Two tist sisters i think i know less about and i argue that even though they didnt marry president s, they are equally important and remarkable women. Higherarchy was important and the older sister was very important. And especially after her brother was disinherited by their father, she was really the one who inherited the first sons role because there was no brother. And when she grew up she proved herself to be a wonderful administrator. Even though she was a woman and dont be elected to any position, she was the de facto mayor of quincy. And her husband would be appointed to positions but really everyone would know mary would take care of everything. And then there is Elizabeth Peabody who was the youngest sister and thought neither of the older sisters gave her attention and she was clamoring listen to me and she was the most literate and best educated. The working tighting was three fold corded. It speaks to the interwoven of the Three Sisters and the intensity of their bond. A threefold cord is a reference to the bible and speaks of a cord that is wound over three times and it is hard to break a cord that is wound over three times. They referred to the three fold cord throughout their life. Abigail wrote something to her son john quincy. He said never was there a stronger connection than that which binds in a three fold cord your mama and her two sisters. And as i was writing the book i wanted the idea of sisterhood to resinate. I wanted the reader to know that while i am speaking very specifically about three biological sisters living 250 years ago, that what is true for them, can be true for women today who are not biologically related but perhaps best friends. So, i thought before i went into more detail i would say a little about how i came to write this book in the first place. I just finished a book on the great radical feminist mary stone craft. I loved the 18th century with the drama and the guillotines and the revolution and particularly i loved the ideas. I loved what was so had to say and i loved it that the character i was writing about read all of these people. So i thought let me find another man or woman and follow them through the same period. And i am a french fan and i thought if i could find a french person i could do paris and the french revolution all over again. But i was having a hard time finding a french person that fit into my category. And a colleague once said what did you against americans . And i said i dont have anything against them. I am an american. When i was in the shower i remembered a voice i reviewed called the adams women and it was mostly about abigail and her daughter in law who was married to john quincy. But there were sessions about abigails sister. And as i was standing in the shower with soap coming down my back i had an image flash before me of one of the last lines in the epilogue and it said some day somebody will write a b biography of the Three Sisters and i thought that is me. After that though, there was a lot of work to do. That aha moment is great. But then afterwards the grown. The ohno. The do i have the material to write the book. I knew i had the massachusetts historical society. I knew i had this wonderful adam site and i knew they would have a lot on abigail. But what about mary and elizabeth . Are their l there letter from them . What did they say to them . To abigail . And to each other. At first i heard there is a nice collection of the younger sisters correspondence at the library of congress. I went down to the library of congress and i was delighted. I found letters from the time he was a teenager and writing her cousin isiac who was at harvard. He would give opinions of the books and she would write him back about the book and she was very defiant and opposite of anything he said. And you could see how he was baiting her. And at one point he writes about madam dissevenay and he wrote you must love her because she doesnt like marriage and neither do you. And not only did she like marriage but she wanted to mary him. And i went through the tragedies of abigail. And then there was mary, the eldest, and i thought what else is there about her . And did she have any ideas . I went to the al babany institu of art and one of the letters was to abigail and she said dont you think it is funny that men think it is silly we dont have the same intellect. Today it is obvious, but at the time, everyone presumed that a woman was given it two things an intellect and a uterus. If she used her mind no wonder she could not have children. And if she bore children she could only think about shopping because she used her one instrument. So her talking about ungendered mind meant a lot to me. And i learned a lot more about her thoughts, and abigails and elizabeths on the rights of women. The intellectual way were there. They tutored their daughters in the same way they did their son. I had a lot of material and i was going to pick and chose because i libraries had so much information i was going to have to decide what to write about. But i hope i did manage to do that. After i came out with these three characters and i thought okay, i have enough research material. Then i had the problem of how i was going to structure the book. I have written two other biographies with one character and it was easy. The structure that is. Not the writing of the biography. But the structure was because i wrote from one persons point of view. Now all of a sudden, i had three people. So i had to see the world through three different perspectives. I thought i would read you a little bit from the first chapter to give you an idea of how i approached the sisters and who these sisters were also. It would have been obvious to anyone who met them that abigail, mary, and bet temperature were sisters. Mary was darker and taller, and betsy was the most slender. They had narrow decisive mouths, clear skin and shining brown hair. They had a marked intelligence and shared their mothers passion for doing good but were surprising delicate. They were the first to catch colds and the last to recover. Abigail was paralyzed for two weeks and her child birth was more treacherous. It was a battle with death to produce a child. Betsy was so weak after one i illness she was ordered not to read, write or even think. It attacked her body more than her mood luckily or she would be impossible to live with abigail observed. Mary, with her pleasing ways, seemed more like more mother. Though, see seethed at the neglect of her mind. Method was wanted in our studies and we had no one to point us to it. She reminded people our parents kept the obligation of leaving us blind and left the rest to nature. You will make a very bad or good woman a family friend told them. In her teens, abigail committed the sacrilege of opposing her mothers authority, or as she thought, made clear how she was angry at her mother for denying her request. Abigail was sent off to her grandmother for long visits who she thought she loved more because she didnt compare her to mary or rebuke her for a crime. And then betsy who was just as high spirited as abigail and less free to express herself. She could not run off to her grandma because she was the youngest and always had duties to perform. She grasps everybody moment to read with a cultivated taste that would have range wider she was sure if one duty or another wasnt always calling her from her fathers books. That is my approach to the Three Sisters. I know it is just giving you a little taste. And i hope you have a feeling of who they are and views of each other. These are my main characters. But they are not my only characters. And is i started writing the book, i realized there are two other important characters in the book. And one of them is the one i was most determined to keep out of the book john adams. I felt so much has been said. The most wonderful book about john adams has been written and who needs be to add anything. Well, i realized i needed him because so many of the great events that happened, not only in abigails life, but the other sisters, were involving john adams. So i said i am going to take him on and i hope he hasnt overwhelmed the book. I dont think he has. But i feel like he is an important part of it. And i hope i added something fresh to what we know about john adams already. We know what a wonderful husband he was, how devoted he was to his children. But i hope i am giving you a feeling for what he was like as a brotherinlaw particularly to marys husband Richard Cranch who was a close friend to him. And also as an uncle. And john adams is frequently known as someone who would not do favors. His best friends would say can you get me some kind of little job in government. No. Even his soninlaw he said i am not going to help until the end. But for some reason, he felt warmly toward his nephews so that when one of them, and this one is the one mary said he has so many oddities that he will never do anything in public life. But john adams said no. He got him a job as a secretary and he performed so well in that job he went on to have a fru fruitful life. And his other nephew was mary cranchs son. My book starts in 1765 when britain imposes the first of the punishing acts on the caocollon networ es. The stamp act. The times are my fifth character because they are important to all of the sisters. Of course to abigail who is frequently in the lime light with john. But really no less during the revolution to mary and elizabeth. They were equally excited, terrified by the battle of boston. And they were equally astonished and overjoyed when the french nav nav nav navvy arrived at york town and american had won the revolution at last. These times are very important to the book. They are the times they lived through. And also, what was important for me was that they lived through the times, through the ideas of the times, and because of what was happening, because in america, we were getting the opportunities to start a nation anew, they had opinions on what it was like to live under a monarch and they had ideas on what the ideal nation state should be. And i so found there were two very large impacts on their visions. On all of their visions. And one, was the enlightment. They had all read that. And it had a very big impact. And they felt strongly about equality between the races. Abigail at one point said to john i dont understand how someone in virginia can have the same passion we have for the revolution for the rights of man and women because they keep slaves. So this was they had very strong ideas about equality. On the other hand, they were puritans and for puritans the most important thing in the world was order. And order for government was particularly necessary. In order for there to be order they believed there had to be higherarchy and that is why the oldest child was most important and one man had to bow to another man and one family had a better pugh in church than another. So they were competing with each other in the views of what the ideal nation state should be. I had my characters now and i want to be an equal opportunities biographer. I wanted to give each their space, and if anything push abigail to the side and say you had your turn, let hear about the others. I want today divide each chapter in three doing one third an abigail, elizabeth and mary. I tried that for four chapters and it was a fiasco. I said there is no way. We are getting no narrative from this and this isnt working. What i decided to do was let the story pull me along. You will find in one chapter it is abigail and she is going off to paris and london and i am trusting that everyone will realize, particularly because of the letters she wrote home to her sisters, that they were enbroiled in this and they were. When abigail wrote a letter it was known it was actually written for the whole neighborhood. And mary would get the pleasure of having everyone important in the neighborhood come over and she would read allowed abigails letter. And then there were chapters when mary is trying find a minister for the first church of quincy and she is the most important person. And even john adams think she is the most important person in quincy. And one day, abigail catches him opening a letter that mary has written to him. And she is furious. She said how can you open a letter and he said it isnt just any letter it is from mary and there is no one that knows more than mary that i am interested in. And then there is a lot on elizabeth. She is the sister who endures the most. She is the prettiest and i say the most beautiful. There is a wonderful picture i have of her in my book. She was always a magnificent looking woman. She was very much in love when she got married and things happen so i spend quite a bit of time with her. I turn out not to be an equal opportunity biographer. I would like to read with you and i share abigails view, but about how she felt on equality. And this is in a chapter that is right after john adams has been elected Vice President and abigail has left mary in quincy and gone off to new york. Two weeks letter, mary acknowledged the gap between her lot in life and her sisters. You are amid the busy world and she wrote abigail who arrived in new york and finding john far heathier. John was always telling abigail he was dying so she would come join him. But he was fine. And she was swept up in the social whirl. The contrast had not escaped abigail who after a few weeks away from home included a statement to the people she loved. I have a favor to request to watch over my conduct if they perceive any altration in me with respect to them arising as they may suppose from my situation in live. I would ask they would make me aware of this. I dont feel any higher but i know mankind were prone to deceive themselves. No struck of luck she felt could separate sisters. Their souls were intertwined from brother so she found it natch natural to use her daughter and send mary all of the pocket money she could spare from her budget. Anticipating her sisters anguish she said reverse the matter and ask yourself if you would not do as much for me or for elizabeth. Fate in abigails few wasnt a democratic process nor did she think much of equality on earth. Higherarchy guaranteed order but family ran on a lofty system of government. She and her sisters only differed on birth order where mary was supreme. Otherwises they were always and will always be equal. I would like to hear any questions you may have for me. Yes . I thought i made it clear. The character was at the times. You mentioned a school . What school . The atkins academic which was in atkins, new hampshire. The first was exiter and this was the second. The sisters sent their children to elizabeths first had been initially. And then their children sent their children to her second husbands school. But they would write each other and say this isnt because of the husbands this is because our sister is so literate and she is sure to instill the love of reading in them. It was a Bording School boarding school and it was very nice. How did you get insight into personality . It was millions of letters. There were so many. They loved each other so much. It was a good thing i had elizabeth being competitive at some point or i would have had a dull story of these women who couldnt do enough for each other. And mary they said we feel each others pain. And mary said we are better wives than anyone will ever know. They saw themselves as equals and mary was happy to do everything to abigail when abigail was away being the wife of the first ambassador to england and then ultimately the second president of the United States because she felt, yes, she is off there having such a hard time i have to help her out. On the other hand, abigail felt i have to send silks home and anything i can because i am having this opportunity. So they felt so connected. Phobe . She was a slave for her father. And she gave her the choice about freeing her or keeping her as slave and they freed her. Abigail had phobe and her husband living in her house when she was in europe and she handled the house for her. Under marys supervision . Absolutely. They were all just these master administrateers. I richard is had one that everybody gives credit to for educating and getting them to read and it was curious they were in the library but had no one to guide them. He came back and tutored them and that said why elizabeth is the best educated because she had the most time with him. Any information prom the quincy First Library . I probably did. I got a lot from the former minister of the church. I am not sure you much i got from the quincy library. I am sure i got some things. Yes, i definitely did. And so much was in the massachusetts historical society. Sometimes there was a d duplication. Did they ever have major arguments . The major was when they were young and it was with elizabeth. Mary and abigail were joined at the hip. But elizabeth was six years younger than abigail. So they felt like abigail in particular felt she should listen to us. And so they had very strong ideas. Not mary so much. Mary, i think, kind of stayed out of it. But abigail had ideas on who she should and shouldnt mary. She urged elizabeth, you know, this is a great time to come to boston, im here and so and so. And elizabeth fell in love with the man she married and for some reason and the only thing i could find in the letters was he was a calvinist and they were an anticalvinist. She hated john shaw. But her husband didnt. She said i would not say congrats in a million years and she didnt. She went to the wedding. But she never wrote elizabeth when she first moved which is where she lived with her husband. Mary wrote how is everything like the little mother hen. But not abigail. Silence. But then john was sent off to europe and abigail was devastated. And elizabeth really she could read people well. And she wrote to abigail not saying why havent you written me or care if i like married life. She said for some people this would be a wonderful thing to get rid of their husband but for you who were joined at birth this is a tragedy and i want to send my sympathy, because she lived with the two of them, and she said this is awful. I want you to know that i feel it for you. And at that point, abigail got off her high horse and she said how are you . How is your husband, mr. Shaw . I am thinking of you as well. So it was resolved. But i think because abigail wasnt married, she was the middle sister, she wanted to be older than someone. And at one point when she was in europe she heard from mary that elizabeth was sick. Elizabeth was trying to get up and take care of the borders and the students and she wrote her a letter that was irate. You cannot do this. You must stay in bed. I am going to write your husband, too. This is ridiculous. And then she thought about it. And her children were boarding with elizabeth at the time and thought maybe i am being hard. So she wrote and said i am sorry about the tone i took. I know you a grown woman. I just care about you. And elizabeth wrote back because she was like no bless. She wrote back i never mistook anything you said even when we were younger. So to be, you know, calling on our eldership, i knew it was because you loved me so much. So there co