Martha Washington, at age 70, just before she died in 1802, ordered her staff at Mount Vernon plantation to burn all of her personal correspondence, notes and letters with late husband George Washington.
The files of cherished letters would have offered so much insight into the couple’s personal and professional life, as well as a fascinating first-hand account of the first U.S. president and first lady of our newly freed country from Britain’s tyranny and taxing.
George, age 67, had died just three years prior at their Mount Vernon home.
In contrast, the couple who were the vice president and second lady for George and Martha Washington, the remarkable John and Abigail Adams, took just the opposite approach. They allowed history to know their private thoughts and opinions as captured in their own words through a vast amount of correspondence, amounting to more than 1,200 letters. They were written between the era of their courtship, starting in 1762, through their time as the second president and first lady up until 1801, spanning their few months in the new White House relocated to its current location in Virginia.
“After so many years under the intense public spotlight and scrutiny, Martha wanted to protect the privacy and intimacy of their 41-year marriage, and the burning of letters was a common practice, especially the wealthy, who wanted to keep their private lives out of the public eye,” historian and actress Leslie Goddard explained to me.
“John Adams, who outlived his wife Abigail, wanted to have a legacy to be remembered, and making his correspondence public was a way to assure his fear of being forgotten would never be realized in later history. One of Abigail’s most famous letters to her husband has her asking him to ‘remember the ladies’ when designing the new laws in the interest of fairness and equality.”
During the past year, I’ve enjoyed devoting a number of my columns to themes for this special 250th birthday celebration for our country.
During the past week, I’ve learned so many amazing chapters of early White House history about George and Martha, John and Abigail, as well as third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and his wife Martha, all from Goddard, who smiles when recounting that sometimes Abigail was referred to as “Mrs. President” during her husband’s one term as president.
Goddard was a guest in the studio on my weekly radio show for WJOB 1230 AM in Hammond last Thursday to discuss her return to the Theatre at the Center stage in Munster as script author and star of the true account of Abigail Adams in her new one-woman play “Abigail Adams: First Lady of Firsts” for a week of eight performances.
More than just the wife of President John Adams and the mother of John Quincy Adams, who became secretary of state during his parents’ lifetime and then the nation’s sixth president, Abigail was a remarkable figure in her own right.
The Theatre at the Center stage was transformed into the partially completed main entrance foyer of “The President’s House,” which is the name given during the November 1800 construction of what is today’s White House, a time span when the structure only had one of the three floors finished and only six of the planned 100 rooms completed.
“Much of the script is taken directly from Abigail’s letters, and it reveals how she was so far ahead of her time, such as writing her own will and leaving her wealth to all of the females of her family during a time when all possessions of women belonged to their husbands,” Goddard said.
“While she was very different from Martha, the two women were friends and greatly respected each other.”
While John and Abigail were born to “New England upper-class farm families of Massachusetts,” Martha and George Washington, as well as Thomas Jefferson, were all part of the southern plantation aristocracy.
Martha Washington had considerable wealth from her own family inheritance, in addition to her first husband dying at age 45 and leaving her a second inheritance before she married George.
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“It was George who oversaw the architecture plans for the new White House, then called the President’s House, for it to be constructed, and it was he who selected the location to move the country’s capital from Philadelphia, and presidential mansion in New York, to have it all be based in Virginia, though neither he nor Martha ever saw an inhabitable finished White House before their deaths,” Goddard said.
“Even before she was in the White House, Abigail was already a political influencer, such as joining the wives of other prominent leaders to not serve any English tea after the extreme taxation that resulted in the Boston Tea Party of 1773.”
Goddard said Abigail created her own household blend of tea since tea varieties were the most popular consumed beverage of the day, by blending sassafras root with dried strawberry leaves and a hint of sage herb and calling it “LIBER-Tea.”
Goddard said she was amused during last week’s performances to serve audiences a complimentary cup and saucer of Abigail’s tea blend and gauge flavor reactions.
Before performances last week, a pre-show themed paired dinner was dreamed up by Chef Hugo Perea and wife Maria Arteaga, owners of 10Forty Banquets and Catering at The Center for Visual and Performing Arts. Inspired by the White House entertaining menus of the era, guests were served White House Garden Vegetable Soup followed by Roasted Chicken and Dressing with a Creamy Supreme Sauce, Homestyle Mashed Potatoes and Corn on the Cob with Abigail’s Apple Pan Dowdy baked in a cast iron pan and served à la mode as the dessert finale.
An essential ingredient in early American cooking and 1801 White House cuisine was molasses, used to sweeten such desserts as Chef Hugo’s, as well as the key ingredient for rich ginger cookies and gingerbread since sugar was very expensive and formerly taxed by the British. John Adams considered molasses an essential ingredient in American independence, a reference to his Molasses Act of 1733. The British Parliament had passed the act to tax sugar and then also molasses imported from the West Indies into the colonies with imposed shipment restrictions. The tax levied by this act is still considered one of the indirect economic reasons for the American Revolution.
The Adams Family recipe for Soft Molasses Cakes was a favorite served at tea time by both John and Abigail, as well as son and sixth U.S. President John Quincy Adams.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is a weekly radio host at WJOB 1230 AM. He can be reached at [email protected] or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Soft Molasses Cakes
Makes 6 dozen cakes
Indgredients
1 cup soft butter (2 sticks)
1 1/2 cups molasses, light or dark
1/4 cup sugar
4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
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1 egg
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, ground ginger and cloves. Set aside.
3. In a large saucepan, melt butter, stir in sugar and molasses and cool.
4. Mix a small amount of flour mixture into the melted butter mixture.
5. Beat in egg, add remaining flour and blend until smooth.
6. Chill dough for about 2 hours and shape into small balls, placing them on a cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.
7. Bake for about 15 minutes and remove to a rack to cool.