Only First Lady born outside the United States, Louisa Catherine Adams did not
come to this country until four years after she had married John Quincy Adams.
Political enemies sometimes called her English. She was born in London to an
English mother, Catherine Nuth Johnson, but her father was American--Joshua
Johnson, of Maryland--and he served as United States consul after 1790.

A career diplomat at 27, accredited to the Netherlands, John Quincy developed
his interest in charming 19-year-old Louisa when they met in London in 1794.
Three years later they were married, and went to Berlin in course of duty. At
the Prussian court she displayed the style and grace of a diplomat's lady; the
ways of a Yankee farm community seemed strange indeed in 1801 when she first
reached the country of which she was a citizen. Then began years divided among
the family home in Quincy, Massachusetts, their house in Boston, and a political
home in Washington, D.C. When the Johnsons had settled in the capital, Louisa
felt more at home there than she ever did in New England.

She left her two older sons in Massachusetts for education in 1809 when she
took two-year-old Charles Francis to Russia, where Adams served as Minister.
Despite the glamour of the tsar's court, she had to struggle with cold winters,
strange customs, limited funds, and poor health; an infant daughter born in 1811
died the next year. Peace negotiations called Adams to Ghent in 1814 and then to
London. To join him, Louisa had to make a forty-day journey across war-ravaged
Europe by coach in winter; roving bands of stragglers and highwaymen filled her
with "unspeakable terrors" for her son. Happily, the next two years gave her an
interlude of family life in the country of her birth.

Appointment of John Quincy as Monroe's Secretary of State brought the Adamses
to Washington in 1817, and Louisa's drawing room became a center for the
diplomatic corps and other notables. Good music enhanced her Tuesday evenings at
home, and theater parties contributed to her reputation as an outstanding
hostess.

But the pleasure of moving to the White House in 1825 was dimmed by the bitter
politics of the election and by her own poor health. She suffered from deep
depression. Though she continued her weekly "drawing rooms," she preferred quiet
evenings--reading, composing music and verse, playing her harp. The necessary
entertainments were always elegant, however; and her cordial hospitality made
the last official reception a gracious occasion although her husband had lost
his bid for re-election and partisan feeling still ran high.

Louisa thought she was retiring to Massachusetts permanently, but in 1831 her
husband began 17 years of notable service in the House of Representatives. The
Adamses could look back on a secure happiness as well as many trials when they
celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary at Quincy in 1847. He was fatally
stricken at the Capitol the following year; she died in Washington in 1852, and
today lies buried at his side in the family church at Quincy.