Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and Her Two Remarkable Sisters

In highlighting sorority, Jacobs (Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft) opens a new window on the familiar life of Abigail Adams, wife of American Revolution leader and second President of the United States, John. The most well-known of the three sisters, she was born Abigail Smith in 1744, three years after her elder sister, Mary, and six years before her younger sister, Elizabeth. Their brother, William, was born in 1746 and named for their father, a Congregationalist minister. The family resided in Weymouth, Mass., where William supplemented his preacher’s salary by farming. Matriarch Elizabeth Smith tutored her daughters in housewifery and community charity, as well as reading, writing, mathematics, and Enlightenment precepts. In 1762 Mary wed Richard Cranch, who was 15 years her senior, self-educated, and unlucky in business. Abigail followed her sister into matrimony two years later, marrying the pugnacious young attorney John Adams. Cycles of pregnancy and childbirth bound Mary and Abigail even closer than they had been growing up. By the time young Elizabeth married Congregationalist minister John Shaw in 1777, the Revolution was well underway. Deftly weaving military and political events of the Revolutionary period with the personal lives of these fascinating sisters, Jacobs has crafted a riveting curl-up-by-the-fireside story. Illus. (Mar.)