by Gwen Fries, Adams Papers

Dear Reader,

How did you enjoy the “rich mental feast” of Anne MacVicar Grant’s Letters from the Mountains? (Not ringing a bell? You have a bonus blog post to read!) I so enjoyed getting to know Mrs. Grant. It’s easy to fall in love with someone through their letters—what merits inclusion, what advice they give to one in need, how they comfort a friend who mourns, and especially the humorous and generous way they see those around them.

My only sadness in reading Grant’s Letters is the fact that she and Abigail Adams never met. We’ve all read a book or listened to a lyric that felt like it was written just for us. How badly do we want to sit down and chat with someone who understands us on that profound level? I have no doubt Adams and Grant would have been the best of friends.

Speaking of Abigail’s dearest friend, last time I promised that John would have the next pick. While I desperately wanted to pick a fun book that I would enjoy reading, in my heart of hearts I know John’s idea of fun has to do with the science of government. Thus, our pick is William Ellis’s translation of Aristotle’s Treatise on Government.

Don’t click away yet! I can redeem myself!

Our friends at the Boston Public Library hold John Adams’s actual copy of the book and have kindly digitized it for the public—marginalia and all!

What better way to get inside a person’s head than to see what sentences struck them and required underlining? Or to read where they disagreed and why? This is essentially a chance to pick John Adams’s brain. Seize it!

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Packard Humanities Institute. Major funding for the John Quincy Adams Digital Diary was provided by the Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund, with additional contributions by Harvard University Press and a number of private donors. The Mellon Foundation in partnership with the National Historical Publications and Records Commission also supports the project through funding for the Society’s digital publishing collaborative, the Primary Source Cooperative.

by Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

On 22 April 1790, John Adams and Congress learned of Benjamin Franklin’s death due to pleurisy, a lung condition. Upon learning of his friend’s death, Adams wrote an imagined conversation between four historical figures, as they waited for Franklin’s arrival in the afterlife. Adams then filed it away and more than two decades later came across it while searching “among a heap of forgotten rubbish for another paper….” In 1813, he added to the bottom of the work:

“Quincy Nov. 24. 1813.

This little thing, was written at Richmond Hill, or Church Hill, where I lived in New York in 1789, in an Evening after the News arrived of Dr Franklins Death, and after I had retired to my Family, after presiding in the Senate of U.S. The moment when it was written is the most curious Circumstance attending it.”

This style of writing—the imagined conversation—was popularized by the Syrian satirist Lucian of Samosata (b. ca.120 CE) and was utilized by the French writer Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757). The conversationalists in this imagined scenario were Charlemagne (747–814), the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; Frederick II (1194–1250), another Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), a French philosopher, originally from Switzerland, whose novels inspired the French Revolutionaries and the subsequent Romantic generation; and James Otis (1725–1783), a lawyer and politician from Massachusetts and a friend and mentor to John Adams, who also happens to be one of my favorite pre-Founding Fathers.

The conversation starts discussing Franklin and whether he had “passed the River,” perhaps meaning the River Styx, with Otis saying he had not and he cared not. Otis also says, “[Franklin] told some very pretty moral Tales from the head—and Some very immoral ones from the heart. I never liked him: so if you please We will change the subject. Populus Vult Decipi, decipiatur was his Maxim.” Populus Vult Decipi, decipiatur is noted to mean “The people want to be deceived, so let them be deceived.”

That sentence captures James Otis’s eloquence with words, as well as Franklin’s temperament. Perhaps John Adams should have been a writer, not a politician?

Then the speakers move on to flattering each other, then chastising each other for their faults. In turn, each repents, saying if he returned to earth, he would mend his ways and warn others against acting how he did the first time around.

Upon discovering this piece of writing in 1813, John Adams sent it to James Otis’s sister, Mercy Otis Warren, a playwright and historian. She wrote back, “The sketch in my hand in connection with some of the greatest actors who have exhibited their parts on this narrow stage of human action, is a proof of your correct knowledge of history and your capacity for comparing the ages of Charlemagne, Frederick the Great, Rousseau, and Otis, though in times so remote from each other, and drawing the results of their sentiments and transactions and the operation thereof on the moral conduct of mankind in our own age and in that of Posterity.”

Read the entire Dialogues of the Dead. Read more about James Otis and his sister Mercy Otis Warren in this Beehive blog.

by Gwen Fries, Production Editor, Adams Papers

I don’t imagine you’ll be too bowled over when I tell you that I believe the Adamses’ writings have great value. There’s a reason that a team of us dedicate our lives to making their words and ideas accessible to all. (Have I mentioned our free digital edition?) While we give them hours of every day, our closest attention—and possibly our eyesight years before it would’ve failed otherwise—I don’t think we can ever repay all the wisdom, adventure, and laughter they give us. Frankly, they’re the best company for which you could ever wish.

So, when a member of the Adams family writes about something they read that gave them the same kind of rush, my ears prick up. Thus was born my idea of Adams Book Club, where we find free and accessible works and read them to gain a deeper understanding of the Adamses and what make them tick. First up? Anne MacVicar Grant’s Letters from the Mountains.

“Pray have you met with these Letters from the Mountains?” Abigail Adams wrote to her daughter Abigail Adams Smith (Nabby) on 13 May 1809. “If you have not, I will certainly send them to you.” The “Mountains” in question are the Scottish Highlands. If you’ve been following along at home, you know Abigail had a particular affinity for all things Scottish. (Am I saying Abigail would’ve been an Outlander fan?…I’m not not saying that.)

“I have never met with any letters half so interesting,” Abigail gushed to her daughter. “Her style is easy and natural, it flows from the heart and reaches the heart. In the early part of her life, and before she met with severe trials and afflictions, her letters are full of vivacity, blended with sentiment and erudition. Though secluded from the gay world, she appears well acquainted with life and manners. Her principles, her morals, her religion, are of the purest kind.”

Abigail recommended the Letters to many in her orbit of influence, including her son John Quincy Adams, who took a copy on the boat to St. Petersburg. On 11 August 1809, he recorded in his (free and fully accessible online) diary, “The Night was almost entirely calm— I employed much of it in reading Mrs: Grant’s letters, which I find more interesting than Plutarch— I return to them of choice.”

We’ve all had a book find us when we needed it most. In the spring and summer of 1809, Abigail had her daughter move to the backwoods of New York, her son leave for the other side of the world, and with her 65th birthday rapidly approaching was feeling the weight of her years. “The more I read, the more I was delighted,” she confided to Nabby, “until that enthusiasm which she so well describes, took full possession of my soul, and made me for a time forget that the roses had fled from my cheeks, and the lustre departed from my eyes.”

“I long to communicate to you this rich mental feast,” Abigail wrote. And so I communicate it to you, dear reader. Meet you next month to discuss the Letters and to delve into John Adams’s retirement reads!

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Packard Humanities Institute. Major funding for the John Quincy Adams Digital Diary was provided by the Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund, with additional contributions by Harvard University Press and a number of private donors. The Mellon Foundation in partnership with the National Historical Publications and Records Commission also supports the project through funding for the Society’s digital publishing collaborative, the Primary Source Cooperative.

by Miriam Liebman, Adams Papers

When I go to family events, I often get a confused a look when I tell them I am an editor at the Adams Papers. Once I explain that I work on the papers of Abigail and John Adams and their family, their puzzled looks often go away. But they usually have several questions about what my work includes. I realized that many people may have similar questions about what we do at the Adams Papers project. At the heart of our work is making the papers of John and Abigail Adams and their family accessible to researchers, students, and the public.

I primarily work on the Papers of John Adams, the public papers of John Adams, and Adams Family Correspondence, the family papers. For more about the different series we publish, see here. The work on both series requires the same editorial process, which comprises several tasks including selection, collation, annotation, and production. These tasks vary depending on what stage we are up to in the production of a volume. Now, I am working on collation of Papers of John Adams, volume 24, and annotation for Papers of John Adams, volume 23, so I will provide more details about what those tasks include.

Here’s what a typical day looks like:

7:45–8:30: Prepare for Collation (which includes reviewing handwriting and making sure I requested all the necessary documents)

8:30–8:45: Access the documents needed for the day

8:45–12:00: Collation

Collation is one of my favorite parts of the editorial process. Collation is the tandem reading of documents selected for a volume, and right now we are working on the Papers of John Adams, volume 24. We collate in the morning for three hours, usually three or four days a week. One editor reads the letter aloud, while a second editor checks the existing transcription. We have a first and then second round of collation with two different pairs of editors. You may ask, why do you spend this much time reading documents aloud? Well, this is how we get the transcription of the documents to reflect what the authors of the letters wrote. For example, we read the letters, but also point out when words are capitalized, punctuation marks, and when text is written in the margins of a letter.

Most of the letters I collate were written by Timothy Pickering, John Adams’s secretary of state. (That is about to change however, since we just got up to the part of the volume when John Adams fired Pickering). Pickering’s handwriting is pretty neat (yes cool, but more importantly easier to read), but he does like to superscript (i.e. M^r) a lot. Letters can be just a few lines or in the case of the Elbridge Gerry letter I recently read, 27 pages! It is one of my favorite tasks because it allows you to better understand the people who wrote these letters and their daily interactions.

12–1: Lunch

1–3:30: Annotation Revisions

After lunch, I returned to revising my annotation for the Papers of John Adams, vol. 23. We work on more than one volume at a time. Annotation are all the footnotes in our volume. Our volumes, including the annotation, are available in our digital editions, which you can check out (for free and without a login!) here. I am currently revising the annotation for documents which cover John Adams’s correspondence from July 1798. The main stories are Franco-American relations in the aftermath of the XYZ Affair and the passage of a direct tax law. Some of my revisions included providing more details on a specific topic. For example, I wrote about the Senate rejecting John Adams’s son in law William Stephens Smith for an officer role in the army. I included that Timothy Pickering lobbied some senators to vote against his nomination, but needed to find out which senators voted against him and why Pickering wanted them to vote against William Stephens Smith.

3:30–3:45: Return the documents used during the day

While all my days do not look exactly like this, the next few weeks will include annotation and collation before moving ahead on writing the index for Adams Family Correspondence, volume 16, and production tasks for the volume.

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Packard Humanities Institute.

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

The MHS, like all archives, holds a number of manuscripts that are unidentified for one reason or another. Of course, we try to identify the authors of these materials whenever possible, but if we can’t, they can still be cataloged by subject, location, time period, etc.

Recently I was tasked with identifying the author of an anonymous diary in our collections. I always enjoy these “investigations,” and I’ve written about a few of them here at the Beehive. So let’s dive in!

The diary is a thin hardbound volume measuring 5 ½ x 7 inches. The leather binding is suffering from red rot and separating from the text block, but the paper itself is in good shape. Only about a third of the pages contain any writing, and the handwriting is, well, challenging. So my first hurdle was just figuring out what the diary says.

The entries date from 24 April 1895 to 19 July 1899 and describe a number of separate trips from Boston to the Midwest and Northwest U.S., as well as Mexico, Jamaica, and Europe. The author was apparently a man traveling on business of some kind, visiting places like factories, stockyards, and other properties. He wrote a lot about railroads, and the front of the volume contains detailed itineraries of each trip. At the back is a pencil sketch signed “M.A.A.” Could these be the initials of our author?

Between the scrawly handwriting, cryptic abbreviations, and lack of context, I had a tough time finding clues at first. I noticed two names: Harry, who was ill and in whom the writer was interested, and Molly, with whom he corresponded. But this wasn’t much to go on.

Then I stumbled across a recurring name that would prove crucial. The writer’s frequent traveling companion was a Mr. Adams, sometimes C.F. Adams or just plain C.F.A. These initials are of course very familiar to MHS staff and historians. Were these references to one of the several Charles Francis Adamses, relatives of presidents John and John Quincy Adams?

The diary was written in the 1890s, so assuming I was on the right track, I had two candidates. One was Charles Francis Adams (1866-1964), but I ruled him out because, as mayor of Quincy, Mass. at the time, he was probably not traipsing around the country looking at properties. But his uncle, Charles Francis Adams (1835-1915), served as chair of the Massachusetts Railroad Commission and president of the Union Pacific Railroad. This set off alarm bells. I literally wrote in my notes beside his name: “Railroad guy!”

Next I consulted Adams family genealogies. In fact, “railroad guy” had a daughter Mary Ogden Adams, who went by Molly. She married Grafton St. Loe Abbott in 1890. Maybe Grafton was our man? He and Molly had a son Henry Livermore Abbott, who might have been the Harry who was ill.

Now that I was more familiar with the handwriting, I returned to the diary for confirmation. Sure enough, on 13 May 1895, the writer was recognized by a friend and used his own name in relaying the story: “As I was walking up [the] street a man stopped me & asked if I [was] Mr Abbott, it turned out to be Prescott.” And an entry at the end of 1897 refers to the death of Molly’s aunt Anne Ogden. Molly’s mother was Mary Hone Ogden.

Grafton St. Loe Abbott graduated from Harvard with a degree in law, but spent most of his life working in the mining and railroad businesses. This diary describes trips taken with his father-in-law Charles Francis Adams in the latter capacity. A detailed biographical notice of Grafton was printed in the 1917 report of the Harvard Class of 1877.

The sketch at the end of the volume, from a trip Grafton and Molly took to Falmouth, Jamaica, was drawn by Molly in 1898.

The catalog record for the diary is here. The MHS also holds the papers of Charles Francis Adams, Molly and Grafton’s daughter Mary Ogden Abbott, and other members of the Abbott family. Special thanks to MHS library assistant Hannah Goeselt, who helped gather details from the diary.

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

As the weather warms it’s time to be out of doors, and the best way to enjoy the weather is to take a walk—just like John Quincy Adams. His parents encouraged him in both diary writing and walking, he notes in many of his diary entries, and he kept a diary from the age of 11 in 1778 until his death in 1848, at age 81. He was a believer in walking for exercise even in inclement weather. On 22 November 1792 he wrote, “Very cold. exercise by way of punishment, walked a great deal.” He lamented how his commitments prevented him from his favorite exercise on 14 July 1811, “My occupation, my Company, and the weather prevented me the whole day from my usual exercise of walking.” And towards the end of his life, on 14 May 1847, he found it hard to walk, “I took a short walk in the afternoon, but finding it from day to day, more difficult to walk, fear that I must henceforth, confine all my bodily exercise, to riding in a carriage.”

Explore the John Quincy Adams Diaries, but first, go take a walk!