Hello friends welcome delighted that you are here today we're going to return to the

life of one of my favorite first ladies I just love her because she is such an independent thinker and she was way before her time. I shared a lot of details about

her in episode 44 of this podcast, an episode called 1100 strongly worded letters.

And so if you haven't listened to it yet, you can check that episode out.

It will give you a lot of biographical details about Abigail Adams.

We explored many of the letters Abigail wrote to her husband John Adams when they were

apart from each other, but today I want to concentrate on one of the times

when John and Abigail were together.

In particular, the years they spent living abroad during the first few years after

the American Revolution. So let's dive in. I'm

Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

Okay, first let's do a very quick recap of Abigail's early life in case it's been a while since you listen to episode 44. She was born into a very prominent and politically involved

Massachusetts family. Her name was Abigail Smith before she got married. She

was educated at home by her mother along with her two sisters Mary and Betsy.

She was taught to read and write something that many girls of her era did not get to experience and she was given leave to use her father's library and the libraries of her uncles

which meant that she had access to extensive English and French literature libraries. So she developed a reputation for being a very avid

reader and you can see that manifested in the letters that she wrote throughout her life.

She often filled them with her favorite passages from literature.

She met a man named John Adams, who was nine years older than her when she was 15.

Her parents were not convinced that he was a good match for her. He was a very small-time lawyer,

making not a lot of money. And he had what her parents considered farm manners from his country upbringing.

He did not have any level of aristocracy to him.

...