Tag Archives: Abigail Adams

March 23, 2026

Remembering the Ladies: Two Talks in Salem

By daseger

A promotional post today: I’ve got two events coming up at the end of this week and the beginning of next on women’s history in Salem for the close of Women’s History Month. Both are free and all are welcome. The first is on Saturday at Old Town Hall, and very squarely focused on women’s organized philanthropy over the centuries, but particularly in the nineteenth. Because this year is the 400th anniversary of Salem’s European founding, I am going back into the seventeenth century but the nineteenth century is so busy I have labeled it the era of “benevolent activism”! This is certainly not a discovery on my part; anyone who glances at an archival list of Salem sources is going to see that Salem women were really busy in that particular century. So many organizations were founded, and with due diligence, quite a few have survived to the present. We really wanted to include a chapter on this topic in Salem’s Centuries, but it just didn’t happen, so I’m happy to focus in on it now even though it took a bit of work for sure. To tell you the truth, I think all of the women associated with all of the organizations you see on this flyer know the history of their institutions better than I do, so I’m just providing a bit of comparative context and a more sweeping view afforded by four centuries of perspective.

Salem Woman’s Friend Society Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

My other event is a bit more about women’s political history in Salem, though I definitely developed an appreciation for how political philanthropic work can be, as well as even more respect for disenfranchised women, when working on the charity talk. Just think about one decade for Salem women, 1920-1920: they provided care during several major epidemics (smallpox, tuburculosis) and relief after the Great Salem Fire of 1914, lost a crucial state vote on suffrage in 1915, participated in several “preparedness” initiatives during World War I and ministered to the sick during the “Spanish” Flu, and then finally won the vote in 1920. Just incredible: I would have been pretty darn mad following that 1915 referendum and retreated to my bedroom or study.

“Remember the Ladies” is a tea at the Hawthorne Hotel on March 31st at 4 (again, free and all are invited) in which I will focus more directly on women’s political activities. As the flyer asserts, the “school suffrage” election of 1879, when women across Massachusetts were allowed to run for, and vote in, elections for school boards, will definitely be a highlight. Salem women really turned out and won four seats, the most in the Commonwealth, and they continued to hold seats right up until 1920 and beyond. But because this is the 400th anniversary, I’m going to go back and forth from 1879. This event is the initiative of my friend Jane, a former Salem city councillor, and she chose the date because it it the 250th anniversary of Abigail Adams’ “Remember the Ladies” letter to her husband in Philadelphia. So I’m definitely going to shine a spotlight on this epistolary moment and also compare Abigail to her near-exact contemporary in Salem, Mary Toppan Pickman. Different women of the same age and time in very similar situations for very different reasons! Both minding the farm and their families while their husbands were absent: John on patriotic business and Benjamin Pickman in London hanging out with other conspicuous Loyalists.

In closing to what I intend to be BRIEF remarks, I’ll move forward to the bicentennial year of 1976, in which the first two women elected to the Salem City Council, ward councillor Frances Grace and councillor-at-large Jean-Marie Rochna, took their seats. Just as those women elected to the School Board in 1879 probably expected the vote a bit sooner than 1920, I bet those women who voted in 1920 likely thought that their city would see a female councilor before 1976, but as we all know, change takes time, and effort. But continuity does too.

I’m not sure if this is the 1976 or 1977 Salem City Council, but it is from the Salem News Collection at Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

More information for “Organizing Generosity,” March 28, Old Town Hall @ 10: https://www.womansfriendsociety.org/events-1/organizing-generosity-centuries-of-women-supporting-women-in-salem

More information for “Remember the Ladies,” March 31, Hawthorne Hotel @ 4: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/remember-the-ladies-tickets-1985348533909?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

Leave a comment | tags: Abigail Adams, American Revolution, Hawthorne Hotel, Local Events, Local History, Old Town Hall, Presentations, Salem's Centuries, Women's History, Women's History Month | posted in History, Salem

November 7, 2020

Abigail, Abigail & Susan

By daseger

I was hopefully thinking about transitions and inaugurations and first ladies and somehow I ended up admiring Abigail Adams’ yellow kid slippers in the Smithsonian. I can’t really retrace my steps as I was kind of in an election coverage daze. But here are the slippers, which were donated by Miss Susan Elizabeth Osgood of Salem. They prompted a #SalemSuffrageSaturday post, as I’m trying to look at Salem women’s history with the widest possible lens, as well as every possible filter. It’s been clear to me for some time that the collection (in both its active and preservation meanings) and curation of Americana is an important Salem topic, and one in which women played many key roles.

Abigail Adams’ Slippers!

The First Ladies collection at the Smithsonian was conceived by two Washington society ladies, Cassie Mason Myers Julian-James and Rose Governeur Hoes, a great-granddaughter of President James Monroe, in 1912-1913; their gallery of items collected from presidential families opened to the public on February 1, 1914. Their emphasis was on “costume” but the collection expanded in scope and scale over the next century and is one of the Smithsonian’s most popular exhibits. An absolutely great source, the successive Reports on the Progress and Condition of the U.S. National Museum for 1913-1914, gave me the Salem story: in the latter year, the Report reported that “Mrs. Julian James and Mrs. R.R. Hoes continued, with their customary zeal, their self-appointed task of securing materials for the period costume collection, and during most of the year they were closely occupied in arranging the interesting fabrics and other articles which had been received. The results of their labors, successful and most brilliant in effect, have already been described, and there only remains to be accounted for in this connection the many and valuable contributions of the year. Of costumes of ladies of the White House, forming the central and most prominent feature of the exhibition and including some accessories, six were received, [including] a dress, kid slippers, and fan and pearl beads, worn by Mrs. John Adams, received from Miss Susan E. Osgood, of Salem, Mass.”

The items which once belonged to Abigail Adams which were donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1913 by Salem’s Susan Elizabeth Osgood: the dress is navy blue, and shown by itself and in “company” (far right); the “pearl beads” are actually glass—so Mrs. Adams was well ahead of Jackie Kennedy and Barbara Bush with her faux pearls!

It took me a while to figure out how Susan Osgood came to be in the possession of these items: there was no readily apparent connection to Abigail Adams and I am no genealogical researcher! Miss Osgood was one of those maiden ladies from established Salem families who seldom shows up in the newspapers: the rule was birth, marriage and death only and since she was unmarried that left a large gap (especially as she lived a long life, from 1832-1920). The only time she really “appears” in public is in reference to her famous garden at 314 Essex Street. I chased down a few family connections and finally found the link: her uncle, the Salem historian Joseph Felt, was married to Abigail Adams’ niece, Abigail Adams Shaw, the daughter of her younger sister, Elizabeth Shaw Peabody. As Mr. and Mrs. Felt had no children, I’m guessing that the Adams items were passed down to their niece, Susan, after their respective deaths and were stored in Susan’s Salem house until the Mrs. Julian-James and Hoes put the word out. There are a few references to Salem sculptress Louise Lander playing an intermediary role in this story, but I couldn’t really substantiate them: she was living in Washington at the time, however. If my explanation of the Abigail-Abigail-Susan connection is accurate, that means that Mrs. Adams is connected to Salem through both of her sisters. Her older sister, Mary Smith Cranch, and her husband Richard lived in Salem for a time, during which both Abigail and John Adams visited occasionally. I presume (again) that the Adamses were introduced to the work of Salem artist Benjamin Blythe on one of those occasions, and commissioned their famous pastel portraits from him.