Smith, Abigail Adams. Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams. Edited by Caroline Smith De Windt. 2 vols. New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841.

Smith, William Steuben. FACTS in Refutation of the Aspersions Against the Character and Memory of Col. Wm. Stephens Smith, as Recorded be Col. Tim. Pickering, in his Review of the Correspondence between the Hon. John Adams and the Late Wm. Cunningham, Esq. Washington: Davis and Forge, 1824.

Smith, William and Cotton Tufts. Diaries of Reverend William Smith, 1734–1783, and Dr. Cotton Tufts, 1738–1784. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 42:444–478. October 1908–June 1909.

Trumbull, John. Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters from 1756 to 1841. New York and London: Wiley and Putnam, 1841.

Tudor, William. Life of James Otis of Massachusetts. Boston: Wells & Lilly, 1823.

Tyler, Royall. The Contrast in Dramas from the American Theatre 1762–1909. Edited by Richard Moody. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing, 1966.

Warren-Adams Letters. 2 vols. Boston: The Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925.

Warren, Mercy. History on the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. 3 vols. 1805. Reprint ed., New York: AMS Press, 1970.

Washington, George. The Writings of George Washington. Edited by Jared Sparks. 12 vols. Boston: American Stationers’ Company, 1837.

Whitney, Janet. Abigail Adams. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1947.

Winsor, Justin, ed. The Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk Community, 1630–1880. 4 vols. Boston, 1880–1881.

Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1969.

 

 

1. July 31, 1833, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, 6 vols. to date, vol. 1–2 ed. Aida Dipace Donald and David Donald, vols. 3–6 ed. Marc Friedlander and L. H. Butterfield. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 1974), 5:137.
    August 1, 1833, ibid., 5:138.

2. JA to AA, July 2, 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:121.

3. AA to AAS, June 19, 1809, Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, 2:202.

4. AA to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, January 24, 1818, Reel 442, Adams Papers.

5. AA to Harriet Welsh, January 28, 1818, Reel 442, Adams Papers.

6. Adams Family Correspondence, 1:XXVII, n. 13.