In this environment, you could tell me a lot about abigail that i still dont know. But why, as caroline also said, why is it abigail is the one name we all know . It really is because of her man, because she married john adams. Being here today, i feel sort of like ive come home because ive come to john and abigails home and also home that all Three Sisters spent a lot of time in. The other two sisters that i think i know less about, i argue in my book, even though they did president s, they are equally important in the important and remarkable women. First there is the oldest sister, mary cranch. She was the uncrowned queen of the family because in the puritan family, hierarchy that is very important and she was born first, so she was the first born. She was very important. Especially after her brother was disinherited by their father, she was really the one who inherited the first sons role because there was no brother. When she grew up, she proved herself to be a wonderful administrator. Even though she was a woman in couldnt be elected to any position, she was the de facto mayor of quincy and her husband would be appointed to positions, but really everyone would know , mary would take care of everything. And then there is Elizabeth Shaw peabody, the youngest sister. She always thought neither of her sisters gave her enough attention and was constantly clamoring, listen to me, listen to me. She was also the most literate and the best educated of the three of them. She had the ambition when she was young to grow up to become a published writer. A published letter writer was the golden age of letter writing. She wanted her letters to be and i will let you read the book to find out whether that actually happened. But she did become, with her husband, the founder of the second coeducational school in america. So that itself is pretty impressive. The working title for my book is threefold cord. Interwovennesse of their bond. A threefold cord is a reference to ecclesiastes and it speaks to of course, it is wound over three times and it is hard to co that isd a wound over three times. Rd the system refers to the d throughout their lives. Abigail wrote, never was there a stronger connection, affection, then that which binds in a mama and herd a sisters. As i was writing this book i wanted sisterhood to resonate. I wanted the reader to know that while im speaking very specifically about three biological sisters, living 250 years ago. What is true for them can also be true for women today who are not biologically related, who are perhaps best friends. So i thought before i went into more detail i said a little bit about how i came to write this book in the first place. Book aboutfinished a the great feminist mary wollstonecraft. I have loved living in the late 18th century. I loved all the drama. I even loved the guillotine, the revolution, particularly a loved the ideas. I loved that the character i was writing about loved these people. I thought i would follow the same men and women through the same time period. I am a francophile, so i thought if i can think of a french person, i could do paris or the french revolution all over again. But i had trouble thinking of a french person that would fit into that category. Someone said to me, what do you have against americans . I dont have anything against americans. I love americans. I am one. About a week later i was in the shower and all of a sudden, this is true, i remembered a book that i had reviewed for the Village Voice 15 years earlier,. Led the adams women and which i believe is in the library affair. Mostly it was about Abigail Adams and her daughterinlaw, louisa, married to john quincy. But there is some very tantalizing sections that were about abigails sisters. As i was standing there in the shower with soap coming down my back, i all of a sudden had this image flashed before me of one of the last lines in the epilogue and they said some day and it said some day, somebody would write a biography of the Three Sisters from weymouth. And i thought, that is me. There was ae aha, lot of work to be done. Moment is always so great, and afterwards, the grown no, do i have the the material to write this book . So i knew that i had the wonderful Massachusetts Historical Society. I knew that i had this wonderful adams site, and i knew they would have a lot about abigail. But what about mary, elizabeth . Where there letters from them . What did abigail say to them . What did they say to abigail and what did they say to each other . So it first i heard there is a nice collection of Elizabeth Shaw peabodys younger sister correspondence at the library of congress. I went down to the library of congress and i was delighted. Because there i found letters from the time when she was a teenager and she was writing her cousin isaac who was off at harvard. He would give her suggestions about books to read and she would write him back for opinions of the book and she was very contrary. No matter what he said, she said the opposite. So i thought, this is great. I have this really feisty character that i can deal with. Also, it was particularly funny because you can see how a isaac was sort of baiting her. At one point he writes here about madame d. You must really love this collection because you are just like her. She didnt think much of mary jay neither do you. Well, not only was elizabeth thinking of marriage, she was thinking of marriage to isaac. She was really very strong in her reply to that. So i had elizabeth and i had also elizabeth when she grew older and there are tragedies in her life and i will leave you to read the book to find them out. But there was mary cranch. I thought, what do we have on mary . She was the eldest, and i know that abigail looks up to her, but what else is there about her and did she have any ideas . I went to the Albany Institute of history and art and there is a wonderful collection there. Among the letters they had was a letter where she says to abigail, dont you think its silly that men think that we dont have the same intellect that they have . Today, like remember the ladies, that may seem very obvious to us. But at the time, it was anything but obvious. In fact, everyone presumed, in europe as well, but particularly in the colonies, that a woman things, an o intellect and a uterus. Used her mind, no wonder she couldnt have children. If she bore children, then no wonder she was so silly and could only think about shopping and things like that because she had used her one ability. So what mary said in gendered it meant a lot to me. I realized i was to learn a lot more as well as abigail and elizabeth on the powers of women in the rights of women like mary wollstonecraft. The intellectual capacity of women they all had the feeling , that there was a strong intellectual capacity of women. All of them also tutored their daughters in the same way that they tutored their sons. So i had a lot of Research Material i saw and i was going to have to pick and choose because the Massachusetts Historical Society as well as the two other libraries have so much information that i was really going to have to decide what to write about. But i hope i did manage to do that. After i came out with these three characters than i thought ok, i have enough Research Material, then i had the problem of how its going to to structure the book. Ive written two other biographies, with one character, and it was quite easy. The structure, that is. Not the writing of the biography, never easy. But the structure was, because i went from one persons point of view. Now all of a sudden i have three people so i had to see the world through three different perspectives. So i thought i would read you a little bit for the first chapter of my book to give you an idea both of how i approach the sisters and also who the sisters were. It wouldve been obvious to anyone who met them that abigail, mary and betsy were sisters. Though though mary was darker and collar and betsy was the slimmest, all were small and slender with oval faces, narrow decisive mouths, smooth as this, smooth hair and clear skin. They shared their mothers selfconfidence and passion for doing good. When she was very young, abigail had been paralyzed for two weeks with pneumatic fever. Her childhood had been far more treacherous than marys. It would have been to risk death to have a child. She was so weak after one childhood illness that her mother ordered her not to read, write, work, or even think. Was due to the ill humours. Mary, with her pleasing ways it seemed most like her mother. There was no one to point us to our studies, she reminded abigail when they were out of the parsonage. Our parents felt the necessity of keeping us away from frivolity and left to rest in nature. On the outside at least mary was , whileul firstborn abigail was openly rebellious and wild. She could make a very bad or very good woman a family friend , told her. Obviously, suspecting the first. In her teens, abigail committed the sacrilege of proposing her mothers authority. She was now that her mother denied her most innocent requests. Abigail was often sent away for long visits to her grandmothers house. She sometimes thought she loved her more than her own mother because grandmother quincy did not invidiously compare her to mary. And then there was betsy, just as highspirited as abigail and even less free to express yourself. She could not run off to her grandmothers because she was the youngest. Her brother billy, she always had duties to perform at home. She grasped every free moment to read. Not just enthusiastically, not taste with a cultivated that would have ranged wider, she was sure, if one duty or another wasnt always calling her from her fathers books. So that is my approach to the Three Sisters. This gives you a little taste. I hope you have a little feeling about who they are. These are my main characters, myey are not my home only characters. And as i started writing the book i realize there are two other very important characters in this book. And one of them is the one i was most determined to keep out of the book, john adams. I felt so much has been said, most wonderful books about john adams, who needs me to add anything . What i realized was, i needed me and i needed him because so many , of the great events that happened not only in abigails , life, but in the lives of the other two sisters, revolve around what john adams was doing. So i thought, ok, im going to take him on and i hope he hasnt overwhelmed the book. I dont think he has but i feel like hes a very important part of it. I also hope i have added something fresh to what we already know about john adams because we know what a wonderful husband he was, how devoted he was to his children, but i hope that im giving you a feeling for what he was like as a brotherinlaw, particularly to marys husband, richard, who was theichard cranch, who was very, very close friend of his. He knew Richard Cranch before he knew abigail. And also as an uncle. And john adams was frequently known as someone who would not do favors. His best friends would say, can you give me some kind of little job in government, no. Even his soninlaw, he says im not going to help them until the very end. However, for some reason he felt so warmly towards his nephews that when one of them, this one was the one mary said he has so many oddities he will never be able to do anything in public life, he might as well stay home and read, but john adams said no, hes my nephew, and he got him a job as his secretary. Probably the only job he could have gotten. But he performed so well in that job and went on to have a fruitful life. And the other nephew he did a was mary cranchs son, william, one of the midnight judges appointed by adams. Wasso john adams is one charac. My book begins in 1755 when britain imposes the first of its punishing acts on the colonies, the stamp act. And it ends 35 years later when adams loses his bid for second term as president of the United States to thomas jefferson. And abigail goes home to her sisters at last. Character fifth because they are important to all the sisters. Of course, abigail who was frequently in the limelight with john, but really no less during the revolution certainly, to marry elizabeth. They were equally excited, terrified, by the battle of boston. And they were equally astonished and overjoyed when the french navy arrived at the last minute at yorktown and america had won the revolution at last. So these times are very important to the book. They are the times that they lived through. And also what was important for me was that they lived through the times through the ideas of the times. And because of what was happening, because in america we were getting an opportunity to start a nation anew, they had opinions on what it was like to start a live under a monarch, and they had ideas on what the ideal nationstate should be. And i still found that there were two very large impacts on their vision, on all of their visions. And one was the enlightenment. They had all read the books of the might meant enlightenment. All readeady rou ousseau, and they felt strongly about equality between the races. Abigail at one point said to john, i really do not understand how someone in virginia can have the same passion we have for revolution for the rights of man and women, because they keep slaves. So they had very strong ideas about equality. They were. R hand, tens. And for puritans, the most important thing in the world was order. Order of government was particularly necessary. And in order for there to be order, they believed there had to be hierarchy. So that was why the oldest child was the most important. And that was why one man had to bow to another man, and one family had a better pew in church than another. So these two were competing with each other in their views of what the ideal nationstate should be. I have my characters now, and i wanted to be an equal opportunity biographer. I wanted to give each of them equal space, and if anything, push abigail a little to the side and say, ok, youve already had your turn. Lets hear about the others. And what i wanted to do was in each chapter i wanted to divide it into three. And do onethird on abigail, onethird on elizabeth, onethird on mary. I tried that for about four chapters and it was a fiasco. I said, there is no way. We are getting no narrative out of this. This is not working. So what i decided to do was to let the story pull me along. And in one chapter youll find its abigail and shes going off to paris and shes going off to london, and im trusting that everyone will realize, particularly because of the letters she wrote home to her sisters, that they were also embroiled in this, and they were. When abigail would write a letter it was no shes going to write it for the whole neighborhood. And mary had a great pleasure of having everyone important in the neighborhood come over and she would read aloud abigails letter. So i let abigail go off when she did, and then the other chapters, chapters when mary is trying to find a minister for the first church, First Congregationalist Church of quincy. And shes the most important person. In fact, even john adams thinks, shes the most important person in quincy. One day abigail catches him opening a letter that mary has written to her. And she is furious. She says, how can you opened a open a letter . Its not just any letter. It is a letter from mary, and there is nobody who knows more than mary that im interested in. So they were involved in that. And then there is elizabeth. She is the sister who endears it the most. Shes the prettiest in the beginning, and i probably said the most beautiful. There is a wonderful picture in the book. She was always a magnificent looking woman. And she was very much in love when she got married, and then things happened. Spend quite a bit of time with her as well. So i turned out not to be an equal opportunity biographer, but id like to read you a little bit about, and i sort of share abigails view, a little bit about how abigail felt on equality. And this is in a chapter that is right after john adams has been elected Vice President and abigail has left mary behind in quincy and gone off to new york. Two weeks later mary explicitly that knowledge the wide gap between her in life and her her own life and her sisters. You are in the midst of a busy work. John was always telling abigail that he was dying so she would come join him and not do what she was doing at home. But he was fine and she had been swept up in a social whirl. The contrast of their lives did not escape abigail. She put together a general statement to the people she loved. Request of allto my near and dear friends. It is a desire to watch over my conduct. If at any time they perceive any alteration in me with respect to them, arising as they may suppose for my situation in life, i beg they will have the utmost freedom acquaints me with it. I do not feel within myself the least disposition of the kind, but mankind is prone to deceive themselves, she added. But the private views to marry no stroke of luck could separate sisters. Their souls were intertwined from birth. So abigail found it perfectly natural to circumvent johns approval and using her daughter as a gobetween, sent to marry all her pocket money she could spare from her own relatively small budget. She did not have a large budget. Anticipating her sisters anguish, she reminded her not to talk about obligations. Ask yourself if you would not do as much for me or elizabeth, she might have added. Her view was not a democratic process. Nor did she think much of the quality on earth. Hierarchy guaranteed order in which is crucial to the survival of mankind. But family ran on a loftier system of government. She and her sisters differed only in birth order, where mary reigned supreme. Otherwise they always have been and always would be equal, harbingers of the more Perfect World to be. So id like to hear any questions you may have for me. Yes. I made it i thought clear, this character was the times. You mentioned a school. Ms. Jacobs the academy was in atkinson, new hampshire. I think the first was exeter and this was the second. And really what was so interesting about it was that first of all, the sisters had sent their children to elizabeths first husband, and then their children sent their children to her second husbands school. But they didnt, they would write each other and say this isnt because of either of the husbands. This is because our sister is so literate and she instilled a love of reading in them. So it was a boarding school. And it turned out to be very nice. Grandchildren, great grandchildren went to be educated there. How did you get such insight into their personalities . Ms. Jacobs there were millions of letter