Louisa Adams

Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, born Louisa Catherine Johnson (February 12 1775 – May 15 1852), wife of John Quincy Adams, was First Lady of the United States from 1825 to 1829.

She was born in London to an English mother, Catherine Nuth Johnson, but her father was American, Joshua Johnson of Maryland who served as United States consulate general in London after 1790. She had six sisters: Ann, Caroline, Harriet, Catherine, Elizabeth, and Adelaide, and a brother, Thomas. Her parents left Europe in 1797 and went to the US. Her father died in Frederick, MD in 1802 of severe fever and some mental problems. Her mother died in 1811 and is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery. Louisa often was left in charge of the family when her mother went out of town. She became responsible and interested in politics. Louisa Adams is to date the only foreign-born First Lady. She was the daughter-in-law of John Adams, the second president of the U.S., and Abigail Adams, second first lady.

A career diplomat at twenty-seven, accredited to the Netherlands, John Quincy Adams developed his interest in nineteen-year-old Louisa when they met in London in 1794. Three years later they were married in All Hallows-by-the-Tower, and went to Berlin, Prussia, in course of duty. A citizen by birth, she arrived in the United States for the first time in 1801. Then began years divided among the family home in Quincy, Massachusetts, their house in Boston, and a political home in Washington, D.C.

She left her two older sons in Massachusetts for education in 1809 when she took two-year-old Charles Francis Adams to Russia, where Adams served as a Minister. Despite the glamour of the tsar's court, she had to struggle with cold winters, strange customs, limited funds, and poor health; an infant daughter born in 1811 died the next year.

Peace negotiations called Adams to Ghent in 1814 and then to London. To join him, Louisa had to make a forty-day journey across war-ravaged Europe by coach in winter; roving bands of stragglers and highwaymen filled her with "unspeakable terrors" for her son. Happily, the next two years gave her an interlude of family life in the country of her birth.

When John Quincy Adams was appointed James Monroe's U.S. Secretary of State the family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1817 where Louisa's drawing room became a center for the diplomatic corps and other notables. Music enhanced her Tuesday evenings at home, and theater parties contributed to her reputation as an outstanding hostess.

The pleasures of moving into the White House in 1825 were dimmed by the bitter politics of the election, paired with her deep depression. Though she continued her weekly "drawing rooms", she preferred quiet evenings of reading, composing music and verse, and playing her harp. The necessary entertainments were always elegant, however; and her cordial hospitality made the last official reception a gracious occasion although her husband had lost his bid for re-election and partisan feeling still ran high.

In his diary for June 23, 1828, her husband records her "winding silk from several hundred silkworms that she has been rearing", evidently in the White House. Diary (New York: Longmans, Green, 1929) p. 380.

Louisa thought she was retiring to Massachusetts permanently, but in 1831 her husband began seventeen years of service in the United States House of Representatives. The Adamses could look back on a secure happiness as well as many trials when they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary at Quincy in 1847.

Her husband died at the U.S. Capitol in 1848; she died in Washington in 1852, aged 77, and today lies buried at his side, as well as President John Adams and first lady Abigail Adams, in the United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts (also known as the Church of the Presidents).

First Spouse Coin

The First Spouse Program under the Presidential $1 Coin Act authorizes the United States Mint to issue 1/2 ounce $10 gold coins and bronze medal duplicates [U.S. Mint: [http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/firstSpouse/ First Spouse Program] . Accessed 2008-06-27. "The United States Mint also produces and make available to the public bronze medal duplicates of the First Spouse Gold Coins."] to honor the first spouses of the United States. Louisa Adams' coin was released May 29, 2008.

References

*"Original text based on [http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/la6.html White House biography] "

Further reading

*Allgor, Catherine. "Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government." Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.
* [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/NAGADX.html Nagel, Paul. "The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters." Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.]
*Joan R. Challinor, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams: The Price of Ambition (Ph.D. dissertation, American University, 1982), 178 pages. [In his book 'Henry Adams and the Making of America' (New York Times, September 11, 2005), Garry Wills says, "Joan Challinor...has written the most complete account of Louisa's life..." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/books/chapters/0911-1st-wills.html?pagewanted=print]