Thomas Jefferson likewise sailed for Europe in July 1784, having been elected as minister plenipotentiary by the Confederation Congress.īefore traveling separately across the Atlantic Ocean, Abigail Adams and Jefferson met in Massachusetts. In the summer of 1784, when John Adams’s European duties had separated him from his wife for nearly five years, Abigail Adams made her first trip abroad. The future “First Lady” was married to John Adams in 1764 and was the mother of four children by the time that she and Jefferson met in 1784.Ībigail and John Adams endured extended absences from one another during his service in the Continental Congress and in Europe. She was schooled at home by her parents, became an avid reader, and, in common with the Virginian, developed a lifelong interest in formal education. Born in November 1744, in Weymouth, Massachusetts, Abigail Adams was nineteen months younger than Thomas Jefferson. Abigail Adams by Gilbert Stuart (National Gallery of Art)Ībigail Smith Adams (1744-1818) and Thomas Jefferson became friends when Jefferson and John Adams were both American diplomats in Europe.
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