E548 72 Milk Pans, Fired Quidlings, 24% Returns: Abigail Adams, America’s First Dairy CFO

About this episode

The episode explores Abigail Adams' role in managing the family dairy and her financial acumen during a pivotal time in American history.

Abigail Adams ran the first Founding-family dairy — and saved it while John built a country from a farmhouse desk in Braintree. April 11, 1776. The cannons had barely cooled over Boston Harbor. Her husband was in Philadelphia arguing independence. And at the kitchen table, a thirty-one-year-old woman dipped her quill in ink instead of cream and wrote about wanting to be, in her own words, "as good a Farmeress" as John was a statesman. She meant it literally. Over the next four decades, she would run the Adams farm through a short-hay war year, fire the quidlings, order seventy-two milk pans in a single 1794 shipment, and — through a trusted middleman, because coverture law forbade her own name on the paperwork — build a bond portfolio that paid up to twenty-four percent while the Adams land paid two. When Jefferson's heirs were auctioning Monticello to settle debts, Peacefield was still in the family. This is how it happened. KEY MOMENTS: The 1777 short-hay year — and the manure, feed, and cull decisions she made alone while John wrote maxims from Philadelphia Why she fired Porter, rotated Arnold and Copland, and vetted the Richards family through Cotton Tufts before hiring The…

People in this episode

Host: The Bullvine

Topics covered

• dairy farming
• American history
• women in agriculture
• financial management
• founding families
• independence

Keywords

• Abigail Adams
• dairy
• financial management
• American history
• John Adams
• women in agriculture
• Monticello
• short-hay war

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cotton Tufts

Places: Braintree, Monticello, Peacefield, Boston Harbor, Philadelphia

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