By the time young Elizabeth married Congregationalist minister John Shaw in 1777, the Revolution was well underway. Cycles of pregnancy and childbirth bound Mary and Abigail even closer than they had been growing up. Abigail followed her sister into matrimony two years later, marrying the pugnacious young attorney John Adams. In 1762 Mary wed Richard Cranch, who was 15 years her senior, self-educated, and unlucky in business. Matriarch Elizabeth Smith tutored her daughters in housewifery and community charity, as well as reading, writing, mathematics, and Enlightenment precepts. The family resided in Weymouth, Mass., where William supplemented his preacher’s salary by farming. Their brother, William, was born in 1746 and named for their father, a Congregationalist minister. The most well-known of the three sisters, she was born Abigail Smith in 1744, three years after her elder sister, Mary, and six years before her younger sister, Elizabeth. In highlighting sorority, Jacobs (Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft) opens a new window on the familiar life of Abigail Adams, wife of American Revolution leader and second President of the United States, John.
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