ADAIR.ADAMS.
prompt action and untiring vigilance succeeded in suppressing the draft riots of 1863. He served on the police commission for nine years, and on resigning that office received the appointment of superintendent of the U. S. assay office. From 1882 to 1886 Mr. Acton was assistant United States treasurer, and in 1887 he organized and became president of the bank of New Amsterdam. Many reforms in the city government were instituted by him, among them the supersession of the unsatisfactory volunteer fire department by the paid service. He was interested in charitable and political reforms, and was one of the prime movers in the establishing of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and in forwarding the work of other similar organizations. He died in Saybrook, Conn., May 1, 1898.
ADAIR, John, senator, was born in Chester county, S. C. in 1759. He was a volunteer in the revolutionary army; was made a prisoner and obliged to endure very great suffering. In 1787 he removed to Kentucky, where he became prominent in the public affairs of that state, distinguished himself in Indian fights by his bravery and sagacity, and was made register of the Kentucky land office in 1805. He was a member of the convention that framed the constitution of the state of Kentucky, and was a representative in the state legislature and speaker of the house. In 1805-6 he was United States senator. At the time of Aaron Burr's treason, Adair was thought to be connected with it, and for a time he was rather unpopular, but people shortly became convinced that Adair had sympathized with Burr simply from his belief that the government was sanctioning his action. In 1813 he was aide to Governor Shelby in the battle of the Thames, and two years later he served under General Jackson as adjutant-general at the battle of New Orleans. He was prominent in politics, was elected governor of Kentucky in 1820, serving four years, and from 1831 to 1838 represented his district in Congress. His name is held in high esteem throughout Kentucky, and Adair county was named in his honor. He died May 19, 1840.
ADAIR, William P., assistant chief of the Cherokee nation, was born about 1828. At the time of the civil war General Albert Pike organized a band of Indians who, led by Adair, fought in the confederate army at the battle of Pea Ridge. After the war he was sent to Washington to represent his tribe, and died there Oct. 23, 1880.
ADAMS, Abigail, wife of John Adams, second president of the United States, was born in Weymouth, Mass., Nov. 22, 1744, daughter of William and Elizabeth Quincy Smith. Her father was for nearly half a century pastor of the Congregational church of Weymouth, and her mother a direct descendant of Thomas Shepard, the eminent Puritan divine of Cambridge, and a great grandniece of the Puritan preacher, John Norton, of the Hingham meeting-house, Boston. .png)
She had few educational advantages in the way of access to books, as they were kept from her owing to her delicate constitution. To in a measure compensate for this, she was instructed in the duties of the housewife and took great interest in home affairs. She became an adept in domestic economy, and added to it the rudiments of penmanship and arithmetic. As she reached womanhood her strength increased, and she took up French, Latin, and a well-directed course of reading, although this was only cursory before she became a wife. She was married to John Adams Oct. 25, 1764, and passed the next ten years as the frugal wife of a rising Braintree lawyer. To them were born, during this time, one daughter and three sons. The political events of the period marked the next decade of her married life as one of great anxiety. Her husband was absent most of the time, first as a delegate to Congress and afterwards on a diplomatic mission across the seas. The patriots led by her husband were urging the termination of the unhappy relations existing between the colonies and the mother country, by a declaration of independence. His earnest advocacy of heroic measures gained for him the appellation, "Colossus of Independence." No more positive and unyielding advocate of the measure sustained the course of John Adams than his patriotic wife, and while she had in full view the dire consequences of failure, yet her courage never faltered and her voice never uttered an uncertain sound. Alone with her children she passed the period of war, doing what she could for the patriot cause. In 1784 she undertook the long and dangerous voyage to Europe to join her husband in France, and then she accompanied him to London, as the wife of the first American minister at the court of St. James, and where as such she was not accorded decent courtesy. This rudeness greatly wounded her and increased her devotion to the new republic. Upon the accession of Mr. Adams to the presidency, his wife became the first mistress of the White House, and there the charm of house-keeping was not dispelled by the pride of position; She is the only woman in our history who has been the wife of one president and the mother of
