Abigail Smith Adams, until 2000 the only woman to have been the wife of one president of the United States and the mother of another, was born on November 23, 1744. Barbara Bush, of course, also shares that honor.
Abigail Adams was a prolific correspondent and many of the letters she exchanged with her husband, John Adams, second president of the United States, are available online here.
She died of typhoid fever in 1818. Her son, John Quincy Adams, said this of her:
“There is not a virtue that can abide in the female heart but it was the ornament of hers. She had been fifty-four years the delight of my father’s heart, the sweetener of all his toils, the comforter of all his sorrows, the sharer and heightener of all his joys. It was but the last time when I saw my father that he told me … [that] through all the good report and evil report of the world, in all his struggles and in all his sorrows, the affectionate participation and cheering encouragement of his wife had been his never-failing support, without which he was sure he should never have lived through them.”
My tribute to this great lady. She must have fought with the disease but Alas! it took on her at the end.