Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Massachusetts: 1,100 Strongly-Worded Letters with Kaben Kramer

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

In this episode, Sharon tells Kaben Kramer about the best letter-writer of all time, Abigail Adams. Born and raised in the great state of Massachusetts, Abigail wrote over 1,100 letters to her husband, President John Adams, throughout his political career. Her words packed a punch, and her letters frequently persuaded her husband to advocate for women’s rights and condemn slavery on the floors of our new nation’s Congress. Abigail was a trusted wife, loving mother, charitable educator, smallpox inculcator, ammunition maker, and at times, she was referred to as “Mrs. President.” Join Sharon and Kaben as they discuss the incredible life and legacy of Abigail Adams. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome, welcome. So glad you're here to join me. My friend Cabin Kramer is here today. Cabin and his wife own a walnut farm. And if that was not interesting enough, I have a fantastic story about a woman that I find so inspirational. She's one of my favorites. I got to share all of the details with Cabin. And by the end of the episode, he loved her too. So let's dive into this episode called 1100 Strongly Worded Letters. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am here today with my friend Cabin Kramer. And why don't you tell everybody what you do? Because your job is very interesting to me. Thank you, Sharon. It's great to be here. Yeah, I'm a walnut farmer in Northern California, so I get to hang out with a bunch of trees all day and take care of some soil and some chickens

and let the sun and the soil do its thing. I think, I mean, you're so used to thinking about farmers being like, we grow corn. These are my cucumbers. And how many walnut farmers are there? Walnut trees grow slowly. They grow very slowly. But where I farm is kind of like champagne from France. That's kind of the area of California I'm in for walnuts. I mean, it is the walnut capital of the world. 99% of America's walnuts come from probably within a hundred miles of where I am. Wow. Yeah. And about half of the world's walnuts, I think. I could miles of where I am. Wow. Yeah. And about half of the world's walnuts. I think I could be wrong. Someone smarter than me will fact check that and let you know. How long does a walnut tree have to grow before it starts producing walnuts? Typically

about seven years. So when you put it in the ground, it'll start dropping walnuts maybe in its fourth year, fifth year, but you can't really harvest anything off of it till about the seventh year. The tree needs to get strong enough and get enough produce. So that means also we only harvest once a year in October. So we are harvesting our property, but when you start farming, you only harvest once a year. You only get paid once a year. So you have to farm for 15 months before we got our first paycheck. That is significant. People do not take their food producers seriously enough and give them enough credit. We just assume we can go to the grocery store and buy some walnuts, which we can, but there's not enough admiration for like,

I had to do this for 15 months before I got one paycheck. And my paycheck is largely tied to mother nature. It is. We don't know what our paycheck is until it comes in. So we've spent a year growing the crop. We have shipped the crop off and then we have to wait four more months before we even know how much we're going to make on that crop. It's definitely not for the faint of heart. No, this episode is not about walnut farming, but I could make it into one because I'm interested. But how does one even get into walnut farming? It's not like land in California to plant a walnut grove is inexpensive. How do you even do that?

Yeah. But honestly, it is very expensive. If I were to go in cold turkey, I would need $4 to $5 million in startup just for land and equipment. And then you wouldn't even harvest your first crop for seven years. So in our story, it's family. I'm the fourth generation of my family on this land. And so that's given me access to something that very few people have access to. And I don't take that for granted, not for a day of my life. I wake up every day, thankful for the honor of being able

to step into the work that my father has done. And what are the best parts of being a walnut farmer? The best part of being a farmer is learning how to settle into the grace of the trees. That's beautiful. How old are the trees on your property? I would imagine there's planting and things like that as trees fall, but what's the average tree age? Yeah, I'd say the average tree age is about 25 years old, but we are planting new trees every year and we're taking out our oldest trees. So our oldest trees are 64 years old. Okay. And so we're taking those out, putting new trees in, but yeah, the average age is probably

somewhere between 20 and 30 years old. I have said this many times that I'm fascinated by other people's jobs. I'm never going to be a walnut farmer, but I really enjoy hearing about other people's experiences doing that. Yeah. And you know, my wife and I just escaped to Napa Valley for a couple of days. And I was reminded that people really enjoy just being out in the vineyards. And my takeaway was, I feel like my orchard almost brings more serenity than these vineyards because you get all the shade. We have about 90% shade out in the summer, which is just

a delight to walk around and let your mind wander, let your thoughts wander. It's a beautiful place. We're very thankful. Have you ever thought about opening a small country in? Give me a few years. Yeah, that would be my heart's desire would be to allow the gift of generations has been given to me to be shared more with the public. Yeah. And there would need to be like a walnut muffin. Yes. Yes, definitely. Great. Thank you for coming on my podcast. It has been nice chatting. No, I have many walnut ideas for you.

So wonderful. Okay. The other thing too, is that you don't just, how does one sell walnuts? It's not like you're just sitting at your roadside stand. Yeah. So we have what's called a commodity buyer. So they buy millions and millions of pounds of walnuts from all different growers. So we're just small potatoes to them. And then they export all over the world, Italy, China, Brazil, some stays in the domestic market here in the US, but about 90% of our crop ends up overseas. The trick with that, of course, is the unpredictability

of it because we do all this work without knowing what we're going to get, which is why we started doing the direct consumer over Instagram with the sprouted walnuts because that's a much more consistent market, even if it's still a small market. Okay, so people want to know this too.

What are sprouted walnuts? The elevator pitch is sprouted walnut does two things. It releases bound up nutrition in the nut because it thinks it's going to start a new plant. So it says, oh, all this good stuff that's going to start a plant. We need to let go of it so we can actually start this plant. And then it also breaks down the protective barrier around the nut so it can start pushing roots. Well, so we allow that biochemical process to start, but we stop it before the nut actually changes shape.

What that does is it creates a bioavailable superfood where your body can actually absorb a higher percentage of the nutrition of the nut and the flavor tastes better because there's not all those bitter acids and tannins on the outside of the nut, protecting it from the soil. I know when you sent me some of your sprouted walnuts, I had no idea what to expect because I've never had a sprouted walnut before. And I did notice how mild they taste. They're very, you know how cashews are very mild flavor, nut. They don't taste like cashews, but they're similar to a cashew in that it does not have that bitter walnut aftertaste that you associate with walnuts.

Definitely. Okay. All right. Enough about walnuts. We'll head back in time to 1744. Oh, that's way back in time. It is way back in time to the actual birth date of this individual is in question. I should clarify. It's not a question. It's just which number do we report? Prior to the 1750s, colonists in the United States and also residents of Britain used the Julian calendar and not the Gregorian calendar, which we have now. And as it turned out, the Julian calendar was not the most accurate in terms of the rotations around the sun, things like that. It was off. And so when they actually made the switch to the Gregorian calendar, it changed people's birthdays by like 11 days.

Imagine a situation like that today, right? Where they're like, listen, guys, the way we've been doing things for centuries has been wrong. We're going to correct it. We're going to make it right. But y'all's birthdays are going to be altered by 11 days. It's going to be 11 day difference. Would Americans take kindly to that? Do you think? Oh man, the social media lash back on that. Wow. You just aged me 11 days. That's right. People would not be into it. All of those 20 year olds on the cusp of drinking might be really excited. Everyone else is going to be livid. It's funny to me to sometimes think about history, take those events that happened and like transpose them into today and think about what would it be like if our government was like, we're changing the calendar?

What would people say today? Like people would not look kindly on it. No. So this individual was born in November of 1744 in the beautiful and historic state of Massachusetts. And she was educated at home, you know, kind of like a lot of girls didn't go to school, but her mother was well-read and her mother taught her how to read, her and her siblings and how to write. And her father was a very well respected member of the community. He was a Congregationalist minister. And in the colonies at that time, truly the highest status one could have was being the minister, you know, and there were obviously various congregations, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, the minister, you know, and there were obviously various congregations,

Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Unitarian, you know, et cetera. But that was a very elevated status. So much so that some professions that we think are very high status today, things like physician, lawyer, et cetera, those were well beneath the status of minister. You went to Harvard and learned how to become a minister. Anyway, she learned how to read and her father had all of these books. And so even though she never attended school formally, she had access to this huge library. And because he was such a well-respected person, he was constantly getting new books from people and visitors to their home would introduce her to different authors. And so she became very

well known as a voracious reader and later a fantastic writer. In fact, one of the best letter writers of all time historians regard her as, which is saying something. A woman born in the mid 1700s is considered by historians one of the best letter writers of all time. And when she was a teenager, she met a man that struck her fancy. And he saw her across the room and she saw him and they had stars in their eyes. She was this very tiny little woman who had dark hair and dark eyes and was like five feet tall, which wasn't unusual for women of the time, of course, but you know, she was just very petite and her parents were not sure about him because he was just a country lawyer. And they were like, his manners are not appropriate. He is very country. He's acts like he just came off the farm. And I am not sure about his prospects as an attorney. I don't

know if he's going to be able to take care of you as an attorney. And so they made them wait a couple of years before getting married because her parents could not be convinced that he was going to be able to care for her. And when she was 19, they finally got married. He was about nine years older than her. And just a few days short of their nine-month wedding anniversary, she gave birth to their first child, who she named after herself. And again, this was a girl child, and this was not an unusual thing to do at the time. Today, we have this tradition of we only name male children after their father. But they named their first daughter Abigail Adams after herself. So the Adams began having children. They named their daughter Abigail. Her nickname was Nabby. Nabby instead of Abby. Okay. I'm not sure where Nabby came from, but that was her name her entire life. And they went on to have

another famous child named John Quincy. John Quincy, by the way, was the name of Abigail Adams's grandfather. And her grandfather was the speaker of the Massachusetts assembly for 40 years. So she was raised in a political household where her grandfather had a pretty significant influence on her, allowed her mother to have an interest in politics and by extension, Abigail to have an interest in politics. So they had Nabi and then John Quincy, and then they had a daughter named Susanna who died before she turned two. And they had a son named Charles, a son named Thomas, and a daughter named Elizabeth who was stillborn. So four of the six Adams children lived to adulthood. And Abigail is truly one of the most fascinating women in

U.S. history to me. More interesting than her actual achievements. You know what I mean? Like as an Enneagram three, I love achievements and she doesn't have achievements where it's like, and then Abigail Adams invented the electricity. You know what I mean? She doesn't have that. And yet this arc of her story is just so interesting. So John Adams, of course, gets real involved in revolutionary politics. They had been living on a farm and they moved to Boston so that he could be closer to his law practice. He was deep in revolutionary politics and she supported the revolution. She wanted there to be independence. And she supported the revolution.

She wanted there to be independence. And John and Abigail had a very interesting sort of symbiotic relationship where he absolutely regarded her advice and counsel as incredibly important. As a product of his time, he definitely viewed women's role as being in the home. But it was Abigail that he wrote letters to asking for advice. And over the course of their marriage, John and Abigail exchanged over 1100 letters. Wow. The vast majority of which are intact, preserved. And so we have this firsthand account of what it is like on the home front during the Revolutionary War, where she is just at the time, a mother trying to care for her children left while her husband is dealing with his politics or her husband is overseas,

et cetera. And also what it was like being the wife of the vice president, because John Adams was George Washington's vice president. And then what it is like to be one of the first ladies of the United States. So her prolific writing is an incredible treasure trove of information to historians. So John would leave Abigail for long periods of time. He had to go to Philadelphia to go to New York, go do this thing, go decide, do we write a declaration of independence? How do we handle this? How do we get out of this situation? We don't want to be your subjects anymore.

How do we extricate ourselves from this? I also love that both of the Adamses were very anti-slavery, and that was not always a popular thing to openly talk about. A lot of the quote-unquote founding fathers of the United States might have been against it. Some of them were. Some of them owned slaves. But the ones who were against it still made a lot of compromises surrounding it. They allowed it to continue for a long period of time. And I love what Abigail Adams had to say in a letter where she said, I doubt very much that the Virginians have such a passion for liberty as they claim they do, since they deprive their fellow creatures of freedom. And I was like, she had a lot of opinions

for a woman her age. One day when she was, she wrote a letter to John, and this is one of her most famous letters, where she is encouraging John to remember women. Like when you are writing your laws, she has this very famous phrase called remember the ladies. And she says in this letter to John, remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands.

Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. And she also goes on to say, listen, if you don't pay attention, women are going to foment a rebellion. And I was like, women are determined to foment a rebellion. And I love this too. And we will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. Oh, I love that. Like we're not going to listen to you. If you are not going to listen to our concerns, we're not going to listen to yours. I'm Jenna Fisher and I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs.

Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode.

Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. So while the Revolutionary War was going on, many of the battles, like the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and several other very important battles, happened not far from where the Adamses lived. And of course, John is not home. It's just Abigail at home with their four children. And she made a reputation for herself that she would allow soldiers who were maybe had escaped from British captivity or who were trying to evade capture, they could come and hide at their house. And at one point she took all of her beloved silverware, which was at the time made of pewter

and melted it all down to make musket balls to pass out to all of the soldiers of like, you guys have got to win this thing. You know, like what you need is ammunition, which I just love that. She's also very famous for making the decision, which was again, extremely controversial at the time to inoculate her children against smallpox. again, extremely controversial at the time to inoculate her children against smallpox. Smallpox was a very significant problem during the time of the revolutionary war. And once it kind of came to your community, the community just was like gripped with fear. It had a very, very high mortality rate. She is like a get it done. DIY amazing woman. She's like, Hey, this has got to get done. I's incredible. I'm going to do what

I have to do here. One of her children did get very sick from the inoculation, but lived, you know, that's one of the things about using that method. It's called variolation of trying to inoculate yourself against a disease is that it's very imprecise, right? Like you don't know what is the correct dosage. Like she was taking the chance of, I think it's safer to do this than to let my kids get a full case of smallpox. Of course, that allowed her four children to continue living to adulthood.

She'd already experienced the death of two kids and probably was not interested in doing that again. So John makes a name for himself in the United States government and they sent him overseas. They say, listen, you are going to be the minister of France. And he had been gone for a while. And eventually Abigail just missed him too much. They were very fond of one another and they were very affectionate with each other.

And he would sometimes refer to her in their letters as Miss Adorable, which I thought was so cute. Like this is a 45 year old woman. You know what I mean? Who doesn't have the trappings of modern beauty standards. Miss Adorable. So she eventually decides, I'm going to join you. I'm going to join you in Europe. John served as one of the ministers to France, and then he was later reassigned to go to Britain. And it was while they were in France, the Adamses, that Abigail had a chance to meet Benjamin Franklin, who she was not fond of, and to meet Thomas Jefferson, who she was very fond of. And they became very close friends. And one of the things that they bonded over was their love of gardens and their love of songbirds. And Thomas Jefferson later told James Madison about his fondness for Abigail Adams. Like I have never met anyone like her. There's just something about her company that I enjoy so much. And they would exchange gifts with each other and became pen pals for years. The friendship between them was very close. So of course, later when Thomas Jefferson beat John Adams in the election of 1800,

that really soured their friendship. And that was a source of sadness for Abigail that she lost that friendship with Thomas Jefferson and that John Adams lost his friendship with him as well. So during this time that the Adamses are in Europe is when the constitution was being written. John Adams was not in the country during this time period. They were in Europe from like 1784 to 1789. Constitution was written in 1787. So they finally came home when George Washington became president and John Adams was voted vice president. So I guess we'll go home if you're going to be vice president then. I mean, if that's what you want, that's what we'll do. So they traveled home.

Adams was vice president for both of George Washington's terms. And it was a job that he hated. He hated being vice president because he felt like this job is so boring. This job is nothing. At the time, the vice president had almost no constitutional obligation other than to cast tie-breaking votes for Congress. That was all they were supposed to do, like be a placeholder in case something happens to the president. Now, all of our jobs that we assign to the vice president, that's not by law. That's just mutually agreed upon by the president and vice president. The job can be whatever they decide it will be. And as a brand new vice

president, the first vice president ever, they had not come up with anything interesting. And he wrote in a letter to Abigail once, like, I cannot imagine a worse job than this one. I cannot imagine a worse job than this one. Like he absolutely hated it. He was a man of great intellect and it was boring. And there's nothing worse than just being bored at work, right? Right, 100%. Constantly bored at work while people watch you being bored. So they, of course, at the time,

the capital of the United States was in Philadelphia. And so they traveled back and forth, especially Abigail, who was trying to take care of things back home in Massachusetts. And she'd come to Philadelphia to see John, et cetera. And there was a very notable incident that happened in 1791. So John Adams was vice president from 1789 to 1797. 1789 to 1797. So in 1791, during George Washington's first term, a young Black man came to their door and said, will you teach me how to read and write? And she said, absolutely,

come on in. And she invited him into their house every day to teach him how to read and write and got him to the point, I don't know his precise age, but I would assume 12 to 15 ish. And once he got up to a certain speed of learning how to read like a certain level of proficiency, she took him to the school to enroll him and was like, you can do the work now because you've learned how to read. And the neighbors and some of the people at the school were like, no, you can't just have differently colored children attending the school. And Abigail Adams famously said that this is a free man as much as any of the other young men. And merely because his face is black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? And then she said, I have not thought it any

disgrace to take myself, to take him into my home and teach him how to read and write. This is the wife of the vice president giving these people kind of a verbal tongue lashing of like, I invited him to my house and there is no reason you should not welcome him into your school. And they did, they dropped it and they did. And he was attended the school. So of course we all know that John Adams eventually became the president and they had to move to Philadelphia more full-time. They had to live at the president's house. And at the time it was up to the president to pay for all of the entertaining they had to do. If you were going to have all the dinners and all the special events and the Christmas parties and

whatever, it was up to the president to pay for that. And the Adamses were frugal people. They were not ostentatious people. They, you know, owned a farm and they had come from more humble beginnings. But while John had been away overseas, Abigail Adams had invested a bunch of the money that they had and those investments began to pay off. And she invested their money wisely enough so that it lasted them the entirety of John's life. John outlived her by quite a few years. He lived a very long life. He lived to be in his nineties and the money that Abigail made from her investments investments again, without really consulting Jen lasted them the rest of their life. They spent it carefully, but they were frugal. They still kept it a little bit more simple. And one of the things they had to do as president and first lady,

they didn't really refer to the wife of the president as first lady at the time, but that's what of course we know her as they had an audience with the public every day. So every day the public would come over to your house for two hours a day. You had two hours a day of just conversing with people who showed up, which that doesn't seem ridiculous today that you could just wait in line outside the White House and be like, well, I'm talking. I feel like somehow that was a carryover from the monarchy of like holding court. And somehow that was still in the evolution of what a democracy is.

This digital tale that came over from the monarchies. Probably. I mean, even all the way up through Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln was doing that too. Just like letting people come over to the white house. And now we're like, stay away from the president, right? Like that's our current position. Like get away. And of course there are legitimate security reasons for that, but now it's like, man, you couldn't get within 20 feet of the president without an express invitation if you wanted to. Right. But

I also, again, as an introvert, the idea that people have to come over to my house two hours a day and I have to talk to you. Oh no. She was so well-informed about political issues that people of the day referred to her as Mrs. President. Sometimes people, if they wanted to send a message to John, they would send it to her first because she was the more emotionally stable one in the relationship. She was much more pragmatic and he was at much more hot-tempered. He constantly apologized in letters to Abigail, like, please forgive my vanity. You know, like his feelings were so easily injured. And she was just more like, John, stop acting that way. You know, like you can't do that.

There were several times where Abigail would leak information to the press in order to get a favorable story about her husband out there in the newspaper. This is also something that a lot of Americans don't realize is that we do not have a long history of an impartial or unbiased press. It used to be that during this time period, newspapers, et cetera, were entirely partisan. And you bought the newspaper that aligned with your viewpoints. Either you hated the Adams administration, or you were a federalist and you loved it. And you bought the newspaper that aligned with your viewpoint. And are things very polarized now? Absolutely. Were they polarized then? Also, yes. It's just a lot more easy for things to go viral now, clearly. So the Adamses were the

first people to live in the White House when they moved the Capitol to Washington, D.C. And as I mentioned, the election of 1800 was very contentious. Thomas Jefferson beat John Adams. And several days before that election, the Adamses son, Charles died of alcoholism that hit them so hard. And so the fact that he had made so many poor life choices, he had a wife and many children and he had gambled a lot of his money away. He had stolen money from his brother, John Quincy, and lost it. The fact that Charles had kind of gone off the rails was a source of tremendous heartache for the Adamses.

And then to have him die and leave his wife and children alone was also just tremendously heartbreaking for them. And then add in this massive election defeat, this incredible amount of contentiousness, and then the fact that they're supposed, this incredible amount of contentiousness. And then the fact that they're supposed to get up and move to Washington, D.C. to the White House and act like everything's fine. Because of course, the election happened at the end of the year. But at the time, presidents didn't take office until March. So they were going to be moving to the White House just for a few months. And they got to the White House and Abigail was very dismayed to find, it was unfinished, by the way, they were still working on it, very dismayed to find that much of the White

House was being constructed by slaves. And she was like, how am I supposed to live here in this? Where even are we? At the time, Washington, D.C DC was literally in the middle of nowhere. It was not a city. It was not close to anything. It was kind of swampy. There were a lot of trees and here she is. Her son has just died. She's supposed to move into this unfinished house that is being built under conditions that she finds morally objectionable. And there's no heat in the house. Like it was very poorly insulated. And she just remembers as that

winter as being like one of the coldest and darkest times of her life. She famously was like, oh, and what's this giant room over here for? Because the house was unfinished. She put up a bunch of clotheslines and hung up their wash. There are paintings of Abigail Adams hanging her laundry in the East room of the White House that are part of like the first lady's collection at the White House. Her doing that, it wasn't a symbol of disrespect per se. It was pragmatic, like the laundry needs to dry. You know, Washington DC is very rainy in the wintertime, but yet it does illustrate how just a little bit of how unhappy they had to have been living there during that time period.

So eventually they, John left office and they move much more happily back to their farm in Massachusetts. And sadly, their daughter, Nabi died of breast cancer oh no she had like three years of horrible pain she had an operation where they attempted to like remove the tumor and there was no anesthetic at the time and she had this operation at her parents house where the doctor came over and they literally when she consented to it, but they literally had to give her a rag to bite on and like tie her arms up. So she wouldn't like enter, try to interfere involuntarily. And the Adams is described later about like listening to

the sound of her, like this muffled screams coming from upstairs while they were trying to do this surgery, but she had children. She had multiple children that she was trying to stay alive for and a deadbeat husband. Oh man. Anyway, she ended up dying. Did they know at the time it was called cancer or what did they call it then? They didn't know it was called cancer, but cancer was very taboo. So you would never come to people and be like, listen, guys, I have cancer. In fact, you would try to keep that diagnosis from the person who had cancer, because there was this idea that you shield people from the truth because they can't handle it, particularly women. Right. And their daughter, Nabi was like, I know something is not right. And she could tell when the tumor grew back, she was like, it's back. So it was viewed at the time as contagious or it was viewed as something that

happened to people of poor moral character. And so it wasn't really until later in the 1800s that it was the treatment of cancer began to become more socially acceptable. Have you watched The Crown? No, I haven't. Okay. Well, you should watch it, but there's a scene in which Queen Elizabeth's father has lung cancer. Nobody wants to tell him. And he has secret surgery at Buckingham Palace to remove one of his lungs, but nobody tells him it's cancer. You know, like that persisted until the 20th century that it was not socially acceptable to tell people that was like happening to you for whatever reason, it had these misguided beliefs about it. Cause

they didn't understand how science worked, but then there were all of these stigmas attached to it from all of their centuries misguided beliefs. Right. Yep. Anyway, all of these stigmas attached to it from all of their centuries of misguided beliefs, right? Anyway, all of that to say, Abigail Adams, absolutely, like as her children grew, she took in other people's children. They raised her son, Charles's children. They raised her daughter, Nabi's children. Her brother-in-law had children who needed raising. They were constantly, in fact, for a period of time back when they lived overseas, she helped raise one of Thomas Jefferson's children, his daughter who later passed away. And that was part of what rekindled Thomas Jefferson's friendship with Adams is was when Abigail sent him a letter of condolence saying, I'm sorry about the loss of your daughter. Anyway, she never stopped

taking care of other people's children. She loved dogs, constantly had a dog at her side and would write about her dogs frequently in letters to people constantly talking about her dog, Juno. Juno is old and gray. Like I am now, but Juno stillo still lives you know like obviously very important to her and Abigail Adams is one of only two women in the world in world history that has been both a wife to a president and the mother to a president because of course John Quincy her son became president eventually and she did not live to see his presidency, but she and Barbara Bush are the only two people who can say they've ever been a mother and a wife to a president. I think that's a cute connection between them. And this is one thing that a historian said about her. He says their correspondence constitutes a treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in U.S. history.

And although she was self-educated, she was a better and more colorful letter writer than John, even though John was one of the best letter writers of the age. And he says she was more resilient, more emotionally balanced, and one of the most extraordinary women in American history. And I loved what she had to say in one of her letters to one of her friends. When her friend wrote her a letter after John had been elected president, her friend, mercy wrote her a letter and was like, congratulations on making it, you know, like you are now like the most esteemed woman in the country. Congratulations. And Abigail wrote back to her and said, I shall esteem myself peculiarly fortunate if at the close of my life, I can retire esteemed, beloved, and equally respected with my predecessors.

I just love that. That was what was important to her. Not like my giant list of accomplishments, not all of my inventions, not all of my awards. I want to retire esteemed, beloved, and respected. Wow. And she is. And she is. And I just think she's fantastic. You've completely convinced me. I mean, I'm sitting here listening to this and I question now whether John Adams could have even risen to his station without a woman like her. The way

that she would stand up against slavery when it wasn't cool. The way that she led John in esteeming her opinion and seeking her advice. The way she took in children. The way she had compassion. Her last words were reported to be to John. Because she died in her 70s. John outlived her by a number of years. She said, do not grieve my friend.

My dearest friend. I'm ready to go. And John, it will not be long. So beautiful. Such a sweet love story they had. You hear about all of the exploits of many of our founders. She, by the way, hated Alexander Hamilton because she was like, his eyes are from the devil. And I looked into his eyes and all I saw was lasciviousness. She had no love for Alexander Hamilton. You hear about the exploits of Alexander Hamilton, the Reynolds pamphlet and all of his affairs. And you hear about all of the slaves that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned, James Madison. And here are the Adamses who are not as flashy, who John Adams made a lot of people mad because he was not very diplomatic and he was prone to fits of temper. But I absolutely admire their commitment to each other, their commitment to their principles, even though it cost him the

presidency because he was unpopular, it cost him his position. Ultimately, he was happier for having lost that election. Their life was happier for not having to continue living in Washington, DC, continue that life of public service. They were happier as a retired couple. Yeah, that's wonderful. You hardly see that anymore. It's a big deal for a couple to stay devoted to one another for that many years to write 1100 letters by hand with a quill and mail it. I just have to admire their commitment to each other. That's what I'm trying to say. That's amazing. Okay. Can I ask a couple of questions? Cause I'm just so curious about

things. Okay. So they weren't around for the writing of the constitution and yet they came back to be vice president where they just completely bought into the constitution or did they get back and they started reading this thing and they're like, hang on, we're going to be leading a country that does what now? John Adams was an advisor to some of the writers of the constitution. They exchanged letters where he was like, be sure to do X. So he was a very big advocate. He and Alexander Hamilton were the leaders of the Federalist Party. And so he was a very big advocate for a strong central government.

He absolutely believed that we needed to ditch the Articles of Confederation, which had no strong central government, and move to a situation where a strong central government existed. So he was a supporter. Okay. So then the White House, did it get finished in Jefferson's term, or when was it actually done? Yes, it became finished during Jefferson's term. He moved into the White House directly, obviously, when he took office in March. He moved into the White House directly, obviously, when he took office in March.

Thomas Jefferson's wife died like 17 years before he became president. So Thomas Jefferson did not have a first lady the way other people had. And so his daughter-in-law helped him hold the parties and do the hosting and do all of the things. Interesting. Okay. So then the vice president lives on Naval Base, Naval observatory, Naval observatory. Were the Adams there? Nope. The Naval observatory was not built until considerably later. And do you know where people stayed in the interim while all this stuff was being finished, taverns. Yes.

Like actual taverns. I love how the world could be such a simple place when we choose for it to be like, oh yes, you running the free country of the United States of America, come sleep in the upstairs of my tavern and listen to the rowdy beer drinking downstairs. Exactly. You know, a lot of taverns at the time

had three or four rooms above the tavern. People who were traveling, people who were too intoxicated to go home. You could just rent a room up there, but they literally stayed in a tavern. And it was often not an appropriate place for women to stay. So a man traveling alone or whatever would stay at a tavern and they did. So yes, before Abigail joined John at the white house, before the white house was ready, like while they were making that transition, John stayed in a tavern. Wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. Okay. My, my last question about her, although I have many, her relationship to

slavery, obviously we can look back and say, wow, she was very much against this. Did she have any sway in what the nation was doing at the time? Well, she certainly had sway in terms of encouraging John to continue to vocally oppose it and to try to encourage him to not compromise his beliefs on that matter. So of course there are compromises in the constitution in relationship to slavery, but again, the Adamses were not in the country when the constitution was being written. And so it's unclear to what extent they were able to impact what was written in the actual constitution. But she was certainly very vocal in her church community and in her social circles about slavery. That said, she had relationships, friendships with people like Thomas Jefferson who openly owned slaves. And so it is one of

those things that's kind of like, how do we reconcile somebody who's doing something that you find morally reprehensible and wanting to maintain a relationship with them? Yeah. That is a question we still struggle with as humans today. We do. Yeah. We struggle with that tension of what does it mean to be present in community and advocate for a better world? It's tough. I love that though, that she was like, maybe these Virginians aren't as much a lover of liberty as they would make themselves out to be. Man, she would wear that sass crown proud if she was around today. I'll tell you what, I wish she was.

Thank you for telling me her story. That's amazing. Wow. Okay, tell everybody how to find you and how to buy your sprouted walnuts. Oh, thank you. Yeah, we are on Instagram at Tenderly Rooted. And we're also online, www.tenderlyrooted.com. It's all one word, Tenderly Rooted. And we're really excited right now because, of course, we're heading into harvest.

But we're also heading into holidays. So we've got these amazing holiday exclusive infusions coming out November 1st, coming in a gift box. And they are incredible flavors. Yeah, we've got gingerbread and holiday spice and coffee liqueur. And all of them we're doing ourselves. We're doing our own cinnamon extracts, vanilla extracts, and then we're mixing it.

Oh my goodness, Sharon, these flavors are so good. So we're really excited to share that with the world. You can find us online. And then November 1st, the gift box comes and limited supplies, of course, because we're doing it all by hand, handcrafting them just for you guys. But we're very excited. What a great idea to put those out on like a holiday cheese board. Yes. You know what I mean? Where you need like a goat cheese, and then you have need like the sweetness of like a cinnamon walnut. That sounds very delicious. sweetness of like a cinnamon walnut. That sounds very delicious. Yes. Yeah. Right. I enjoy eating in case that was unclear. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I

am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.