The Boston City Hall Plaza covers the same ground as the eighteenth century Brattle Square. From 1768 to 1771, Abigail Adams (1744-1817) lived in two locations in and near Brattle Square with her husband, attorney John Adams, and their family. It was a period of increasing family responsibilities for her. Her five children were born between 1765 and 1772. The family lived there during the Boston Massacre, which took place nearby—just outside the Old State House—in 1770. After John Adams successfully defended the British soldiers involved in the incident, his health declined. The family moved back to their farm in Braintree (now Quincy) the following year, but returned to Boston in 1772. They were in Boston during the Boston Tea Party in 1773, but by 1774 the Adamses had moved back to the farm permanently because John began traveling for the new Republic—first as a delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Abigail Adams became well known as a critical thinker and correspondent with her husband, who was away from the farm for much of the next ten years. She managed the farm, their large family, and their financial affairs. Abigail Adams is one of three women chosen to be portrayed in the Boston Women’s Memorial.
Among Abigail Adams’s correspondents was Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814), probably the first published women historian in the U.S. In 1805, she published a three-volume history of the American Revolution. She also published several satirical plays.
