The Hi-Desert Nature Museum is now on Facebook!  Keep up with our events and programs, make comments on your visit, share suggestions with staff, or tell us something interesting you have learned.

The Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that became the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution.  The Congress met from 1774 to 1789 in three incarnations.  The First Continental Congress organized an economic boycott of Great Britain.  By the time the Second Continental Congress met in 1775, shooting in the American Revolutionary War had begun.  They established the Continental Army, issued the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, and designed a new government in the Articles of Confederation.  With the ratification of the Articles the Congress was renamed the Congress of the Confederation, which met from 1781 to 1789.  When the Articles were replaced by the U.S. Constitution, the Confederation Congress was superseded by the U.S. Congress.

Women contributed to the American Revolution in multiple ways.  Like men, women participated on both sides of the war - Patriot and Loyalist.  While formal Revolutionary politics did not include women, domestic behaviors became charged with political significance.  Women participated by boycotting British goods, spying on the British, following armies as they marched, nursing, washing, cooking, and delivering secret messages.  Some women fought in combat, a few even disguised as men.  Above all, they continued the agricultural work at home to feed the armies and their families.

 

Abigail Adams was the wife of second President John Adams, and mother of the sixth president John Quincy Adams.  Abigail Adams was an advocate of women's property rights and more opportunities for women, particularly in education.  She is known for her March 1776 letter to John Adams and the Continental Congress, requesting that they, "...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.  Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.  Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.  If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."