Abigail Adams was smart about money, as she was about many things. The first Second Lady/second First Lady combined Yankee thrift with shrewd, even ballsy, investing, often over her husband’s objections. She speculated on land in Vermont, hiding her identity behind straw men. She bought heavily discounted government bonds—as risky as junk bonds today—earning a tidy profit when Alexander Hamilton, whom she later compared to the devil, paid the bonds at face value.

But as materially savvy as she was, she was never really dazzled by the flashy life. Living in Paris, she admired the fashions but admitted she “would never be in the mode.” When her husband lost a disappointing election to his old friend-turned-rival Thomas Jefferson, she wrote, “Neither my habits, or My Education or inclinations, have led Me to an expensive stile of living; So… I have little to mourn over. If I did not rise with dignity, I can at least fall with ease.”

She seems to have had her head screwed on right, to have been fundamentally decent. She was devoted to her family, taking in grandchildren and nieces when their fathers struggled with alcohol.[1] She buried the hatchet with both Jefferson and her old friend Mercy Warren in later life. Before she died, although married women’s property legally belonged to their husbands, she wrote a will, which John honored, leaving all her money to female relatives and servants. And her faux pearls sit alongside Jacqueline Kennedy’s and Barbara Bush’s in the Smithsonian.

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Links:

• Abigail Adams, Bond Speculator - Woody Holton, The William and Mary Quarterly, October 2007

  
  

• Audio: Barbara Bush is amusing about her pearls (skip to 10:40) - interview with Terry Gross, NPR Fresh Air, April 18, 2018: "You know how much real pearls this size would cost?"

  
  

• Abigail Adams' faux pearl necklace - Smithsonian collection

  
  

• Jewelry of the First Ladies - Smithsonian National Museum of American History

  
  

• Remember the Ladies – Women and the American Story, The New York Historical Museum

  
  

• Hair Jewelry Celebrating a Presidential Friendship – Cassandra Good, Mental Floss, July 22, 2016

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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[1] Abigail brought the children of her brother William Smith and her son Charles to live with her because the children's fathers both struggled with alcoholism. Charles died shortly after his daughter Susanna, who was 4 years old, came to live in the President’s House in 1800.