John Adams by the numbers

John Adams died on 4 July 1826 at the ripe old age of 90. His death falls slightly more than halfway through the Adams Papers slip file, but when we reached this date in Encoding Level 2 last summer, we felt we'd marked an important milestone in the project. So in honor of John Adams, I've compiled some statistics related to him.

As of now, John Adams appears in the database as an author 13,943 times. He appears as a recipient 11,782 times. These numbers reflect original letters, retained letterbook copies of outgoing correspondence, and other documents. While the MHS holds the vast majority of these items, the slip file lists all known Adams family manuscripts, including those held by other institutions and those in private hands.

The earliest extant letter from John was written at Worcester on 1 Sep. 1755 to Nathan Webb. The first letter John received was written by Richard Cranch in Oct. 1756.

Correspondence between John and Abigail Adams accounts for 1,376 records in the database. Ironically, although Abigail often complained of how little John wrote, he wrote many more letters to her than she did to him--an impressive 912 to her 464 (including letterbook copies). John's first letter to his future wife was written 4 Oct. 1762, two years before their marriage, and her first letter to him was written 11 Aug. 1763.

According to the slip file, John Adams exchanged 662 letters with his "frenemy" Thomas Jefferson--376 to him and 286 from him. Their correspondence spans almost 50 years, beginning with Jefferson's letter from Williamsburg, Va. on 16 May 1777 and ending with Adams' of 17 Apr. 1826, less than three months before the day both men died.

John Adams wrote his last letter on 22 June 1826 to Roger C. Weightman, at that time the mayor of Washington, D.C. Four days later, the last letter to John was written by Ebenezer Clough. It was one of only three letters Clough ever wrote to the former president.