Rev. William Woodbridge, a descendant of Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and for fifty years an honored educator, wrote, in the latter part of his life, to a correspondent: “You inquire how so many of the females of New England, during the latter part of the last century, acquired that firmness, and energy, and excellence of character for which they have been so justly distinguished, while the advantages of school education were so limited. The only answer is that it is not the amount of knowledge, but the nature of the knowledge, and, still more, the manner in which it is used to form character. Natural logic, the self-taught art of thinking, was the guard and guide of the female mind. The first of Watts’s five methods of internal improvement, ‘The attentive notice of every instructive fact and occurrence,’ was exemplified in practice. Newspapers were taken in a few families; books were scarce but freely lent; the Scriptures were much read; and, as for time, ‘where there is a will there is a way.’” Since the women of that day left almost no record of their thought in print, the biography of Mrs. Adams, already quoted, may be called upon to illustrate the intellectual and moral characteristics attributed to them. Among the New England women of the early part of this century who are still remembered by the present generation, there was a noteworthy number who, in vigor of intellect and strength of character, might truly be called her peers. While Mr. Adams was in Europe (from 1780) as Commissioner from the United States, Mrs. Adams was managing the family property, at a time of depreciation of paper money. Speaking of this period Mr. Charles Francis Adams says: “Her letters are remarkable because they display the readiness with which she could devote herself to the most opposite duties, and the cheerful manner in which she could accommodate herself to the difficulties of the times. She is a farmer, cultivating the land and discussing the weather and crops; a merchant, reporting prices current and the rates of exchange, and directing the making up of invoices; a politician, speculating upon the probabilities of peace or war, and a mother, writing the most exalted sentiments to her son. All of these pursuits she adopts together; some from choice, the rest from the necessity of the case; and in all she appears equally well.” The complete sympathy of interest between Mrs. Adams and her distinguished husband in “seeking for political truth in its fundamental principles,” as Mr. Adams is said to have done, appears in her letters, and it may be questioned whether, barring the consideration of sex, the term “statesmanlike” might not apply to the views of both. Just a month before the resolution declaring the independence of the colonies was offered in the Continental Congress by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia and seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts Mrs. Adams wrote to her husband, under date of May 7, 1776.