ADAMS 40 Abigail Adams was very helpful to her husband, John Adams,
when he was President. arate articles about these men in the following
pages. Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, the founder of this
great family. She was the first American First Lady (wife of a
president) to live in the White House, which was opened in 1800 while
John Adams was still president. She was also the first American woman
to have both a husband and a son who became president, but she did not
live to see her son president because she died in 1818, and John Quincy
Adams was elected president in 1824.
ADAMS 40 Abigail Adams was very helpful to her husband, John Adams, when he was President. arate articles about these men in the following pages. Abigail Adams was the wife of John Adams, the founder of this great family. She was the first American First Lady (wife of a president) to live in the White House, which was opened in 1800 while John Adams was still president. She was also the first American woman to have both a husband and a son who became president, but she did not live to see her son president because she died in 1818, and John Quincy Adams was elected president in 1824.
There are several biographies of Abigail Adams, some of them for children. Charles Francis Adams was a son of John Quincy Adams, and was born in 1807. He became a lawyer, studying under Daniel Webster, but instead of practicing law he served in the legislature of Massachusetts, ran for vice-president in 1848 but was defeated, and then served in Congress. During the Civil War he was American minister to Great Britain (a position as important then as that of ambassador is now).
This first Charles Francis Adams had three sons who became famous. One of them, also named Charles Francis Adams, was a general in the Union Army in the Civil War, and at one time was president of the Union Pacific Railroad. His brother Henry Adams was a famous professor and teacher who wrote an autobiography, named The Education of Henry Adams, that is considered one of the greatest American books.
The third and youngest brother, Brooks Adams, wrote many books of history. Almost all members of this famous Adams family wrote a great deal, both books and letters, and there are many books about them. In our own century, another Charles Francis Adams (bom in 1866) served as Secretary of the Navy under President Herbert Hoover, from 1929 to 1933. The first Charles Francis Adams was his grandfather, so of course President John Adams was his great-great-grandfather. This Charles Francis Adams also won one of the yacht races for the America's Cup, about which there is a separate article. The names of some other prominent Americans who were named Adams, but were not related to the family of President John Adams, are: Franklin Pierce Adams, better known as F.P.A. (the name under which his best-known writing was done), who edited a daily column called "The Conning Tower" in a famous newspaper, the New York World, and also became known to millions by being a member of the panel on a famous radio quiz show, "Information Please."
Many of those who became America's best writers had their first writings published, when they were quite young, in "The Conning Tower." F.P.A. was born in Chicago in 1881. James Truslow Adams was a writer of history, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 for his book The Founding of New England. He was born in Brooklyn in 1878 and died in 1949. Maude Adams was one of the best loved American actresses, especially in the role of Peter Pan, which she was the first to play in the United States. She was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1872, and her real name was Kiskadden, but she used a different name (her mother's maiden name) on the stage, as so many actresses and actors do. She died in 1953.
