Adelaide was the youngest offspring of Joshua Johnson and his English wife, Catherine Young Newth, and was born in London following the Johnsons' return to England from Nantes, France after the Revolution. As several of her sisters, she almost certainly had a middle name, but it was not recorded in any documents found to date. She was baptized on 6 Jan 1789 at All Hallows, Barking By the Tower, the Johnson's parish church after their return from Nantes in 1783, and their home then No. 8 Cooper's Row, a short walk from the church.

The b/w photo of her portrait**, as shown, from the Frick Museum archive, appears to have been painted when she was perhaps about six years old, and is confirmed as authentic, having been passed down in the Moody family to her second great granddaughter. It may have been painted in about 1794 in London by American artist Edward Savage, two other Johnson family portraits also painted by him in that period. It is noted as heavily restored and overpainted, but the actual painting of Adelaide with red-brown hair and brown eyes. The painting's description as of the "American school - Maryland" is supportive of its painting by Savage. Also see attached in the gallery the circa 1792 miniature portrait of her (color copy), much less sophisticated, but known painted in London, and in which she is wearing what appears a similar dress. Interestingly, both portraits are largely as she appeared to her first cousin, and later husband, Walter Hellen Jr., when they first met in London, he arriving there in 1792 and residing with the Johnson family for perhaps four years. From this early portrait, and also inferred from images of her older sisters, one can easily imagine she became a very lovely young woman.

The Johnson family returned to the US (port of arrival, Philadelphia) in Oct/Nov of 1797 aboard the vessel Holland, for Adelaide and her siblings, their first time in this county. They traveled overland to Washington, arriving on 25 Nov 1797, and took up residence in Georgetown. Upon her father's death in 1802, she, her older unmarried sisters, and her mother were all taken in the Georgetown home of her brother-in-law, Walter Hellen Jr., married to her eldest sister, Nancy. Adelaide remained in that household through Nancy's death in 1810, her mother's in 1811, and thereafter with Walter and his children up until her marriage to him on 14 Oct 1813 in Washington.

Per some undocumented sources she was a young widow with a child at the time of her marriage to Walter, that precise description now suspect and perhaps only partially correct. See closing notes below. Walter and Adelaide had one confirmed son, Walter IV, born in 1814, and Adelaide later had a second "Hellen" child, Georgiana Adelaide, clearly not Walter's as the birth was far too long after his death. Recent research (2014) based on surviving Johnson/Adams family correspondence and the diaries of her sister, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, record that the father of that daughter was Col George Boyd, her brother-in-law. He had returned from Europe in 1817 and was afterwards in Georgetown for a time, later moving to northern VA. Georgiana's birth has now been confirmed as 27 Sept 1818, nine months after his residence there. Adelaide spent the summer of 1818 in York, PA, where Georgiana was born, assumed there primarily to minimize knowledge of the pregnancy and birth. Boyd departed northern Virginia for Wisconsin in 1819, appointed as an Indian Agent, returned east briefly, and made his final departure with his family in March of 1820. His marriage to Adelaide's sister, Harriett, was noted as "troubled", and she must have certainly been aware of Georgiana, but surviving records tell us little more except that Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams expressed her "innumerable irritations" with Boyd over years.

An interesting footnote to this account is that in the winter of 1818, Adelaide early in her pregnancy, President Monroe's youngest brother, widower Joseph Jones Monroe, much her senior, "offered" to marry her, he obviously then unaware of her condition. The "offer" was declined, Louisa Adams also noting her disapproval (aside from all else) as not "a good match". Adelaide never remarried.

Also see the bio attached to Walter's memorial, link to her noted daughter, Georgiana and her family, and notes below on the marker in Rock Creek Cemetery for additional information.

After a lawsuit against her deceased husband's estate, she came to inherit the plot in Rock Creek Cemetery where Walter was buried in 1815 with his first wife, Nancy Johnson, plus four of their offspring, and Nancy and Adelaide's mother, Catherine Young Nuth Johnson. She then had several more of her family interred there afterwards, up until her death, a listing of twelve family names, plus one unconfirmed, inscribed on the single marker as follows:

Inscriptions on the "obelisk" marking the plot, in known order of interment (two additional offspring of Walter and Nancy also interred here, but without inscriptions - see links):

Washington Hellen, 1805

Walter Hellen III, 1806

Anne "Nancy" Johnson Hellen, 1810

Catherine Young Newth Johnson, 1811 – not buried with her husband Joshua for some reason.

Walter Hellen Jr., 1815

Interments made there by Adelaide after Walter's death, and limited to her immediate family, with one exception; her stepson Thomas Johnson Hellen 1809-1833, who she allowed to be interred there, but has no inscription - see links.

Eugene Joseph Moody, 1840 – Adelaide's grandson by Georgiana

Thomas Baker Johnson, 1843 – her lifelong bachelor brother

Walter Thomas Hellen, 1850 - no date inscribed

William Stevens Smith – no date inscribed – see note below*

Adelaide Maria Moody - 1862

Georgiana Adelaide Hellen Moody, 1863 – see link

Adelaide Johnson Hellen, 1877

And finally, her son-in-law, who inherited the plot upon her death, Walter Hellen IV's inscription immediately above his:

Theodore Lyman Moody, 1878

Adelaide's will was written on 6 May 1871 in which she noted her health as poor, yet lived another six years. She appears not to have changed it before her death, leaving everything to her immediate, and linear, surviving family members, and her son-in-law.

The cemetery records note Adelaide's internment on August 14th, three days following her death. Her inscription notes her age as 88, a one year discrepancy from her confirmed birth and death dates.

She lived a very long life for the time, as a widow for over sixty years, not the thirty noted in her obituary, and died a very rich women, with real estate alone worth nearly three times the total of her late husband's estate in 1815, those gains, it appears, at least in part due her own business acumen. Upon her death, she had outlived all her siblings, her children, her stepchildren, and all but one of her grandchildren. How happy a life she had, we will now never know.

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* William Stevens Smith cannot be positively identified and no date of birth or death is inscribed. As his name is below that of Thomas Baker Johnson on one face of the marker, about all that can be surmised is that he died after 1843, but with names carved on all the available space on the maker, it could have been later, after Georgiana in 1863, but assumed before Adelaide herself, she likely having him interred her, not her son-in-law.

Recent research (2018) makes a very strong, yet circumstantial, case that he was Adelaide's son, born about 1811, but not in a first marriage, which now appears never to have happened, but as a result of an affair at age about twenty-three with a much older man, Colonel William Stevens Smith, close to the Joshua Johnson family and an Adams family in-law, and who she had known since childhood in London. John Adams is noted as reprimanding Smith, his son-in-law, repeatedly over years for his frequent abandonment of his family and other "questionable" behavior. Another possibility is that the father of this speculative son, was Smith's equally unprincipled oldest son, William Steuben Smith, who later married (under duress) Adelaide's sister Catherine "Kitty" Johnson in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1813, she appearing already pregnant. That marriage also failed miserably. If William Stevens was the father, then the child was named for him, a common convention of the time. Both possibilities remain informed speculation, however, and are unlikely to ever be confirmed without a detailed DNA analysis (problematic with both a father and son as candidates), so should not be recorded as fact.

Allan Garner - Rev: Apr 23, 2024.

** Many thanks to contributor Tom Nichols who found the Frick archive records of her portrait and generously shared them. Unfortunately, the b/w photo was taken, it appears, about 1947 for record, no color version is known available, and the current location of the portrait unknown.