In 1781, she lost her last surviving child, John Custis, aged twenty seven. Her widowed daughter-in-law and the four children, she took to her own home, and thenceforward they were the objects of her untiring solicitude.
The life of Mrs. Washington, after her husband took the Presidential chair, was marked by no striking incidents, and affords scanty material of the nature marked out for this work. During the eight years that he was Chief Magistrate, she presided in his mansion with the same unaffected ease, equanimity and dignified simplicity that had marked her previous course in more retired circles. Visitors were received on all days except the Sabbath, and, irrespective of rank, shared in her courtesies and hospitalities. A portion of each summer, at that period, was passed in the quiet and seclusion of Mount Vernon, she rarely, if ever, accompanying her husband on his tours through the land. She expressed regret when he was chosen President, because she preferred "to grow old" with him "in solitude and tranquillity;" hence it is not surprising that she found a luxury in retiring for a season from the scenes of public life, and in attending to the education of her grand-children and to other self-imposed tasks and important duties, in the performance of which she could bless her friends and honor God.
After the death of her illustrious companion, which occurred in December, 1799, she remained at Mount Vernon; where she spent seventeen months mourning her loss; receiving the visits of the great from all parts of our land, and from various parts of the earth; attending, as heretofore, to her domestic concerns; perfecting in the Christian graces, and ripening for the joys of a holier state of being. On the twenty-second of May, 1801, she who, while on earth, could be placed in no station which she did not dignify and honor, was welcomed to the glories of another world.
THE WIFE OF JOHN ADAMS.
The mother in her office holds the key
Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin
Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage,
But for her gentle cares, a Christian man.
Old Play.
——O we will walk this world,
Yoked in all exercise of noble aim.
Tennyson.
Abigail Smith was a daughter of the Rev. William Smith, a Congregational minister of Weymouth, Massachusetts, where she was born on the eleventh of November, 1744, O. S. "It was fashionable to ridicule female learning," in her day; and she says of herself in one of her letters, "I was never sent to any school." She adds, "I was always sick. Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic." But notwithstanding her educational disadvantages, she read and studied in private, and kept up a brisk correspondence with relatives, and by these means expanded and fed her mind, and cultivated an easy and graceful style of writing.
On the twenty-fifth of October, 1764, Miss Smith became the wife of John Adams, a lawyer of Braintree.[3]