Abigail Marston

Origins

She was born in 1877, the year carved on her headstone at Beecher's Hope. Her early life is known only from what she and John say about it in 1911, in Red Dead Redemption: she grew up an orphan and worked as a prostitute before she joined the gang. The games never name her parents, her birthplace or the places where she worked.

Uncle brought her into the Van der Linde gang around 1894, about five years before the events of 1899. She became the partner of John Marston, one of the young outlaws raised by Dutch van der Linde, and gave up prostitution. Their son, Jack, was born around 1895, when she was about eighteen. When Jack was still a baby, John left the gang for about a year, then came back; Dutch and Hosea Matthews took him in again, while Arthur Morgan held the desertion against him. In 1899, during "The Battle of Shady Belle", John admits to Arthur that he treated Jack and Abigail badly and that he did not want to believe the boy was his.

By 1899, Abigail and John are a couple in all but name: they are not married, and they argue openly about John's place in Jack's life. Abigail travels with the gang's other women and with Jack, who grows up calling the men of the camp his uncles. In the weeks before Red Dead Redemption 2 begins, the gang is based in Blackwater, in West Elizabeth. A ferry robbery there turns into a shootout with Pinkerton agents, and the gang flees north into the mountains with its wounded. John is among those who were shot. The game does not say where Abigail and Jack were during the robbery itself.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (1899)

Chapter 1: Colter

"Outlaws from the West" opens with the gang's wagons crossing the mountains in a snowstorm. Reverend Swanson tells Dutch that Abigail says Davey Callander is dying and that they must stop. The gang shelters in Colter, an abandoned mining town in Ambarino. Abigail walks into the main cabin ahead of Bill and Arthur, who carry Davey on a stretcher, and she is the one who announces that he is dead. John is still missing: he had been sent out to scout and has not come back.

In "Enter, Pursued by a Memory", John has not been seen for two days. Abigail is sitting by the fire with Tilly Jackson and Mary-Beth Gaskill; when Tilly says John is strong and smart, Abigail only grants the first point. She stands up when Arthur comes in, apologizes for asking, and asks him to look for John. Arthur mocks John and is in no hurry to go. Hosea tells him to at least take a look, and points out that everyone, Abigail first, is worried. Hosea then asks Javier Escuella to ride with him, and Javier agrees. Abigail thanks them both as they leave.

Arthur and Javier find John on a ledge, his face torn by wolves, and bring him back to Colter. Abigail opens the cabin door and cries out with relief that he is alive. Bill and Lenny Summers carry him to a bed, and she follows, saying they need to get him warm. She thanks Arthur and Javier, then turns to John and tells him that he has sunk lower than ever, even for him. At the start of "Who the Hell is Leviticus Cornwall?", she brings Jack to see his bedridden father. John asks whether she came to see him too; she replies that she was hoping to find a corpse, calls him a rotten man after his answer, and leads the boy out. Dutch sides with her and calls John an idiot.

Abigail takes no part in the robbery of Leviticus Cornwall's train. Once the storm passes, the gang leaves the mountains. In "Eastward Bound", Abigail and Charles Smith help the injured John into the back of a wagon while Pearson loads supplies. Hosea suggests a camp at Horseshoe Overlook, near Valentine, and the gang heads east. When they arrive, Abigail joins the group that gathers around Susan Grimshaw to set up the new camp, while Dutch and Arthur talk at a table.

Chapter 2: Horseshoe Overlook

At Horseshoe Overlook, the couple argue often in camp, mostly because John keeps his distance from Jack, and the boy suffers from the tension. Two of these exchanges end with Abigail slapping John.

In "A Fisher of Men", Abigail calls Arthur over and asks him for a favor: Jack seems down, and all the moving about cannot have been easy on him. Arthur jokes about being her preferred nursemaid. She answers that the boy likes him and that his father is useless, and Arthur agrees to take Jack fishing on the Dakota River with the rod Hosea made him. At the river, Agents Andrew Milton and Edgar Ross of the Pinkerton agency interrupt them and offer Arthur a deal against Dutch. Back at camp, Abigail greets the two with a cheerful question. Jack gives her a flower necklace he made, and she asks him whether he thanked Uncle Arthur.

Once Jack has gone, Abigail notices Arthur's expression and asks him what is wrong. He tells her only that he met some people, and goes straight to Dutch's tent to report the Pinkertons. She lets him go without pressing.

Chapter 3: Clemens Point

The gang then moves south to Clemens Point, on the shore of Flat Iron Lake in Lemoyne. At the campfire there, Abigail tells the others how hard it is to be a mother in the gang: she can put up with the insults and the names, but not with being pitied or looked down on. Drunk at the poker table with Javier, John says he wishes she would leave him alone.

At Clemens Point, Dutch and Hosea set two rival families, the Braithwaites and the Grays, against each other. Abigail starts "Advertising, The New American Art" by telling Arthur that Hosea is waiting for him at the stash of stolen moonshine. The scheme collapses in Rhodes, where Sean is killed in an ambush. When Arthur gets back to camp from that ambush ("A Short Walk in a Pretty Town"), Abigail tells him, at the start of "Blood Feuds, Ancient and Modern", that Jack has disappeared. The gang decides that the Braithwaites have taken the boy to get even for the theft of their prized horses. Dutch promises Abigail that he will bring her son back. Dutch, Arthur, Hosea, John, Charles, Bill, Javier and Lenny ride to Braithwaite Manor; Micah and Kieran are left behind to watch the camp.

The gang kills the Braithwaite men and burns the manor, but Jack is not there. Catherine Braithwaite finally reveals that her sons handed the boy over to Angelo Bronte, a crime boss in Saint Denis. Abigail is deeply distraught when the gang returns without her son. The next morning, in "The Battle of Shady Belle", Dutch and Hosea try to reassure John, who fears what Abigail will do if the boy is not brought back safe. Milton and Ross then walk into camp. Milton offers the others three days to disappear if Dutch gives himself up. The gang refuses, and Dutch moves everyone to Shady Belle, an abandoned plantation house in the bayou that John and Arthur clear of Lemoyne Raiders.

Chapter 4: Saint Denis

The chapter opens at Shady Belle with Jack still missing. Abigail is frantic and turns her anger on the men of the gang, who failed to protect one small boy.

In "Angelo Bronte, A Man of Honor", Dutch, Arthur and John visit Bronte's mansion in Saint Denis. Bronte agrees to return Jack in exchange for a favor, and John and Arthur clear grave robbers out of the city cemetery. Dutch, Arthur and John bring the boy back to Shady Belle, where Abigail rushes to him and the gang throws a party for his return. That evening, John asks her and Jack to share his room and live as a family, and she accepts.

From then on, Dutch grows suspicious of her. In camp conversations during the chapter, he presses John on where his loyalty lies. In "Country Pursuits", riding to Lagras with Arthur, he complains that nobody trusts him any more except Micah, and accuses Abigail of turning John against him. Meanwhile, Abigail works with Hosea on the plan to rob the Lemoyne National Bank. According to Hosea, she posed as a representative of a New England real estate firm while the two of them scouted the town, and she hid an explosive device to be set off on the day of the robbery. At the planning table, Hosea walks Dutch through the diversion the two of them will create.

Before the robbery, Shady Belle comes under attack. In "Horsemen, Apocalypses", Kieran Duffy, who disappeared during Jack's party, is sent back into camp dead on a horse, and the O'Driscolls attack the house. The camp's non-fighting members take shelter indoors: Abigail takes cover in the house with Jack, Mary-Beth, Leopold Strauss and Susan Grimshaw, while Dutch posts John, Charles and Arthur at positions inside the house. In "Banking, The Old American Art", Hosea and Abigail ride ahead and set off the explosion a few blocks from the bank to draw the police away, while the rest of the gang walks in through the front doors.

The diversion works, but the Pinkertons surround the bank while the gang is inside. Milton has caught Hosea during the diversion; Abigail has got away and is not seen again during the mission. Milton holds Hosea in the street, then shoots him in the chest. The gang escapes over the rooftops. John is seized by the Pinkertons and later sent to Sisika Penitentiary, and Lenny is shot dead on a roof. With Charles's help, Dutch, Arthur, Micah, Bill and Javier get away on a ship. Abigail makes it back to camp on her own.

Chapter 5: Guarma

Abigail does not go to Guarma. While the ship's passengers are wrecked on the island, the members left behind move from Shady Belle to Lakay, an abandoned settlement in the bayou. In "A Kind and Benevolent Despot", on Guarma, Dutch wonders aloud why Hosea and Lenny were killed at the bank while John was only arrested and Abigail got away. In "Fleeting Joy", the last part of the chapter, Arthur reaches Lakay, followed by Micah and Javier, then Dutch, then Bill. Strauss tells Dutch that those who stayed behind owe their survival mostly to Sadie Adler. Abigail says that the group recovered the two bodies from the city morgue and gave them a burial; the graves lie side by side in Bluewater Marsh.

The reunion is cut short when Milton's Pinkertons surround Lakay and open fire with a machine gun. Arthur, Sadie and Bill drive them back. Afterwards, Dutch asks for time to decide what comes next. When Abigail raises John's imprisonment and the talk of hanging him, Dutch says it will have to wait. She turns to Arthur and Sadie instead; both agree to get John out, and Sadie takes charge of the plan. In "That's Murfree Country", Arthur and Charles find the gang a new camp at Beaver Hollow, in Roanoke Ridge, and the gang moves north.

Chapter 6: Beaver Hollow

On the day of the breakout, in "Visiting Hours", Abigail asks Arthur and Sadie at Copperhead Landing to take her along. They turn her down, saying they would have to look after her too, and she lets them go with her thanks. Arthur and Sadie row to Sisika, take a guard hostage and force the prison to release John. Abigail embraces John with relief when he reaches Beaver Hollow. Dutch is displeased, says he had a plan of his own, and warns that the law will now come for all of them.

John and Arthur want the Marstons out of the gang, and Abigail, worried for Jack, starts searching for the place where Dutch hides the gang's money. In "The Bridge to Nowhere" John tells Arthur that she thinks she knows where it is. Arthur asks to be told once she is sure. Arthur, who learns during this period that he has tuberculosis, can ask Sadie a favor in "Mrs. Sadie Adler, Widow" if he agrees to help her: that she help John, Abigail and Jack get away when the time comes.

Most of the gang robs an army payroll train in "Our Best Selves". During the job John is shot and falls from the train, and Dutch and Micah later tell Arthur that he "didn't make it". Meanwhile, Milton's men grab Abigail outside camp, where she is with Tilly and Jack; it happens too fast for her to do anything. Tilly hides with Jack. At the start of "Red Dead Redemption", Tilly tells the returning gang that Milton has taken Abigail to Van Horn, to be put on a boat and tried for murder. Micah argues that without John she is only bait, and Dutch agrees and rides back to Beaver Hollow with most of the others. Arthur refuses to let Jack be made an orphan. He gives Tilly money, tells her to wait with Jack at Copperhead Landing for Abigail and Sadie, and leaves for Van Horn with Sadie.

From the lighthouse at Van Horn, Arthur watches through a sniper scope as Milton takes Abigail into the trading post. Sadie advances through the town until Milton's men seize her too. Arthur fights his way down, kills the agents holding the two women and is cutting Abigail free when Milton holds a gun to his back. Milton taunts the dying Arthur and reveals that Micah has been informing for the Pinkertons. Arthur grabs for Milton's revolver but is too weak to turn it. Abigail breaks free, takes Sadie's revolver and shoots Milton in the temple, calling him a horrible man. She cuts Sadie loose with Arthur's knife and urges them both to move.

Abigail's first question outside is about Jack; Sadie tells her that Tilly has him. Sadie lets her ride her horse, and the three fight off the agents chasing them while Abigail curses their pursuers. On the road, she asks Arthur about John. Arthur tells her that John was either killed or captured during the train robbery and that he did not see it. She breaks down. Arthur tells her that John loved her and Jack, imperfect as he was, and that she must go and get the boy with Mrs. Adler. He says he has to go and have a little chat before he gets much sicker. Abigail gives him the key to Dutch's chest, hidden under a wagon at the back of the caves below Beaver Hollow, and tells him she has no use for it now.

Abigail adds, as a joke, that she always had a talent for stealing, and Arthur agrees. Sadie takes her to Copperhead Landing, where Tilly is waiting with Jack. Arthur rides back to Beaver Hollow and tells the gang that Abigail has shot Milton and is safe, and that Micah was close to the agent. John, who survived his fall from the train, then arrives and accuses Dutch of leaving him to die. The camp splits, and the Pinkertons attack. Once Arthur and John have climbed out of the caves, Arthur tells John that Abigail and Jack are with Sadie at Copperhead Landing. Later he raises the money Abigail gave him the key to, and John answers that his family matters more. John then escapes and reaches Copperhead Landing, where Abigail and Jack are waiting with Sadie and Tilly. Arthur dies in all four of the game's endings.

Red Dead Redemption 2: the epilogue (1907)

After Beaver Hollow, the Marstons head for the Yukon, where the Klondike gold rush is under way, hoping to earn enough to buy land. The venture fails, and they come back without having struck it rich. For the next years they move from place to place across the north, rarely staying more than a few weeks; John keeps giving away who he is, and the couple's relationship becomes badly strained. In 1907, a few months before the epilogue opens, John kills a man in Roanoke Ridge, and the family takes to the road again. One of John's journal entries from this time records that Jack does not like him and that Abigail cannot stand him.

Epilogue I: Pronghorn Ranch

"The Wheel" opens with the family crossing Big Valley by wagon, Jack in the back. Abigail reproaches John for the shooting that forced them to move again, and asks him to try to live somewhere for longer than a few weeks. She chooses Strawberry because she has heard that its people are honest and hard working. In town, John takes the name Jim Milton and a delivery job for Pronghorn Ranch, while Abigail finds work cleaning the doctor's office. At the ranch, the foreman Tom Dickens agrees to put in a word for John after he recovers a stolen wagon, and the family is given a small cabin on the edge of the property.

In "Simple Pleasures", Abigail and Jack arrive at the ranch from Strawberry by wagon, and a ranch hand helps them unpack. John has asked the hand Abe not to mention his fight with the Laramie Gang the day before. Inside, Abigail tells John that taking such risks puts the family in danger; he answers that the chase is what got him the job. That evening, she tells him she is tired of running and wants to settle down. In "Farming, For Beginners", she tells him over breakfast that she has a job at the doctor's office. In "Fatherhood, For Beginners", after John turns down Mrs. Geddes's invitation by saying he is married, Abigail persuades him to take Jack riding on a pony borrowed from Duncan Geddes.

In "Old Habits", the leader of the Laramie Gang and two of his men harass Abe one morning. John fights the leader and is about to finish him when Abigail stops him. The leader turns his insults on her and promises to return. Once the riders have gone, Abigail is furious: John had promised her there would be no more violence. In "Fatherhood, For Idiots", John complains that all his skills are criminal ones. To cheer him up, Abigail mentions a piece of land called Beecher's Hope that they could buy with a bank loan and be happy; it was Jack who told her the land was for sale. John replies that a man with a price on his head cannot get a loan, and their argument upsets Jack.

Abigail asks John to collect a parcel for her in Strawberry. At the post office, he is forced to give his real name and hers. On the way back, three riders confront him over the man killed in Roanoke Ridge, and John kills all three; Jack, who sees the bodies, panics. Back at the cabin, Jack pushes past his mother and storms inside. John admits that someone who knew him shot at them. After an argument, he shouts that her parcel caused the trouble; she answers that it was not for her but a gift for him. In "Jim Milton Rides, Again?", the Laramies raid the ranch at night and John helps take back the cattle at Hanging Dog Ranch. On his return, Abigail is angry that he got involved; John answers that he was doing his job.

In "Motherhood", John receives a telegram from Sadie asking him to meet her in Valentine, and goes back to the cabin to tell Abigail. She and Jack have gone. Her letter says she has begged him to grow up, that they have had to run time after time because of his behavior and his decisions, and that she loves their son too much to keep him near John while he is like this. She has left him a shirt as a gift, which becomes part of his Rancher Outfit. Tom Dickens, who saw the two leave with their luggage, asks John who he really is; John answers that he is a family man. Over the following months, John keeps working at the ranch, then asks David Geddes to help him buy land at Beecher's Hope, so he can prove to Abigail that he has changed. Geddes sends him to a distant cousin, the Blackwater banker Ansel Atherton. With the loan, John buys Beecher's Hope, in the Great Plains, and runs into Uncle, who decides to help him build the ranch.

Epilogue II: Beecher's Hope

Abigail is absent from the first half of the second part of the epilogue. In "Bare Knuckle Friendships", John finds Charles in Saint Denis, and Charles joins him and Uncle at the ranch. In "A New Jerusalem", once the house is finished, John writes to Abigail: he tells her about the land, the house and his reunion with Charles and Uncle, says he has changed, and tells her he misses her and Jack. In "The Best of Women", on the day John and Charles bring Uncle back from the Skinner Brothers' camp, Abigail and Jack arrive at the ranch. They are impressed by the house. They bring a dog with them, Rufus.

The family settles in. In "Trying Again", John takes Jack fishing; Rufus is bitten by a snake, and John sucks the venom from its leg. When Jack, back at the house, says they should never have gone, John and Abigail reassure him that the dog will be fine in a few days. At the start of "A Really Big Bastard", John finds Abigail knitting in the living room and asks whether she is pleased with his work; she says she is, and jokes that she has not forgiven him. Jack then calls them out to the porch: Sadie has arrived. Abigail, who has not seen her for eight years, invites her to lunch.

On the porch, Sadie explains that she works as a bounty hunter and hired gun, and offers John a job she describes as safe, legal and well paid. Abigail says no for him, until it comes out that John has been taking bounties since she left. John says he needed the money and that it was the only work his skills allowed. Abigail objects to the danger and to the example it sets for Jack. When Sadie adds that she has been tracking Micah Bell since he came back to West Elizabeth, Abigail is even more opposed to that, and Sadie apologizes. Abigail finally lets John go after the bounty, an accountant named Marshall Thurwell, on condition that he comes home safe and leaves Micah alone.

On the ride to Tall Trees, John tells Sadie that he intends to propose to Abigail with the ring Arthur once offered to Mary Linton. In "A New Future Imagined", Abigail is first seen scolding Uncle for his poor work. Duncan and Angus Geddes then deliver furniture to thank John for saving Pronghorn Ranch from the Laramies. John and Abigail spend the day in Blackwater: they have their photograph taken at Benjamin P. Lockhart's studio and watch a moving picture at the Imperial Theatre, which Abigail says is her first. They borrow a canoe and row out onto the lake, where John proposes. Abigail says yes. At dawn the next day, John gets up without waking her and goes out to watch the sun rise.

"American Venom" begins at dinner time. When Uncle asks Abigail what they are eating, she tells him to cook it himself, and John says it is not a bad idea. Sadie then rides up: she has found a lead on Micah, one of his men seen drinking in Strawberry. Abigail answers that John is not coming. When Charles agrees to go, she tells him that this is his business and that John's business is at home. John says he will ride with Sadie. Abigail follows him inside as he collects his weapons and begs him not to risk everything they have for Micah. John answers that the ranch would not exist without Arthur, Sadie and those who died along the way, and that he has no choice. She is sobbing when the three ride out.

On Mount Hagen, John kills Micah with Dutch's help and finds most of the Blackwater ferry money in Micah's cabin. When he rides back to the ranch with Sadie and Charles, Abigail calls Jack and Uncle outside. John tells her it is all over, and she laughs with joy and hugs him. The money pays off the loan, and the closing credits show John and Abigail's wedding and their first dance, with Jack, Uncle, Sadie and Charles present. Charles and Sadie later leave the ranch. Edgar Ross and Archer Fordham examine Micah's body on the mountain, find no trace of the money and end up watching John and Jack in the corral from a distance, through binoculars.

In the scene after the credits, Abigail tells John that since he has bought this millstone around their necks, they had better keep the place running. When he starts to talk about the money that paid their debts, she cuts him off: she does not want to hear about it. She tells him to get to work on the ranch he owns and to raise his son, and asks whether his answer is sarcastic. When John says he thought she liked the place, she answers that she does not like it, she loves it, because it is home. The ranch then works much like a camp: Abigail makes the family's dinners and reminds John of the chores that keep the property in good condition.

Red Dead Redemption (1911)

Between 1907 and 1911, the Marstons work Beecher's Hope as a ranch, with Uncle living with them. In 1911, John tells Bonnie MacFarlane that he has been farming for three years or so, and, in "Women and Cattle", that he is married, has a son, and had a daughter who died. The game gives neither the daughter's name, nor the year of her birth, nor the cause of her death. In 1911, agents of the newly created Bureau of Investigation, led by Edgar Ross, take Abigail and Jack away from the ranch. The Bureau holds them to force John to track down Bill Williamson, Javier Escuella and Dutch van der Linde.

Act I: New Austin

Abigail does not appear during the first act. In "Exodus in America", John arrives in Blackwater on the ferry, and Ross and Fordham walk him to the train for Armadillo, in New Austin, where his first target, Bill, holds Fort Mercer. Shot during his first approach to the fort, John recovers at MacFarlane's Ranch and builds a posse with Marshal Leigh Johnson, Nigel West Dickens, Seth Briars and Irish. When the fort falls, Bill is not there: he has left for Mexico to join Javier.

Act II: Nuevo Paraíso

In Mexico, John's family comes up in his exchanges with the men he hunts and the agents who hold her. In "The Gates of El Presidio", John tells Abraham Reyes that he wants to go home, work his land and grow old with his wife. If John captures Javier alive, Javier tells him that Abigail would not want this; John answers that she would already have killed him, because she always thought he was a creep. Whether Javier is captured or killed, Ross and Fordham then meet John, and Ross tells him that his wife sends her regards. Bill dies near Escalera at the end of "An Appointed Time". The Bureau still keeps Abigail and Jack.

Act III: West Elizabeth

Back in Blackwater, in "Bear One Another's Burdens", John asks Fordham where his wife and son are. Fordham says they are being well looked after. Ross refuses to say more, and later tells John that his wife and son are doing well and that they should both make sure it stays that way. On the drive to the wreck of the Serendipity, Ross talks about motorcars, moving pictures and the aeroplanes to come, and says it would be a shame for John's wife to experience it all as a widow. At the end of the day, John asks him how it feels to take a man's wife and child. In "Great Men are Not Always Wise", Dutch asks John how Abigail is, then tells the lawmen around them that John married a prostitute who used to ride with the gang.

In "And You Will Know The Truth", John accuses the government of enforcing its civilization by kidnapping a man's wife and son, and Ross again refuses to let him see his family. In "And The Truth Will Set You Free", Ross points out that the only person left who could appeal to Dutch is John's wife. At Cochinay, Dutch dismisses Abigail and Jack with insults when John explains that the government holds his family. After Dutch's death, John asks Ross where his family is. Ross first says that Abigail was killed in a prison riot the week before, and when John aims his gun at him, says he was joking: Abigail and Jack have been sent back to Beecher's Hope, safe and sound.

Return to Beecher's Hope

In "The Outlaw's Return", John walks into the yard and calls for his family. Abigail comes out and starts hitting him, calling him a no-good hillbilly: she thought he was dead. She asks whether he saw Dutch and Bill, and whether he went back to them; he says he left that life just as she left hers. About her captivity, she tells him she can take care of herself: one guard got too familiar once, she was not ladylike about it, and nobody tried again. She tells him that Jack has grown up like a child without a father. She says they tried to change; he answers that they did, and that it is over now. They embrace. When John asks whether she has learned to cook, she says that the agents kept her in a cooking school for young ladies rather than a prison.

In "Pestilence", John finds her in the kitchen. She jokes that she has been cooking the same dish for fifteen years in the hope of poisoning him, admits she was never much of a cook but tried to be a good wife, and says that, given where they came from, they have done well. Looking at Jack, she feels blessed and hopes he can become something more. She adds that he will not marry an orphaned working girl running with hucksters; John answers that he hopes he does, if she is like Abigail. She then sees crows breaking into the silo and eating the corn, and tells John to go and deal with them.

In "Old Friends, New Problems", Abigail brings John a telegram from "some lady friend" of his, a Bonnie, and asks what he is not telling her. She cannot read it herself and makes him read it aloud: weevils and moths have destroyed the county's corn, and Bonnie asks for sacks of it. Abigail tells him to go and help Bonnie, who saved his life, and her family, then changes her mind as he loads the wagon and rides with him to Hennigan's Stead. On the way she questions him about Bonnie's looks and whether she is married. She also tells him that during her captivity she was blindfolded on the way there and back, that the agents soon learned not to lay a finger on her, and that the waiting was the hardest part, because she began to think he had gone back to Dutch and Bill.

At MacFarlane's Ranch, John introduces Abigail to Bonnie. Abigail thanks her for saving her husband's life and for teaching him some manners; Bonnie answers that she knew better than to try to change a man, and Abigail replies that people can change, and that she and John have to believe it more than anyone. The two women tease John together. On the ride home, Abigail says she likes Bonnie and that she is glad she saved his life. She then doubts that their past will leave them alone, and expects the government to decide that John owes it something else. They talk about Jack, who is angry and, John says, hides in his books; Abigail does not know what to tell him when he asks about "Uncle Bill and Uncle Dutch", who were his family when he was little. Back home, she kisses John and goes to make dinner.

In "The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed", Uncle spots soldiers and lawmen riding toward Beecher's Hope. John sends Jack inside to keep the doors locked and his mother indoors. After the first wave, Abigail asks John what they will do now. Uncle is shot on the porch and dies after telling John to get Abigail and Jack away. John tells them to get the horses ready in the barn, and the three run there under fire. In the barn, he puts Jack and Abigail on a horse and tells them to ride and not look back. She tells him to stay out of trouble, they tell each other they love one another, and she kisses him before they leave by the back door.

John walks out of the barn to face Ross's men and is shot down. When the gunfire stops, Abigail tells Jack that they have to go back for his father. They find John dead in front of the barn. Abigail weeps over her husband, holding on to Jack. The two bury John on the hill above the ranch, next to Uncle. His headstone reads "Blessed are the Peacemakers". The game then shows nothing of Abigail's life as a widow between 1911 and 1914.

1914

The story jumps to 1914, three years after John's death. Jack, now an adult, stands at a fresh grave on the hill at Beecher's Hope: Abigail has died. The game does not give the cause of her death. Jack buries her next to John and Uncle, puts on his father's hat and leaves the ranch; he goes on to find and kill Edgar Ross. Abigail's headstone reads "Abigail Marston", the years 1877 and 1914, and the words "Always in our hearts". She died at about thirty-seven.

Undead Nightmare (outside the canon)

Undead Nightmare, an expansion released in 2010, is not part of the series' canon. It is set at Beecher's Hope while John, Abigail, Jack and Uncle are all alive. In "Love in the Time of Plague", John comes home on a stormy night, uneasy. He asks where Uncle is; Abigail thought the two of them had been together, and she is not worried: Uncle, she says, can look after himself. The family has dinner without him. Afterwards, Jack talks about the book he is reading, a story about the ancient Aztecs and a curse that brings a plague. Abigail has no time for such stories, and the family goes to bed.

During the night, Uncle walks into the bedroom covered in blood and lunges at John, who beats him with a lamp. Abigail looks away from the body in disgust. While John runs to the barn for his gun, Uncle gets up, chases Abigail out of the house and bites her. John shoots Uncle in the head. Jack comes out, ignores his father's warning and runs to his mother; Abigail has turned, and she bites him. John lassoes and hogties his wife and son. He leaves them a plate of food before locking them in the house and riding to Blackwater in search of a cure. A player who later looks through the bedroom window can see them there, still tied up.

John's search takes him across West Elizabeth, New Austin and Nuevo Paraíso. In "A Civilized Man", he kills an undead Abraham Reyes in Escalera and returns a stolen mask to its altar in the catacombs beneath the town. The young woman who guided him reveals that she is Ayauhtéotl and tells him to go back to his family. In "On a Pale Horse", John returns to Beecher's Hope and finds his wife and son still tied up but no longer infected, and holds them. Three months later, Seth steals the mask again. By then John has died, and the plague raises him from his grave. An in-game message explains that his wife and son buried him with a flask of water he treasured, without knowing its power.

Rockstar's character description, published on September 6, 2018, reads: "An orphan who grew up scraping out a living in dive bars and brothels in the West, Abigail is a strong, straight-talking woman who has seen a lot of life and knows what it takes to survive against the odds." Red Dead Redemption 2: The Complete Official Guide calls her "John's romantic partner and the watchful mother of Jack" and says she worked as a prostitute "from a very young age". The guide's character biography page adds "single-minded" to the description and says of her son: "Her young son Jack is her great pride and purpose. She is determined to give him a better and more loving childhood than she ever had, even if it is an unconventional one."

In 1899 she argues with John in the open, at camp and in front of the gang, about his lack of interest in Jack. She is just as blunt with others: she gives Molly O'Shea and the grieving Sadie Adler hard truths, and refuses outright when Susan Grimshaw tells her to go back to her old trade. These scenes are told under Relationships.

Her letter of 1907 links her love for John to her refusal to keep watching him live as he does: "loving you means I can't watch you do this". She jokes about her own cooking more than once.

In her own words

When John is carried back to Colter in "Enter, Pursued by a Memory", she tells him: "This is a new low, even by your standards." Later at Colter, in "Who the Hell is Leviticus Cornwall?", he asks what she hoped to see when she came in with Jack, and she answers: "Guess I was hoping to see a corpse." In "Red Dead Redemption", handing Arthur the key to Dutch's chest, she says: "I always was a good thief." After the end credits of "American Venom", John asks whether she likes the ranch: "No, John, I don't like it... I love it. It's home."

In 1911, back from the Bureau's custody in "The Outlaw's Return", she tells John: "I can take care of myself, John. One guard got funny on me one time, but I wasn't so ladylike and he didn't try it again, nor no one else." In "Pestilence": "I never was much of a cook, but I did try to be a good wife." In "Old Friends, New Problems" she tells Bonnie MacFarlane: "Oh, people can change, Miss MacFarlane. John and I have to believe that more than anybody." On the ride home she tells John: "The life we led, that doesn't go away. It's never over."

Names

She was born Abigail Roberts. Red Dead Redemption 2 uses that name: Rockstar's 2018 description and the guide's biography page both call her Abigail Roberts. Arthur addresses her by her full name, "Abigail Roberts...", when she gives him the key to Dutch's chest. She becomes Abigail Marston when she marries John at Beecher's Hope in 1907. In 1911 Bonnie MacFarlane calls her "Mrs. Marston", and so does John when he teases her. John calls her "darling" when he comes home in "The Outlaw's Return" and "my angel" in "Pestilence". Her nickname is Abby, and she goes by Agatha Milton at Pronghorn Ranch, where John goes by Jim Milton.

Appearance

In 1899 Abigail has blue eyes and dark brown hair, which she wears in a bun by day and in a long braid at night. The two games do not give her the same height next to John: in Red Dead Redemption he is roughly a head taller, while in Red Dead Redemption 2 the difference is less marked.

In the gang

Abigail is one of the gang members Arthur can play dominoes against: at Horseshoe Overlook in chapter 2 and at Shady Belle in chapter 4. She says she learned the game in a saloon at the age of eight. For the Saint Denis bank job she plays a real estate investor from New England while scouting the bank with Hosea (see Relationships). She is also the one who gets hold of the key to Dutch's money chest. Her weapon in both games is a Cattleman Revolver.

Work, ranch and home

Abigail cannot read: in "Old Friends, New Problems" she hands Bonnie's telegram to John for that reason. The postscript of the letter she leaves at Pronghorn Ranch in 1907 says that a kind lady in the village helped her write it. In Strawberry she takes a job cleaning the doctor's office. After the end credits of "American Venom", she keeps after John to do the ranch chores at Beecher's Hope. In 1911 she cooks for the household. In "Old Friends, New Problems" she rides with John on the wagon that takes the corn sacks to MacFarlane's Ranch.

Horses

Her horse is a red roan Tennessee Walker. In "Red Dead Redemption", Sadie gives Abigail her own horse for the escape from Van Horn. In 1911, in "The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed", John puts her and Jack on a single horse in the barn and sends them out through the back door.

Abigail is involved in 28 story missions of Red Dead Redemption 2, from the arrival at Colter to the wedding at Beecher's Hope, as well as four missions of Red Dead Redemption and three of Undead Nightmare. She gives several of them herself.

Red Dead Redemption 2, chapters 1 to 6

Red Dead Redemption 2, epilogue

Abigail is absent from Beecher's Hope during the first missions of the second epilogue. In "Home Improvement for Beginners", Uncle mocks John's hopes of winning her back; in "A New Jerusalem", John writes her a letter once the house is built. Neither mission shows her.

Red Dead Redemption 2: other activities

Red Dead Redemption

Abigail is held by the Bureau with Jack through most of the game, and appears in person only once John has returned to Beecher's Hope. In "By Sweat and Toil", "A Continual Feast", "John Marston and Son", "Wolves, Dogs and Sons" and "Spare the Love, Spoil the Child", she appears only among the people the player must not harm.

Undead Nightmare (non-canon)

Undead Nightmare is set outside the series' continuity. Two of her three missions take place at Beecher's Hope; the third, in Escalera, ends with John told to go back to his family.

Notable people Abigail kills

Abigail kills a single notable person in the story.

The lines below are given as spoken in the game, in the original English, with the mission and the person addressed. The lines quoted under Personality, in "In her own words", are not repeated here.

Red Dead Redemption 2, chapters 1 and 2

• Davey's dead.

  Outlaws from the West (RDR2, chapter 1), to the gang gathered around Davey Callander's body in the cabin at Colter

• You're a rotten man, John Marston.

  Who the Hell is Leviticus Cornwall? (RDR2, chapter 1), to John; Dutch adds that he is an idiot and that everyone knows it

• Because he likes you and, well... you know his father's useless.

  A Fisher of Men (RDR2, chapter 2), to Arthur, who asks why she chose him to take Jack out; it is one of her two possible answers, the other being that he does what he says

Red Dead Redemption 2, chapter 6

• Horrible man.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), after shooting Milton at Van Horn

• Call yourself men? You pathetic sons of bitches.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), at the Pinkertons firing on Arthur, Sadie and her during the escape from Van Horn

• The bastards grabbed me outside camp... I was with Tilly and Jack... it happened so fast, I couldn't do anything.

  Red Dead Redemption (RDR2, chapter 6), to Sadie, during the same escape

Red Dead Redemption 2, epilogue

• John... I love you. Don't you forget that... not ever now.

  The Wheel (RDR2, epilogue 1), to John

• John, I... I never... I didn't know it mattered to you.

  A New Future Imagined (RDR2, epilogue 2), to John, when he proposes on the lake at Blackwater

• What's for dinner? Away with you, you no good parasite... you cook.

  American Venom (RDR2, epilogue 2), to Uncle, who asks what is for dinner; John says it is not a bad idea

• I'm begging you. No! You'd risk all this? For what? For Micah?!

  American Venom (RDR2, epilogue 2), to John, as he takes his guns to ride after Micah with Sadie and Charles

• Alright, John Marston... since you bought this millstone around our necks, we better try and keep this place going.

  American Venom (RDR2, epilogue 2), to John, on the hill above the ranch after the credits

Red Dead Redemption 2, no mission given

• So, you saved the silly bastard's life then you and him go robbing sheep?

  Red Dead Redemption 2, to Arthur

• I bet that sign says Strawberry, don't it?

  Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption, Act III

• You no-good, hillbilly, piece of shit. I thought you was dead. I thought you was dead, John.

  The Outlaw's Return (RDR1, Act III), to John, hitting him as he arrives at the ranch

• Yes, didn't I say, rather than some prison, they actually kept me incarcerated in a cooking school for young ladies.

  The Outlaw's Return (RDR1, Act III), to John, who hopes she has learned to cook

• The same thing I've been cooking the past 15 years with the hope of poisoning you.

  Pestilence (RDR1, Act III), to John, who asks what she is cooking

• Given what we was and where we came from, I think we've gone and done okay. I look at Jack ...I look at him and, I think we've been blessed. Maybe he can be something more.

  Pestilence (RDR1, Act III), to John, in the kitchen

• And he ain't gonna marry no orphaned working girl running with a bunch of hucksters, neither.

  Pestilence (RDR1, Act III), to John, about Jack; John answers that if Jack meets one like her, he hopes he will marry her

• Stop. For an illiterate gunslinger, you sure know how to make a girl blush.

  Pestilence (RDR1, Act III), to John, in reply to that compliment

• Of Bill? You gotta be kidding me. He was only frightening if you was afraid of dumb fools.

  Old Friends, New Problems (RDR1, Act III), to John, who says people in New Austin were scared of Bill

• A family that left you for dead. You knew the truth, John, and they hated you for it.

  Old Friends, New Problems (RDR1, Act III), to John, who says the gang was still a kind of family

• It ain't the first time I had a gun to my head, John. You're forgettin' your marriage proposal.

  Old Friends, New Problems (RDR1, Act III), to John, who asks whether the government men treated her right; he answers "Very funny."

• I don't know, John. How many times can we start again? An outlaw and a workin' girl. We ain't exactly farmers.

  Old Friends, New Problems (RDR1, Act III), to John, who says they will have a ranch like the MacFarlanes' someday

• You stay out of trouble, John.

  The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed (RDR1, Act III), to John, in the barn; he answers "Ain't no trouble, Abigail. Ain't no trouble. I love you."

• Did you hear that? Jack, we have to go back for Pa!

  The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed (RDR1, Act III), to Jack, as they ride away from the ranch

Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

Her multiplayer model has 14 lines, reproduced here as written. One of them, "You've clearly had one too many blows to the head.", is close to a line she says to John in "Old Friends, New Problems": "You clearly had one too many blows to the head."

• I see you ain't learn no manners.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• I've had enough of this.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• Call yourself a man.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• What's the matter with you?!

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• You really are a strange man.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• You've clearly had one too many blows to the head.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• You damn fool.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• Oh, ain't you quite the gentlemen all the sudden.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer (original spelling)

• You think I'm afraid of you.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• I'll kill you mah self!

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• Oh, like hittin women do you?!

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• Are you completely insane?!

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• You idiot!

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

• Clumsy oaf.

  Red Dead Redemption multiplayer

Casting

In Red Dead Redemption (2010), Abigail is played by Sophia Marzocchi, who provided her voice and motion capture. In Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), the role went to Cali Elizabeth Moore, an American actress who also provided both the voice and the performance capture. Marzocchi is credited on Red Dead Redemption 2 for additional motion capture, and lines recorded by her remain in the prequel's files. The other two members of the family were cast differently: Rob Wiethoff plays John in both games, while Jack, played by Josh Blaylock in the first game, is played in the prequel by Marissa Buccianti and Ted Sutherland, with a young child providing motion capture for early scenes.

On 26 October 2019, Moore posted on Instagram an image from her very first day on Rockstar's motion capture set, describing it as the first scene she ever shot as Abigail. The scene is the opening of "A New Future Imagined", the epilogue mission in which John takes Abigail to Blackwater.

Five years with the Marstons

Moore described the production to Cass Marshall of Polygon, in an article published on 3 May 2019. Filming lasted five years, and the actors came in to perform once or twice a month. Most of the work took place on the motion capture stage, where whole scenes were acted out "as if it was theater". For the first few months, she said, only she and the actors playing John and Jack were on set, so the family was built before the rest of the cast arrived. By the time of the proposal scene, the three had known each other for five years and had met each other's spouses. Polygon adds that scenes were shot out of order, and that the actors did not see the full timeline until late in production. Some sessions covered story cutscenes, others the optional exchanges heard around camp. Moore said "You'd learn something new about your character every single time you came in", and that every scene was repeated until it was exactly right.

Moore called Abigail's arc "a dream as an actress" and called the director Rod Edge "brilliant". Her favorite running joke is a squirrel that John keeps bringing into the house in the epilogue and that Abigail keeps hiding. She said the couple has "a tumultuous relationship", and that John goes from a wild young man to a family man. She described Abigail as someone who has "learned to make her own happiness where she can", sees where the gang is heading and tries to put John on the right path. She also said Abigail "has a little bit of a temper" and "can go from zero to 60 on some things", a side she could play in the camp scenes. The relationship between Hosea and Abigail, she said, reflects part of her own relationship with Curzon Dobell, Hosea's actor, whom she called a "lovely man".

Moore told Polygon that the child who played Jack in the early scenes was about five years old, and that it was hard not to feel motherly toward him. She singled out the scene in which Jack is brought back to camp: he jumps off the horse and runs toward Abigail calling "mama", and she said it was not hard to burst into tears. As a mother, she said, she wondered what it would be like not to know where her own child was for days. In the article, Marshall contrasts Abigail with gang members who hide their weaknesses, and describes her as "openly vulnerable and emotional". Moore added that the story is bittersweet because it leads to the events of the first game, and said of John: "You get to see what made John that kind of man".

The proposal scene

In a GamesRadar+ article by Rachel Weber published on 7 March 2019, Moore recalled the proposal in a canoe on the lake at Blackwater, in "A New Future Imagined". She and Rob Wiethoff had been "mo-cap husband and wife for years" by then, and rehearsed the lines together in the green room. Both started crying during that rehearsal and agreed to stop and save the emotion for the shoot. She said they shot the scene only twice. Both actors are married, and she said it was easy for each of them to go back to their own proposal. Moore also singled out a scene in which Abigail tells Sadie Adler, newly arrived at camp, that she is safe, that she has friends there and that time will heal her wounds; she called it "such a sweet scene".

Cut content

The files of Red Dead Redemption 2 contain a cut torso model for Abigail. A cut mission labeled "ind2" had Arthur, Micah, Hosea and Abigail testing how fast the law responded, ahead of "Banking, The Old American Art": Arthur would have planted dynamite under the Cornwall Freight and Commodities building. The first mission of a cut strand about the camp girl Eliza, labeled "ELZ1", began with Abigail sending Arthur to look for her after she ran off in chapter 1. In "A New Future Imagined", a cutscene showing John and Abigail arriving home after their day in Blackwater was cut. A piece of concept art shows Arthur, John, Abigail and Jack together.

Two camp encounters with Abigail were cut. At Horseshoe Overlook, a drinking Micah would have invited her to come and sit with a real man; she would have answered that she would send one over when she found one, and he would have laughed softly. At Beecher's Hope, Abigail would have praised the honest day's work she and John had done, and John would have replied that it was honest enough. In Red Dead Redemption, leftover subtitles for "The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed" suggest that Abigail was first meant to be seized by a soldier during the attack on the ranch, and that John would have had to rescue her. In that version, John would also have taken his rifle from the kitchen and been given the choice to run, fight or surrender.

Before release

In a Game Informer feature on the seven characters returning from the first game, published on 28 September 2018, a month before release, Jill Grodt opened her profile of Abigail with "Not to be trifled with" and wrote that she is quick with her gun and her wit. Grodt wrote that her years among shady characters in bars and brothels had taught her to read a room, that she had her son with John at eighteen, and that a wrong move would show her to be more ruthless than many of the men around her.

Rankings and commentary

• WhatCulture, 16 November 2013: in a list by David Michael Hughes of the most memorable characters of Red Dead Redemption after John, Abigail gets an honorable mention. Hughes allows that some players may have found her dull, possibly because her missions are among the less memorable, but argues that her past and her will to change define her, and that no character in the game is closer to John.
• Game Informer, 27 December 2018: 10th of the 24 members of the Van der Linde gang in the staff ranking. The staff wrote that Abigail changes little between the two games, but that the prequel explains why: she is "a savvy woman on the fringes of the action forced to watch the idiots in her life make the same mistakes over and over again." They called her wish for land and an honest living "the series' seed of hope", and also praised her for shooting Milton.
• TheGamer, 10 August 2019: in Jerrad Wyche's ranking of the ten most prominent members of the gang, John is 3rd, and Wyche writes that Abigail can be placed beside him at the same rank, since the two are "a package deal".

Multiplayer

Abigail became a playable character model in the multiplayer mode of Red Dead Redemption with the Liars and Cheats Pack, released on September 21, 2010. The pack added 15 characters from the story, as well as Poker, Liar's Dice, horse races and the Stronghold mode. Players select Abigail in the Redemption section of the Outfitter, alongside John, Jack, Bonnie MacFarlane, Leigh Johnson, Luisa Fortuna, Nigel West Dickens and Seth Briars.

For multiplayer, her model swaps the story's blue-violet top and long pink plaid skirt for blue trousers and a white and blue plaid top, which suit riding. Luisa Fortuna's model is changed in the same way. The versions of Red Dead Redemption released on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch on August 17, 2023, then on PC on October 29, 2024, contain the story and Undead Nightmare but not the multiplayer mode, so the Abigail model is not available in them.

Marketing

Rockstar released official artwork of Abigail as an undead for Undead Nightmare. The printed Undead Nightmare map carries, on its back, artwork of her undead in her ranch clothes; in the expansion itself she is undead only in her nightdress.

For Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar released new official artwork of her. On September 6, 2018, Rockstar posted the portraits and character descriptions of the gang's members on Twitter, and The Hollywood Reporter reproduced the series the next day. In the composite image of the 23 gang members, she stands in the front row, next to Jack.

Across the series

• John and Abigail have the same first names as John Adams, second President of the United States, and his wife Abigail Adams.
• The couple also shares its first names with John Proctor and Abigail Williams, who have a secret affair in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible.
• The first name Abigail comes from Hebrew; it means "my father rejoices".
• In "Old Friends, New Problems" (1911), John tells her that in his darkest hours the thought of her rat meat stews kept him going. In the 1907 epilogue, John says he misses Pearson's cooking.

Red Dead Redemption 2

• In chapter 2, once "A Fisher of Men" is done, Jack can ask Arthur for a thimble to replace one of his mother's that he lost.
• Her reply to a greeting changes with the period: to Arthur in 1899 she says she is not doing well, to John in the epilogue that she is.
• Before "American Venom", Jack can be heard reading a story to Abigail and Uncle; the book is a Frank Heck dime novel.
• After the credits, the player can ask for dinner at the Beecher's Hope house between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.
• John and Abigail talk after the credits on the hill where their wedding takes place during the credits of "American Venom". In Red Dead Redemption, the graves of John, Abigail and Uncle stand on the same hill.

Red Dead Redemption

• Neither Abigail nor John wears a wedding ring. The same goes for every married character in the game.
• Killing her in a mission fails it and sends the player back to the last checkpoint. With the invincibility cheat active, killing her, Jack or Uncle triggers a brief earthquake, and the player's next death shows "You have killed a member of your family" instead of the normal screen.
• Before "The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed", two marks on the hill at Beecher's Hope show where John's and Abigail's graves will later appear.

Undead Nightmare (non-canon)

• After the first mission of Undead Nightmare, the player can kill the hogtied Abigail and Jack, but doing so kills the player too.
• After the expansion is completed, two black outlines mark the places where Uncle's and Abigail's graves should be, next to John's.