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The women behind the Declaration of Independence
A devoted band of women who shared the outlawry of their husbands and brought
upon themselves by declaring their independence of British rule---
....bitter persecution from British and Tories----
Mary Bartlett forced to fly with her family from her burning home----
Elizabeth Adams compelled to resort to needle-work to support her
family----
Elizabeth Lewis, imprisoned for months, suffered privations and hardships
that led to her death----
Mary Morris (N.Y.) driven from a beautiful home, wantonly devastated----
Annis Stockton, a homeless refugee after the British looted and burned
her home----
Deborah Hart, driven from her home, saw her husband hunted for months as
a criminal and came to her own death from exposure and anxiety.
History has been generous in its
recognition of the patriotism of the men who, on that hot July day in
Philadelphia in 1776, pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honor to uphold and support the Declaration of Independence of all foreign rule.
Through that act, these men "put their necks in the halter as traitors" to the
British Government, and from John Hancock to George Walton had no other prospect
but ignominious death should the struggle for independence prove unsuccessful.
From the day that Declaration was published, these men were proscribed outlaws.
Their names were read in every British camp and every British soldier and Tory
adherent were taught that they were beyond the pale of consideration as mere
military enemies and that they and their families were to be persecuted as
dangerous criminals. As opportunity gave, this policy of persecution was duly
carried out, and any signer who fell into the hands of the enemy was treated
with marked cruelty. A price was set on the heads of John Hancock and Samuel
Adams.......
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The above was taken from the book Wives of the Signers, by Wallbuilder
Press, PO Box 397, Aledo, Texas, 76008-0397, phone: (817) 441-6044. ISBN:
0-925279-60-9.
TJRG recommends this book very highly, if for no other reason than the
language, which, as it carries forth in the letters of the wives of the
Revolutionaries, provides the reader with significant insights into the culture
and character predominant in the 1700s. But the book, as well as the letters
contained within it, also gives an undebatable view backward in time to the
living reality of the Revolution as men and women of conscience defied,
resisted, and finally, with guns, overthrew the government of their day.
It is hoped that by including a selection from the book here the reader will
become inspired to purchase this book and avail himself of this source of
truthful history about the outlaws who gave to the world the American
Revolution. Below is the chapter of the book which gives the accounting of the
second wife of Samuel Adams, Elizabeth Wells Adams.
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Far removed from the brilliant social circle of which Dorothy Hancock was
the bright particular star, and inferior intellectually to
Abigail Adams, (wife of John Adams), Elizabeth Wells, second wife of Samuel
Adams, was yet a woman of most excellent qualities and well worthy of being the
helpmeet of that patriot and statesman during the most trying period of his
life.
Samuel Adams' characterization of Benjamin Franklin as being "a great
philosopher but a poor politician" might be paraphrased as applied to himself as
being "a great politician but a very improvident family man." His whole life was
practically given up to public affairs, while private interests, business, and
family matters were neglected in a way that would have driven a woman less loyal
and even-tempered than Elizabeth Adams to bitter complaint, if not open
rebellion. Yet always we find her cheerful and sympathetic; always a faithful
and loving wife to Samuel Adams and a tender mother to his motherless children.
(His first wife, Elizabeth Checkley Adams, had died prior to his marriage to
Elizabeth Wells.) His business might be going to ruin through neglect while he
talked politics with his neighbors on the street corners, his leaky roof go
unshingled while he made patriots of the workmen of the sail-lofts and shipyards
of Boston, but not one word of complaint or fault-finding do we hear from his
family.
Politics came as natural to Samuel Adams as the air he breathed--not the petty
politics that plots and plans for place or patronage, but the great politics
that is the practical side of statesmanship; the politics that began by teaching
a crude and simple-minded people their inherent rights as freeborn men and
women, and building up a spirit of opposition to any encroachments upon those
rights, whether foreign or domestic; the politics that finally wrenched a
handful of straggling Colonies from a great and powerful monarchy and welded
them together into a compact and harmonious republic. Such was the politics of
Samuel Adams, and the very thesis that won for him from Harvard College, in
1743, his Master of Arts degree, "Whether it
be lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot be
otherwise be preserved," shows, not only the bent of his mind, but also, that
however much other leaders of revolutionary sentiment may have looked forward to
reconciliation with the mother country, on a basis of justice to the Colonies,
Samuel Adams, almost from the first, saw nothing ahead but independence.
Samuel Adams was forty-two years old when he married Elizabeth Wells, fifth
daughter of his intimate friend, Francis Wells, an English merchant who came to
Boston with his family in 1723. She was twenty-nine years old at the time of the
marriage. He was not a successful man according to the standard of his thrifty
neighbors, though looked upon as one of strict integrity and blameless morality.
He could not make money and, what was more to his discredit in their eyes, he
seemed to have no desire to accumulate property. His father had left him a
fairly profitable malting business, a comfortable house on Purchase Street, and
one thousand pounds in money. Half the money he had loaned to a friend who never
repaid him. The malt business was neglected and mismanaged so that it did not
pay expenses. But always and ever, "Sam" Adams, as he was generally known, was
talking politics, writing for the newspapers, debating some measure before the
town meeting, or framing up some act for the Assembly calculated to strengthen
the rights of the people or to awaken opposition to British encroachment.
Boston at that time was a city of about 18,000 inhabitants and noted already as
a "reading town". Education was general. Nearly every person read some one of
the five newspapers that were published there and they carried columns of
announcements from the booksellers. Of news and impersonal articles, such as go
to make up the newspapers of our day, there was little. But letters from the
people championing various lines of thought, letters that argued, letters that
pleaded, letters of vehement invective and insinuating sophistry, letters signed
by the writers and letters signed by *nom-de-plume*, filled the columns of the
papers and exercised a vast influence on public opinion.
Samuel Adams was an indefatigable writer for the newspapers, appearing under
many pen names, but always in advocacy of some measure that he was preparing to
have the town meeting endorse of the Assembly put through. A Tory writer of the
day is quoted as saying, "The town meeting of Boston is the hotbed of sedition.
It is there that all their dangerous insurrections are engendered; it is there
that the flame of discord and rebellion is lighted up and disseminated over the
Province."
"In the year 1764," says Hosmer, his biographer, "Samuel Adams had reached the
age of forty-two. Even now his hair was becoming grey, and a peculiar
tremulousness of the head and hands made it seem as if he were already on the
threshold of old age. His constitution, nevertheless, was remarkably sound. His
frame of about medium stature was muscular and well knit. His eyes were a clear
steel grey, his nose prominent, the lower part of his face capable of great
sternness, but in ordinary intercourse wearing a genial expression. Life had
brought him much of hardship. In 1757 his wife had died....Misfortune had
followed him in business. The malt house had been an utter failure; his
patrimony had vanished little by little, so that beyond the mansion of Purchase
Street, with its pleasant harbour view, little else remained. His house was
becoming rusty through want of means to keep it in repair. On the sixth day of
December of this year he married for his second wife Elizabeth Wells, a woman of
efficiency and cheerful fortitude, who, through the forty years of hard and
hazardous life that remained to him, walked sturdily at his side. It required
indeed no common virtue to do this, for while Samuel Adams superintended the
birth of the child "Independence", he was quite careless how the table at home
was spread, and as to the condition of his own children's clothes and shoes.
More than once the family would become objects of charity if the hands of his
wife had not been ready and skillful."
In the present day Samuel Adams would have been called a political "boss".
Boston was as absolutely ruled by its "town meeting" as any city of today is
governed by its mayor and council, and "Town-meeting Sam" Adams was absolute in
his direction and control of the town meeting. It was he who outlined policies,
made up slates, and saw that they were put through. Always he held some minor
office, generally one without a salary attached and entirely out of keeping with
his services and the power he exercised. For "Sam" Adams as a boss had his
limitations which would have been laughed at by the political bosses of later
days.
He remained as poor as ever. No shadow of corruption ever fell across his path.
No political job ever left the taint of graft on his hands. He was a collector
of taxes for years. Times were hard, money woefully scarce, and the collections
became sadly in arrears. Adams' enemies raised the cry of defalcation. Then it
came out that Sam Adams had refused to sell out the last cow or pig or the last
sack of potatoes or corn meal or the scant furniture of a poor man to secure his
taxes. He had told his superiors in authority that the town did not need the
taxes as badly as most of these poor people needed their little belongings and
that he would rather lose his office than force such collections. It was, of
course, a poor showing for an official, but it put Sam Adams and the plain
people of Boston so closely together that they were ready, ever after, to elect
him to any office that he would accept.
Writing of Adams in 1769, Hosmer says: "For years now, Samuel Adams had laid
aside all pretence of private business and was devoted simply and solely to
public affairs. The house on Purchase Street still afforded the family a home.
His sole source of income was the small salary (one hundred pounds) he received
as clerk of the Assembly. His wife, like himself, was contented with poverty;
through good management, in spite of their narrow means, a comfortable home life
was maintained in which the children grew up happy and in every way well trained
and cared for. John Adams tells of a drive taken by these two kinsmen on a
beautiful June day, not far from this time, in the neighourhood of Boston. Then
as from the first and ever after
there was an affectionate intimacy between them. They often called one another
brother, though the relationship was only that of second cousin. 'My brother,
Samuel Adams, says he never looked forward in his life; never planned, laid a
scheme or formed a design of laying up anything for himself or others after
him.' The case of Samuel Adams is almost without a parallel as an instance of
enthusiastic, unswerving devotion to public service throughout a long life."
It is not our purpose in these pages to give, even in outline, a history of the
great work that Samuel Adams did for the cause of American independence. But in
order to gain insight into the character of Elizabeth Adams and show what the
wife had to contend with, the utter devotion of her husband to the public
business and his singular unselfishness, so far as that business was concerned,
must be dwelt upon. It is easy enough at this time to see the great stakes for
which Samuel Adams was playing; to understand his carefully laid plans and to
sympathize with his disinterested patriotism. But we must remember that
Elizabeth Adams, doing needlework and kitchen gardening to eke out the scant
allowance which had to furnish a livelihood for herself and family, was looking
at the fabric from the wrong side. What is to us a strong, harmonious, and
beautiful pattern, must have
been to her a motley collection of ragged ends, thrown together without rhyme or
reason--something dull, distorted, and indescribably ugly. Yet we hear no
complaining--no chidings because of his thriftless waste of time and talent
working for other people without compensation and neglecting his own affairs and
family. Always she and his children seemed to think that whatever he thought or
whatever he did must be right.
During the summer of 1774, Samuel Adams was a busy man. He was making
preparations to attend the Congress that was to be held in Philadelphia, and was
at the head of several committees devoted to the relief of Boston. Owing to the
closing of the port, the city was in sadly straitened circumstances. Donations
were coming from far and near and were distributed by one of the committees of
which Adams was chairman. Another of his committees laid out public works,
opening streets and wharves and furnishing work for many citizens. Hosmer,
writing of Samuel Adams at this time, says:
"He still occupied the house in Purchase Street, the estate connected with which
had, as time went forward, through the carelessness of its preoccupied owner,
become narrowed to a scanty tract.... Shortly before this time he had been able,
probably with the help of friends, to put his home in good order, and managed to
be hospitable. For apparently, life went forward in his home, if frugally, not
parsimoniously, his admirable wife making it possible for him, from his small
income as clerk of the House, to maintain a decent housekeeping. His son, now
twenty-two years old, a young man for whom much could be hoped, was studying
medicine with Dr. Warren, after a course at Harvard. His daughter (Hannah Adams)
was a promising girl of seventeen. With the young people and their intimates the
father was cordial and genial. He had an ear for music and a pleasant voice in
singing, a practice which he much enjoyed. The house was strictly religious;
grace was said at each meal, and the Bible is still preserved from which some
member read aloud each night. Old Surry, a slave woman given to Mrs. Adams in
1765, and who was freed upon coming into her possession, lived in the family
nearly fifty years, showing devoted attachment. When slavery was abolished in
Massachusetts, papers of manumission were made out for her in due form; but
these she threw into the fire in anger, saying she had lived too long to be
trifled with. The servant boy whom Samuel Adams carefully and kindly reared,
became afterwards a mechanic of character and worked efficiently in his former
master's behalf when at length,
in his old age, Adams was proposed for Governor. Nor must Queue be forgotten,
the big intelligent Newfoundland dog who appreciated perfectly what was his due
as the dog of Sam Adams. He had a vast antipathy to the British uniform. He was
cut and shot in several places by soldiers in retaliation for his own sharp
attacks, for the patriotic Queue anticipated the 'embattled farmers' of Concord
Bridge in inaugurating hostilities, and bore to his grave honourable scars from
his fierce encounters.
"Until his fifty-third year, Samuel Adams had never left his native town except
for places a few miles distant. The expenses of the journey and the sojourn in
Philadelphia were arranged for by the legislative appropriation. But the
critical society of a prosperous town and the picked men of the Thirteen
Colonies were to be encountered. A certain sumptuousness in living and apparel
would be not only fitting but necessary in the deputies, that the great Province
which they represented might suffer no dishonour. Samuel Adams himself probably
would have been quite satisfied to appear in the old red coat of 1770 in which
he had been painted by Copley and which his wife's careful darning doubtless
still held together; but his townsmen arranged it differently."
How this arrangement was brought about is told in a private letter written
August 11, 1774.
"The ultimate wish and desire of the high government party is to get Sam Adams
out of the way, when they think they may accomplish everyone of their plans; but
however some may despise him, he has certainly very many friends. For, not long
since, some persons (their names unknown) sent and asked his permission to build
him a new barn, the old one being decayed, which was executed in a few days. A
second sent to ask leave to repair his house, which was thoroughly effected
soon. A third sent to beg the favour of him to call at a tailor's shop and be
measured for a suit of clothes and chose his cloth, which was finished and sent
home for his acceptance. A fourth presented him with a new wig, a fifth with a
new hat, a sixth with six pairs of the best silk hose, a seventh with six pairs
of fine thread ditto, an eighth with six pairs of shoes, and a ninth modestly
inquired of him whether his finances were not rather low than otherwise. He
replied it was true that was the case but he was very indifferent about these
matters, so that his poor abilities were of any service to the public; upon
which the gentleman obliged him to accept of a purse containing about fifteen or
twenty Johannes."
The next glimpse we get of the family relations of Samuel and Elizabeth Adams
was in a letter that has been preserved, which he wrote from Philadelphia, June
28, 1775, nearly a year after his friends had bought him new raiment and filled
his purse in Boston to attend the first Continental Congress. Governor Gage had
just made his proclamation offering pardon "to all persons who shall forthwith
lay down their Arms and return to the Duties of peaceable Subjects, excepting
only from the benefit of such pardon Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose
Offences were of too flagitious a Nature to admit of any other Consideration
than that of condign Punishment." The Battle of Bunker Hill had been fought and
Dr. Joseph Warren had been killed. The letter was as follows:
"My Dearest Betsy, yesterday I received Letters from some of our Friends at the
Camp informing me of the Engagement between the American troops and the Rebel
Army at Charlestown. I cannot but be greatly rejoiced at the tryed Valour of our
Countrymen who by all accounts behaved with an intrepidity becoming those who
fought for their Liberties against the mercenary Soldiers of a Tyrant. It is
painful to me to reflect on the Terror I suppose you were under, on hearing the
Noise of War so near. Favour me, my dear, with an Account of your Apprehensions
at that time, under your own hand. I pray God to cover the heads of our
Countrymen in every day of Battle and ever to protect you from Injury in these
distracted times. The
death of our truly admirable and worthy Friend Dr. Warren is greatly afflicting;
the language of Friendship is, how shall we resign him; but it is our Duty to
submit to the Dispensations of Heaven 'whose ways are ever gracious and just'.
He fell in the glorious Struggle for publick Liberty. Mr. Pitts and Dr. Church
inform me that my dear son has at length escaped from the Prison at
Boston....Remember me to my dear Hannah and sister Polly and to all Friends. Let
me know where good old Surry is. Gage has made me respectable by naming me first
among those who are to receive no favour from him. I thoroughly despise him and
his proclamation.....The Clock is now striking twelve. I therefore wish you good
Night. Yours most affectionately, S. Adams."
Early in August, Samuel Adams and the other delegates from Massachusetts hurried
home. Congress had adjourned from August 1st until September 5th, but when Adams
arrived from Philadelphia, he found the "General Assembly of the Territory of
Massachusetts Bay" in session and himself entitled to sit as one of the eighteen
councilors. The delegation had in charge five hundred thousand dollars for the
use of Washington's army. Samuel Adams was at once elected Secretary of State.
Mrs. Adams, who had been forced to leave Boston, was living with her daughter at
the home of her aged father in Cambridge, and Samuel Adams, Jr., held an
appointment as surgeon in Washington's army. Friends were looking after all of
them. Mr. Adams' visit with his family was a short one, and on September 12th,
he started on his return to Philadelphia, traveling on horseback, on a horse
loaned him by John Adams. An interesting letter is still preserved, written by
Mrs. Adams to her husband during this Congress. It is as follows:
"Cambridge, Feb. 12, 1776.
My Dear--I received your affectionate Letter by Fesenton and I thank you for
your kind Concern for my Health and Safty. I beg you Would not give yourself any
pain on our being so Near the Camp; the place I am in is so Situated, that if
the Regulars should ever take Prospect Hill, which God forbid, I should be able
to make an Escape, as I am Within a few stone casts of a Back Road, Which Leads
to the Most Retired part of Newtown..... I beg you to Excuse the very poor
Writing as My paper is Bad and my pen made with Scissars. I should be glad (My
dear), if you shouldn't come down soon, you would Write me Word Who to apply to
for some Monney, for I am low in Cash and Every thing is very dear. May I
subscribe myself yours, Eliza Adams."
The closing years of Mrs. Adams' life brought more of peace and comfort than had
been her portion during the Revolutinon or the years leading up to it from her
marriage in 1764. After the British evacuated Boston she and her family returned
to the city to live. Sometimes they were "low in cash", as she naively put it,
but with her fine sewing and Hannah's "exquisite embroidery", they managed to
live in comfort. Samuel Adams retired from Congress in 1781, but was constantly
in office in Massachusetts, the salary of which, while he did not much consider
it, must have been of great help to her. During Hancock's incumbency of the
gubernatorial chair Adams was Lieutenant-Governor, and upon the death of Hancock
in 1793, Adams succeeded him as the chief executive of the State and was
re-elected Governor in 1795 and '96, declining re-election because of failing
health.
The death of Dr. Samuel Adams (Jr.) In 1788, was a great blow to the father,
which was somewhat ameliorated by his satisfaction at the happy marriage of his
daughter Hannah, who had become the wife of Captain Thomas Wells, a younger
brother of Mrs. Adams, her stepmother. They lived in a comfortable home on
Winter Street. The last days of the aged pair were made comfortable by his son
who, dying, left claims against the government which yielded about six thousand
dollars. This sum fortunately invested sufficed for the simple wants of the old
patriot and his wife. Samuel Adams died in 1803 and his wife followed him five
years later.
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