“Her price was indeed above rubies,” is how John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president, mourned his mother, Abigail (1744–1818) in his diary upon her death. His reference to the description of the “Woman of Valor” in Proverbs 31:10 was apt. After all, Abigail’s life had been steeped in Scripture.

The future second First Lady was born on November 22, 1744, to the minister of the North Parish Congregational Church in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Sickly for much of her childhood, Abigail never received a formal education. But her mother Elizabeth taught her and her sisters to read and write, and Abigail developed a particular affinity for the Bible. Throughout her adult life, amidst the stirrings of what would become the American Revolution, as well as her husband’s political career and her education of their children and grandchildren, the Good Book served as a beacon of hope, comfort, insight, and uplift.

Familiar with All of Scripture

Though Abigail was a Christian and cited the New Testament throughout her copious letters to friends and family, the Hebrew Bible was a well into which her pen often dipped. As her husband, John, deliberated with delegates of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September 1774, Abigail sent him a letter of support citing an ancient Jewish prophet as well as the Psalmist:

You have before you . . . the greatest national concerns that ever came before any people; and if the prayers and petitions ascend unto heaven which are daily offered for you, wisdom will flow down as a stream, and righteousness as the mighty waters [Amos 5:24], and your deliberations will make glad the cities of our God [Psalm 46:4].

The Psalms were a source of reassurance again as tensions were rising in early 1775, just two months before war broke out in Lexington and Concord.