Rebecca Tirrell

Rebecca "Becky" Tirrell was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1780.¹ She began working for the Adams family around 1790 as a young girl.² She served as a lady’s maid to Abigail Adams. Becky accompanied Abigail Adams to the President’s House in Philadelphia in 1797 with fellow ladies maids, Betsy Howard and Betsy Marshall.³ 

When the Adams family prepared to move to the White House in the fall of 1800, Abigail sent Becky ahead, alongside Betsy Marshall to set up the new home.⁴ She worked at the White House, living on the Ground Floor until the end of Adams’ presidency, when she moved back to Quincy, Massachusetts with the Adams family.⁵ Becky married another Adams family servant, Richard Dexter, on August 23, 1804, at Peacefield. Abigail Adams wrote about the marriage, “You know I have always been a true friend to Matrimony. upon this principle I last week parted with my most beloved domestic who was to me a child in sickness and in Health and who had lived 14 years with me.”⁶ The couple had two children. 

When Abigail Adams died in 1818, she left Becky a brown silk gown and “Thirty dollars in token of her faithful Nursing me in various sicknesses.”⁷ On February 22, 1822, Becky married Daniel Driver after the death of her first husband. She died on September 3, 1851, in Quincy, Massachusetts.⁸