Northeast
Meet the American who never flinched in the fight for independence, Abigail Adams
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine wrote near the end of the turbulent, fear-filled year of 1776.
It was the soul of a woman, however, that defiantly withstood the weight of the trial — the miraculous fight for American independence — with five children at her hip.
Abigail Adams never flinched, never wavered.
Neither the crown then nor fellow citizens today can mistake her gamble on a bold new nation called the United States.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO MADE PRESCRIPTIONS SAFER, DEBORAH ADLER, INSPIRED BY HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR GRANDMA
“We are no ways dispirited here. We possess a spirit that will not be conquered,” Adams wrote to her husband, John, on Sept. 20, 1776, days after George Washington’s colonial army was routed by the British in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Adams was just 31 with five small children at her humble farmhouse, with her husband far from home for much of their marriage.
Running a wartime home without a husband by her side appeared to only fuel her defiant independence. She added in that same letter: “If all our men are drawn off and we should be attacked, you would find a race of Amazons in America.”
The now-former first lady is remembered as a gifted writer, wife and confidante of a Founding Father and the first of just two women to be both wife and mother of U.S. presidents. She was joined in that distinction, nearly 200 years later, by Barbara Bush.
“She was a revolutionary in every sense of the word.”
But as her combative words proved, the 5-foot-6-inch New England mother was harder than the granite in the hills of Massachusetts. She stands among the greatest patriots in American history.
The toughest times in American history tried Adams’ soul. The toughest times lost.
“No woman in the history of our nation contributed more or sacrificed more for our country than Abigail Adams,” said Tom Koch, mayor of Quincy, Massachusetts, where Abigail lived most of her life, and a devoted scholar of Adams history.
She rests today within the Church of the Presidents, across from his office at Quincy City Hall.
He added, “She was a revolutionary in every sense of the word.”
‘My bursting heart must find vent at my pen’
Abigail Smith was born on Nov. 22, 1774 in Weymouth, Massachusetts.
Her father, William Smith, was a Congregational minister. Her mother, Elizabeth (Quincy) Smith, was born into a prominent political family in colonial Massachusetts.
Abigail Adams’ first cousin, Dorothy Quincy, was born and raised in the community of Quincy that would later bear the family name.
The first lady-to-be married a man born in Quincy, John Adams, in 1764.
Cousin Dorothy Quincy, for her part, married another rebel born in Quincy just a few hundred yards away from her. She and John Hancock wed in Oct. 1775, only six months after the Battle of Lexingon and Concord.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO HELPED SAVE MILLIONS OF NEWBORN BABIES, DR. VIRGINIA APGAR, PHYSICIAN AND MUSICIAN
Adams and Hancock had betrothed themselves to a family steeped in warrior spirit and tradition.
“The origins of the Quincy family lie in Cuincy in northwestern Normandy, France, where a knight named ‘de Cuincy’ joined the 1066 invasion of Britain,” historian Harlow Giles Unger wrote in “John Quincy Adams,” a biography of Abigail’s oldest son, the sixth U.S. president.
The name evolved to Quincy, he writes, noting that a nobleman, the Saer de Quincy, led a rebellion against John, King of England, and “appears at the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede.”
The two women, Abigail and Dorothy, in other words, provided the genetic link between the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence.
Both women bore eyewitnesses to the bloody birth of American independence.
Quincy watched the Battle of Lexington – April 19, 1775 – as 700 British troops marched on the tiny town in a quest to capture rebel munitions and her rebel beau, Hancock.
“The day, perhaps the decisive day, is come on which the fate of America depends. My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.”
Adams watched the rebellion intensify two months later. She climbed a hill near the humble family farmhouse, which doubled as her husband’s law office, and watched the Battle of Bunker Hill erupt across Boston Harbor with her 7-year-old son, John Quincy.
“The day, perhaps the decisive day, is come on which the fate of America depends,” she wrote afterward. “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.”
She knew a difficult life lay ahead, yet never wavered.
“While her husband was away serving the new nation, she was raising five children and running their farm in time of war,” Massachusetts historian Alexander Cain told Fox News Digital.
“The Siege of Boston was essentially outside her front door. She had to deal with inflation and food shortages and a daughter [Nabby], who was gravely ill.”
She remained devoted to American independence in its darkest hours despite enormous risk.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO MAPPED THE US-MEXICO BORDER, GEN. WILLIAM EMORY, SHAPED NATION IN WAR AND IN PEACE
“She would have lost everything. Her husband would have been tried for treason, her property confiscated,” said Cain.
“But she was devoted to the cause and knew she had to set an example for her fellow women and fellow patriots. She was tough. She was absolutely tough.”
One rebellion not enough
The voluminous correspondence of 1,100 letters between Abigail and John Adams provide perhaps the most important primary source of study of the American Revolution.
“Abigail (Smith) Adams did not have a formal education, but proved to be an extremely resourceful partner to John Adams,” reports the website of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the repository today of the correspondence between the two.
“While he was away on numerous political assignments, she raised their children, managed their farm, and stayed abreast of current events during one of the country’s most turbulent times.”
“Abigail Adams proved to be an extremely resourceful partner to John Adams.”
The letters, the site observes, “demonstrate her perceptive comments about the Revolution and contain vivid depictions of the Boston area.”
Adams proved her steel during the Second Continental Congress, where the delegation born in Quincy – her husband, Hancock and Samuel Adams – went to Philadelphia to convince the other colonies to join the revolt.
The rebellion was over in Massachusetts, the colony that effectively revolted against the British alone at first.
The Redcoats fled Boston in humiliation on March 17, 1776. They never returned.
The war moved elsewhere, to New York and the southern colonies.
But the stakes only grew higher. So did the fear.
But one rebellion wasn’t enough for Abigail.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO WROTE ‘THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC’
The Founding Fathers understood that they sat on the cusp of an unprecedented opportunity in history, to remake a more equitable society for mankind.
Adams saw the same unprecedented opportunity to remake a more equitable society for womankind.
“I desire you would remember the Ladies,” Adams wrote to her husband in the days before the passage of the Declaration of Independence.
The two sentences that follow “remember the ladies” portray the fire of her revolutionary spirit and signature defiance.
“Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could,” she wrote. “If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
“The Ladies … are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice.”
The demand represented a conviction to independence displayed by American women not often chronicled in history books, according to Cain.
“Women played a significant role in the build-up of the war,” he said. “They were the ones boycotting British goods and hosting spinning bees to make their own fabric so they didn’t have to buy British fabric. They were the ones who had to protect the home front and care for the children.”
Adams’ cry to “remember the ladies” was a demand, Cain said, to recognize the role women played in American independence.
‘Brightened the prospects of the race of man on Earth’
Abigail Adams died on Oct. 28, 1818. She was 73 years old.
John Adams lived six more years.
He died hauntingly on July 4, 1826 – the same exact day as Thomas Jefferson – the 50th anniversary of the American Independence both men famously helped forge.
The couple’s oldest son, John Quincy, was serving as secretary of state under President James Monroe at the time of Abigail Adams’ death.
She never got to see her son, the scared little boy who watched the Battle of Bunker Hill at his mother’s side, ascend to the White House — which he did in 1825.
She did not get to see her son ascend to the White House.
John and Abigail Adams, plus John Quincy Adams and his wife, Louisa Catherine Adams, lie side by side today in granite tombs in the family crypt in the United First Parish Church in Quincy.
It’s better known locally as the Church of the Presidents. The congregation dates back to 1639. The Rev. John Hancock, father of the patriot, was once its minister. He’s buried across the street in a nearly 400-year-old cemetery alongside 69 veterans of the American Revolution.
John and Abigail Adams moved into an estate in Quincy after the war, which they dubbed Peacefield, the name reflecting their hopes after decades of turmoil.
It’s now the centerpiece of the Adams National Historical Park, along with the nearby birthplaces of the two presidents.
The site where mother and son watched the Battle of Bunker Hill on “that decisive day” is memorialized today with the Abigail Adams Cairn, a fieldstone monument with the inscription of her words.
Abigail Adams has been remembered in numerous dramatic accounts and biographies. The white Yorkist roses she brought back from England after the war in 1788 and planted at Peacefield still bloom every spring.
John and Abigail Adams passed their gift for words to John Quincy Adams, who spoke or read nine languages.
He penned a tribute to his parents, scripted on a white marble tablet above the altar of the Church of the Presidents.
It captures in poetic beauty the profound gift his parents gave to the world through times that try men’s and women’s souls.
“During a union of more than half a century they survived in harmony of sentiment, principle and affection the tempests of civil commotion; meeting undaunted and surmounting the terrors and trials of revolution which secured the freedom of their country, improved the condition of their times; and brightened the prospects of futurity to the race of man upon Earth.”
To read more stories in this unique “Meet the American Who…” series from Fox News Digital, click here.
For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.
Read the full article from Here
Pittsburg, PA
New safety measures could protect children from falling out of windows in Allegheny County
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – New safety measures could soon protect children from falling out of windows in Allegheny County. It’s one of many proposed safety improvements to the county’s housing regulations.
“It’s a good thing. We’re bringing our housing regs up to the 21st century,” said Patrick Catena, president of Allegheny County Council.
The county council will hear the proposal next week.
Fall prevention devices for the windows of housing in Allegheny County are just one of the safety regulations now up for consideration. And it’s just a coincidence about a week or so after two small children fell from a window.
It’s something Tyler Jefferson will never unsee as the father of those two children who fell.
“It’s tough. It’s tough that we messaged them, and they didn’t do anything until they fell out the window,” Jefferson said.
Quin and Elody fell out of their third-story apartment building’s window onto the concrete window well below and miraculously survived.
New proposed housing regulations in Allegheny County could mandate window fall prevention devices.
“Trying to help the health department for the health department to be able to help them, so I think it’s a good thing all around,” Catena said.
A copy of the new proposed regulations includes guards on stairs, landings, and balconies 30 inches above the floor below, deadbolts for all entrance doors, required lighting for stairways and hallways, stricter requirements for carbon monoxide detectors, and fall prevention devices installed in all windows more than 72 inches off the ground below.
“It’ll come before county council, and county council will obviously act on it, and I expect a positive recommendation from the county council for it to pass,” Catena said.
Housing advocate David Vatz sees a lot of good in it.
“Yeah. Pro-Housing Pittsburgh is broadly in favor of improved health and safety regulations to protect tenants,” Vatz said. “I think one of the things about Allegheny County and Pittsburgh in general is that we have some of the oldest housing stock in the country, and this can often result in substandard conditions for tenants.”
Vatz believes common-sense protections are needed, and calls on policymakers “to make it easier to build new housing in the county.”
“Since we have such old housing stock and don’t build a lot of new housing, there’s nothing that puts pressure on landlords to maintain their sub-standard units and provide the best quality to their tenants.”
These housing safety regulations will be discussed next week at the county council meeting, and if approved, they could go into effect as early as October of this year.
Connecticut
Fiery tanker crash shuts down major Connecticut thoroughfare
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Maine
Did Anyone Else Witness This Tesla Possibly Driving Itself Along the Grass in Portland, Maine?
You have to love how small Portland is. So small, where you can’t even accidentally drive in the wrong direction without being caught.. or in this case, on the wrong piece of earth? This is a weird thing to write about because I don’t think that anybody who’s commenting on this poor guys car on Facebook has any idea what’s actually happening in the photo.
The best part is, my good friend Nate over at Portland Old Port tagged me in this photo that was posted to his Facebook and of course I had to make a blog about it as he would expect, so here we are. He’s going to laugh when he reads that part.. Hi Nate thanks for the content :)!
Okay so this dude named Pete Peterson who has a “top poster” badge next to his name on Portland Old Port’s Facebook, posted a photo of this Tesla just chillin driving down the boulevard in Portland, just not on the road. This is the photo that then generated over hundreds of comments below it.
It’s wild to me that this is the photo that started such a huge conversation online, but I guess that’s what happens when we’re all cooped up inside bored. However, as the internet does to us, I’m not invested, and I now need somebody to tell me once they figure out the real story, what exactly was going on here. Also please have them reach out to me so I can interview them on my show LOL!
2024 Maine Savings Amphitheater Summer Waterfront Concerts Lineup
Here are the performers who will be coming to the Maine Savings Amphitheater on the Bangor Waterfront in the summer of 2024!
Gallery Credit: Jordan Verge
Maine Moms Will Love These 5 Easy and Fun Mother’s Day Gift Ideas
Your Mom’s been making life special for you all your life, so here are five suggestions on how to make her special day extra-memorable.
Gallery Credit: Cindy Campbell
-
News1 week ago
Larry Webb’s deathbed confession solves 2000 cold case murder of Susan and Natasha Carter, 10, whose remains were found hours after he died
-
Education1 week ago
Video: Dozens of Yale Students Arrested as Campus Protests Spread
-
World1 week ago
Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigns, transitional council takes power
-
News1 week ago
First cargo ship passes through new channel since Baltimore bridge collapse
-
World1 week ago
US secretly sent long-range ATACMS weapons to Ukraine
-
World1 week ago
Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez suspends public duties to 'reflect'
-
News1 week ago
American Airlines passenger alleges discrimination over use of first-class restroom
-
World1 week ago
Asia bears biggest climate-change brunt amid extreme weather: WMO