2 Stephen Peabody, Jacobs tells us, “transformed her vision of married love.”
But the ambitious Braintree lawyer and the 19-year-old he called “Miss Adorable” would be a matched set for 54 years.ĭespite Abigail’s warning, Betsy wed Congregationalist minister John Shaw, who turned boozy and abusive, dying of liver disease at 47. John Adams at first thought the witty Smith sisters “not fond, not frank, not candid,” and his country manners appalled Abigail’s mother.
Mary wed brilliant but impractical Richard Cranch, 15 years her senior, and moved to Salem. And because they were such lively prose stylists – Adams said Betsy had an “elegant pen” - they climb down from their Gilbert Stuart portraits and remind us of our own sisters and daughters.Īll married as teens and moved away from the parsonage of their father, a liberal Congregationalist pastor and farmer, in Weymouth, Mass., a village that, Betsy quipped, was distinguished for its “inactivity.” The sisters couldn’t hold office, vote or control property, but that didn’t keep them from voicing strong opinions. Just as Abigail is such a big presence, it’s a surprise to see her slightly larger than life-size bronze statue, wearing a bonnet and standing arms folded in the Boston Women’s Memorial. This is eyewitness reporting, and it’s almost a shock to look up from this world of horse-drawn carriages and whale oil lamps to see streetlights and cars. Their romances, money worries, illnesses and grief play out against the colonists’ struggle for independence at the Boston Massacre, Battle of Bunker Hill and burning of Charleston. But if not formally educated, the Smith sisters were well-read, taught by their mother and English tutor Richard Cranch, who introduced them to philosophy, Shakespeare, Milton and Pope.Īll were small and slender with oval faces and bright dark eyes.
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