Lucy’s death made a difficult season even worse. “Mr. J. is a man of great sensibility, and parental affection,” Abigail and John Adams’s daughter Nabby Adams wrote in her journal.47 “His wife died when this child [Lucy] was born, and he was in a confirmed state of melancholy; confined himself from the world, and even from his friends, for a long time; and this news has greatly affected him.”
