One Leading Women: Abigail Adams By Woody Holton

One Leading Women: Abigail Adams A young girl sat on her cold bedroom floor as tears streamed down her face. She was only seven years old. Her favorite thing to do was go to school and learn new things every day, but that privilege had now been torn from her grasp. Abigail Adams by Woody Holton was written to inform people of the struggles and obstacles that Adams had to overcome to become the successful Women’s Right Activist that she was. This book does a fine job of explaining how Abigail Adam’s personal life pertained to her political life. It tells in detail how Adams accomplished all that she did, and what she went through to do it. After growing up in a world of sexual discrimination, Abigail Adams was fortunate enough to be one of

Adams was pulled out of school at age seven. She was devistated. Going to school was her favorite thing in the entire world, even though she never learned as much as the boys did. Later in life, Adams said, “Female education, in the best of places, went no further than writing and arithmetic”(Holton 7). Adams’ parents told her that they took her out of school because of her “chronic illness.” They told her that she always seemed to have a cold or the flu. Looking back on this, Adams never remembered being sick and having to miss school. So, did Adams really have a “chronic illness” that required her to be home instead of at school, or did they do it because they didn’t believe that a girl should get to go to school and get an education? After a couple of years of being out of school, Adams had matured some and decided that she needed to be educated more than she had been. She and some friends got together and started s study group. Adams and her friends read books together and helped each other to learn how to properly read and write, since she had never fully learned from her real school experience. When her friends could no longer do her any good, she turned to her sister’s husband, Richard Cranch. “Richard was the first perosn who put proper Bookes into my hands, who taught me to love the Poets and to distinguish their Merrits”(Holton 10). Cranch was the person that really taught everything that Adams