Late Fall, 1776

John Adams, following a momentous time in Philadelphia, promoting, drafting and approving the Declaration of Independence, requested and was granted some leave of Congress to attend to his family and business in Massachusetts.

John had been away from his wife and family on-and-off since 1774, attending a Continental Congress as one of the representatives from Massachusetts. Philadelphia to Braintree was a two-week trip; absences were long, and particularly stressful. Not only was there emotional hardship in their separation, but Massachusetts, particularly the Boston area, suffered danger, sickness, turmoil, economic devastation, anxiety and death via a war that was becoming widespread throughout the thirteen colonies.

Abigail Adams already had prepared survival kits for her children, managed the family farm and household, tended generously to evacuees from Boston in need of aid, nursed family members and servants through a cholera epidemic – followed by dysentery, followed by smallpox. Followed by death. Followed by an ordeal of inoculating herself and her children against smallpox. She was exhausted.

John’s few months in Massachusetts was welcome beyond belief. By January ‘77, when he returned to Philadelphia, both of them knew she was pregnant. It was her sixth pregnancy. Their daughter Abigail (nicknamed Nabby from birth) was ten; John Quincy was nine; a daughter Susanna died in infancy; they there was Charles, six, and Thomas, four.

Now, when she wrote to her husband, their words were couched in private understanding. “I am sure no seperation [sic]was ever so painfull [sic] to me as the last. Many circumstances concur to make it so—the distance and the difficulty of communication, the Hazards which if not real, my immagination [sic] represents so, all conspire [to] make me anxious, as well as what I need not [. . .] mention.”

And John responded frequently, and just as circuitously, noting his “source of Anxiety which I never had before,” and urging her to “tell me you are as well as can be expected.”

They did not want their letters to fall into the wrong hands.

June or July, 1777

Pregnancy and childbirth were serious medical conditions, fraught with danger and changes and emotional turmoil. Late in her pregnancy, Abigail had a sudden chill and shaking episode which caused her to fear the worst: that something had happened to the unborn babe. Her doctor was hesitant to confirm anything and possibly could not assure her one way or the other. She was encouraged to have hope.

But Abigail was correct in her fears. When she finally went into labor, it was exhausting, arduous and long. And John, who had been nearby during the births of all his other children, was hundreds of miles away.

On July 11, 1777, John Quincy’s tenth birthday, Abigail gave birth to a stillborn daughter. She named the baby Elizabeth, after her mother, who had died a year earlier. It was nearly a week  before she could sit up and write the sad news to her husband. “Join with me my dearest Friend in Gratitude to Heaven, that a life I know you value, has been spaired [sic] and carried thro Distress and danger altho the dear Infant is numberd [sic] with its ancestors.”

Any loss of a child leaves a hole in the mother’s heart. Even in an age where infant/child mortality were extremely high. And of course, with pregnancy and childbirth creating its own hormonal emotional difficulties, Abigail was devastated. She and John had looked forward to welcoming another baby. While her sisters and her children were near to bring some help and comfort to the bereaved mother, John was another story.

John Adams, Grieving Father

Transportation, including mail delivery, was very slow in 1777. John did not learn the sad news of their stillborn daughter for nearly two weeks after it happened.

He was also alone. He had no family or close friends to provide the comfort that fathers also need. Life was hard in those days, and death in childbirth and infant mortality was high – nearly 30%. Most parents of that era knew the pain of tiny coffins first hand. It was obviously God’s will, expected and borne.

But John Adams also grieved, feeling sentimental pangs for an infant he had never seen. He wrote her immediately, saying “Never in my whole life, was my Heart affected with such Emotions and Sensations.”

But he took whatever comfort he could, grateful to God for preserving to him “a Life that is dearer to me than all other Blessings in this World.”  

Epilogue

Losing a child in infancy, or even in early childhood naturally causes scars, but more often than not, those scars pale with time.

But nearly twenty-five years later, John and Abigail suffered a far grievous loss when their grown son Charles succumbed at 30. He was perhaps the most loveable of the Adams children, but also the most vulnerable. He fell into bad habits and eventually disappointed his father with no opportunity for reconciliation. But as Abigail said, “He was no man’s enemy but his own.”

Abigail was devastated beyond understanding, but perhaps more so, her flinty husband was not only grieved, but deeply conflicted about the loss – and about his mishandling of the situation. Unfinished and unresolved issues present grief that no one else can assuage.

Fifteen years after Charles’ death, their only daughter developed breast cancer, and suffered through a mastectomy, followed by two years of its withering metastasis. There was nothing anyone could do.

This time John and Abigail grieved together.

Sources:  

Butterfield et al – The Adams Papers, Vol. 2, – Harvard University Press 1961

Gelles, Edith – Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage – William Morrow 2009 p. 37-39

Levin, Phyllis Lee – Abigail Adams – St. Martin’s Press, 1987

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0107

https://www.founderoftheday.com/founder-of-the-day/charles-adams