How tall was John Adams?

How tall was John Adams?

John Adams, the second president of the United States, is usually listed at 170 cm (5′7″). That figure appears in standard references on presidential heights, which cite Joseph Kane's Facts About the Presidents, and it is the value recorded on Wikidata and used on this site. No measuring record from Adams's lifetime has been published, so like most 18th-century heights, his is a historical estimate assembled from contemporary descriptions and later biographical research rather than a documented measurement.

Adams was not a physically imposing figure, and his contemporaries noticed. He was short and stout compared with several of the other leading founders, especially the two Virginians who bookended his presidency, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Yet the evidence on American heights in the 18th century suggests that, by the standards of his own time and place, he was close to an ordinary American man.

Adams among the founding presidents

The first six presidents covered an unusually wide range of heights. Using this site's figures:

Adams served as vice president to George Washington, whose height is itself debated. Reference lists give figures from 6′0″ to 6′3½″, and Washington once mentioned six feet himself. Whichever value you use, Washington stood the better part of a head taller than his vice president, and the contrast between the tall, reserved general and the shorter, talkative lawyer from Massachusetts was obvious in the new government.

Adams was then followed by Thomas Jefferson, his rival in the elections of 1796 and 1800 and, much later, his close correspondent. Jefferson, at about 189 cm, was roughly 19 cm taller. The two men's long friendship, rupture and reconciliation is one of the great stories of the early republic, and they died on the same day, July 4, 1826.

Adams's son, John Quincy Adams, became the sixth president. Height references list him at 5′7½″ (171 cm), barely different from his father. The Adamses and the Bushes are the only father-son pairs to have held the office, and the Adamses were clearly the shorter pair: reference lists give George H. W. Bush as 188 cm and George W. Bush as 182 cm.

Was 5′7″ short in the 18th century?

To judge whether Adams was short, it helps to compare him with the men around him rather than with modern Americans. Here, economic historians offer useful evidence.

Kenneth Sokoloff and Georgia Villaflor, in a 1979 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, used militia muster rolls from the colonial and Revolutionary periods to estimate the heights of American-born men. They concluded that native-born Americans had already come close to modern heights by the time of the Revolution, that colonists were notably taller than Europeans, and that rural Americans and Southerners were taller than city dwellers and Northerners.

Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, writing for PBS NewsHour in 2016, used Adams as a direct example. They noted that, at 5′7″, Adams was just an inch below the average for American soldiers of the time, which implies an average of about 5′8″ (173 cm), and that he was significantly taller than a typical European soldier. They also observed that when the colonies broke away from Britain, adult American men were on average about three inches taller than men in England.

The conclusion is that Adams was close to average for an American man of his generation and above average compared with Europeans. He looked short mainly because several of his most famous colleagues were unusually tall: Washington and Jefferson were both well over six feet, an exceptional height in any century.

How historians estimate 18th-century heights

It is worth being clear about how uncertain any 18th-century height is. Nobody in Adams's era kept systematic medical records for prominent men, and a figure like 5′7″ usually comes from a combination of sources: descriptions by people who knew him, comparisons in letters and diaries, surviving clothing, and the judgments of later biographers. Different references can disagree by an inch or more, as the range of figures given for Washington shows.

For ordinary people, historians have a better tool. Militia muster rolls and military enlistment records often recorded each recruit's age and height, because height was useful for identifying deserters. Sokoloff and Villaflor's NBER study used exactly these records, looking at height by age to estimate how well-nourished different groups of colonists had been while growing up. Because thousands of men were measured, the averages are far more reliable than any single famous person's height.

That is why comparisons between Adams and the average soldier are meaningful even if Adams's own figure is approximate. If he was 5′7″, give or take an inch, he sat close to the middle of the distribution of American men of his day. Only an error of several inches would change that conclusion, and nothing in the historical record suggests one.

His Rotundity: build, titles and a lasting nickname

Adams's build was as much a subject of comment as his height. He was described as short and plump, and in middle age he was noticeably stout. This became the basis of one of the most memorable nicknames in American political history.

In the spring of 1789, as vice president and presiding officer of the new Senate, Adams became deeply involved in a debate over how the president should be addressed. He favored a dignified, even regal title, believing that the new office needed public respect, especially in comparison with European monarchs. Other senators thought this was absurd and smacked of monarchy. According to an editorial note in the Massachusetts Historical Society's edition of the Papers of John Adams, attached to Adams's letter to William Tudor of May 9, 1789, Senator Ralph Izard of South Carolina began referring to Adams as "Rotundity" after Adams rejected a title Izard had proposed.

The nickname was cutting because it worked on two levels. It mocked Adams's enthusiasm for grand titles by inventing a mock title, and it poked fun at his physique. The Senate eventually settled on the simple form "President of the United States", which has been used ever since. The episode did lasting damage to Adams's reputation among those who already suspected him of monarchist sympathies.

The 1796 and 1800 elections: height on the ballot

Adams's two presidential contests against Jefferson are among the most lopsided height matchups in American electoral history. According to the presidential height lists, Adams was about 170 cm and Jefferson about 189 cm, a difference of roughly 19 cm. In 1796, the shorter man won and Adams became president; in 1800, the taller man won and Jefferson replaced him.

Researchers have looked for a pattern in such contests. A 2013 study by Gert Stulp and colleagues, summarized in the same reference list, found that significantly taller candidates were more likely to win the popular vote, but not more likely to win the presidency itself; the number of taller winners did not differ from chance in a statistically meaningful way. The study also found that the taller candidate's advantage in the popular vote has grown over time, which means it is especially weak in the earliest elections. Adams's 1796 victory over a much taller rival fits that picture neatly: in the first contested elections, chosen through the Electoral College by a small political class, physical presence mattered less than regional alliances and party loyalties.

The 1800 election, which Adams lost, was decided by the bitter split in his own Federalist Party and by the popularity of Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans in the South and West, not by any visible contrast in stature.

A life of law, revolution and diplomacy

Adams was born on October 30, 1735, in the north precinct of Braintree, now Quincy, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1755 and became a lawyer. In 1770, he defended the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, a controversial decision that he later regarded as one of his most important services to his country.

He served as a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1777 and played a central role in pushing for independence; he was a member of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. The Miller Center notes that he was known as the "Atlas of Independence" for his advocacy. From 1778 to 1788 he served as a diplomat in Europe, helping to negotiate the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, and later becoming the first American minister to Great Britain.

He then served two terms as vice president under Washington and one term as president, from March 4, 1797, to March 4, 1801, as a Federalist. His presidency was dominated by the Quasi-War with France and by the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts. He lost the 1800 election to Jefferson and retired to his farm in Quincy.

Adams married Abigail Smith in 1764, and they had five children, including John Quincy Adams. Abigail's letters, including her famous 1776 appeal that the new nation's lawmakers consider the rights of women, are among the most important documents of the period. Reliable figures for her height have not been published.

A long life

Adams died on July 4, 1826, at the age of 90, in Quincy, on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson died at Monticello the same day. For more than 170 years, Adams was the longest-lived American president, a record eventually surpassed in the modern era.

His longevity is notable given the life expectancy of his time, and it is a reminder that the average lifespans quoted for the 18th century were pulled down heavily by deaths in infancy and childhood; adults who survived those years often lived well into old age. His long life also gave him a perspective few founders shared: he lived to see his son elected president in 1824 and the young country grow far beyond the 13 original states.

Adams compared with modern Americans

The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration's data begin with Americans born in 1896, more than a century and a half after Adams. Even so, they offer useful context. American men born in 1896 averaged about 171.1 cm (5′7.4″), nearly identical to Adams's estimated height. American men born in 1996 average about 177.1 cm (5′9.7″), roughly 7 cm taller than Adams.

That means a man of Adams's height today would be somewhat below average, at roughly the 15th to 20th percentile for American men, while in his own time he was close to the middle. You can see the full century of change on the average height in the United States page or check where 170 cm falls today with the 170 cm to feet page.

Why Adams's height matters to historians

Adams's height is a small detail, but it illustrates a larger point about the early United States. Economic historians use 18th-century heights as a measure of living standards, and the evidence suggests that ordinary Americans of Adams's era were well fed by the standards of the time, taller than their European counterparts. In that context, Adams was a typical American of his generation. His colleagues Washington and Jefferson were the outliers.

His physique and the "His Rotundity" nickname also show how early American politics, like modern politics, often turned on personal image. Adams's short, stout frame contrasted with the tall, dignified figures of Washington and Jefferson, and his opponents made the most of it. To compare the founding presidents side by side, use the height comparison tool.