Locate Manuscripts

Overview of Adams Family Manuscripts

Information about the Adams Family Papers, the manuscript collection owned by the MHS that contains documents written, received, and saved by John and Abigail Adams and their descendants, as well as other collections at the MHS that contain papers relating to members of the Adams family.

Online Adams Catalog (OAC)

Catalog of three generations of Adams family correspondence, including manuscripts by or to the Adamses at the MHS and over 30,000 documents held by other institutions.

Microfilm guide to the Adams Family Papers

A guide to the 608-reel microfilm edition of the Adams Family Papers manuscript collection at the MHS.

Microfilm Set Locations

A list of the domestic and international institutions that own the 608-reel set of Adams Family Papers microfilm.

Upcoming Events
History of Women and Gender Seminar

“Ladies Aid” as Labor History: Working Class Formation in the Interwar Syrian American Mahjar

15Oct 5:15PM 2019

Founded in 1917, the Syrian Ladies Aid Society of Boston (SLAS) provided food, shelter, education, and employment to Syrian workers. Volunteers understood the SLAS as ...
Brown Bag; Research Fellow

The Last & Living Words of Mark: Following the Clues to the Enslaved Man’s Life, Afterlife, and to ...

16Oct 12:00PM 2019

Mark (1725-1755), a blacksmith, husband, and father, might have slipped from public memory if not for his brutal end: his body gibbeted for decades on Charlestown Common ...
Conversation; Housing as History

Housing as History: Villa Victoria and the Fenway Community Development Corporation

16Oct 6:00PM 2019
There will be a pre-talk reception at 5:30.

In the 1960s and 1970s Boston struggled to stem urban flight and a landscape of deteriorating housing stock. Massive redevelopment projects, such as the razing of the ...
See our calendar for all events

From our Blog

This Week @MHS

Join us for a program this week! Here is a look at what is going on: - Tuesday, 29 January, 5:15 PM: Better Teaching through Technology, 1945-1969, with Victoria Cain, Northeastern ...

Founder to Founder

Like so many good stories here at the Historical Society, it began with a reference question. Jeremy Belknap, hunting through his sources, asked Vice President John Adams for some help. Belknap, the ...

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Capt. Henry M. Tremlett