By Amanda A. Mathews, Adams Papers

Two hundred years ago today, August 22,1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to his old friend, Abigail Adams; the first he had directed to her since 1804. While Jefferson’s incredible correspondence with John Adams has rightly acquired fame, Jefferson and Abigail maintained a warm relationship and a notable correspondence as well following their joint stay in Europe in the 1780’s, interrupted, during the often personal political conflict and mistrust of the 1790s and early 1800s.

The renewed friendship between Jefferson and the Adamses is evident in Jefferson’s playful tone. “I have compared notes with mr Adams,” Jefferson teased, “on the score of progeny, and find I am ahead of him, and think I am in a fair way to keep so. I have 10 1/2 grandchildren, and 2 3/4 great-grand-children; and these fractions will ere long become units.”

Jefferson concluded, “under all circumstances of health or sickness, of blessing or affliction, I tender you assurances of my sincere affection and respect; and my prayers that the hand of time and of providence may press lightly on you, till your own wishes shall withdraw you from all mortal feeling.”

What Jefferson could not know, however, was that it was under sickness and affliction that he was writing to his two old friends. Abigail Adams Smith, better known as Nabby, the only daughter of John and Abigail Adams, had passed away on August 14 at her parents’ home after a recurrence of breast cancer, ending a difficult adult life generated by her husband’s financial misadventures. In her reply to Jefferson, “your kind and Friendly Letter found me great affliction for the loss of my dear and only daughter, mrs smith . . . I have the consolation of knowing, that the Life of my dear daughter was pure, her conduct in prosperity and adversity, exemplary, her patience and Resignation becomeing her Religion— you will pardon by being so minute, the full Heart loves to pour out its sorrows, into the Bosom of sympathizing Friendship.”

Abigail closed her letter with her own assurances of friendship, “altho, time has changed the outward form, and political ‘Back wounding calumny’ for a period interruped the Friendly intercourse and harmony which subsisted, it is again renewed, purified from the dross. with this assurance I beg leave To subscribe myself your Friend.”

While the letters written between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson certainly deserve the recognition they have received, Abigail’s independent friendship with the third president, one built on mutual respect and shared sorrows, fostered a correspondence equally as fascinating.

By Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Reader Services

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about the new Netflix original series “Orange is the New Black,” a drama about life in a women’s prison. As Heather Chapman, one-time volunteer at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Framingham, writes in The Guardian:

The reality is over 2 million Americans are currently locked up. Put another way, that’s 1 in 100 US adults.  And 1 in 37 Americans will be locked up at some point in their lifetimes. Despite the “lock ’em up and throw away the key” mentality, most of these people will re-enter society. The public should understand our correctional system – and its financial and human costs – far better than we do now.

What does a twenty-first century Internet series have to do with an institution like the Massachusetts Historical Society? While the medium is new, the message is not: American calls for prison reform and advocates of prisoner’s rights have long historical precedent. Before the advent of moving pictures – and long before the invention of the Internet – reformers and prison advocates alike used text and images, to convey their message. Here are a few examples drawn from the MHS collections.

This illustration from prison warden Gideon Haynes’ Pictures From Prison Life: An Historical Sketch of the Massachusetts State Prison (1869) depicts a tidy building and grounds, with a row of prisoners exercising.

A different perspective can be found in the lyrics and illustration of “Song of the Convict,” a maudlin lament written by William and James Bradley, “two brothers, prisoners,” for the celebration of Thanksgiving at the Massachusetts State Prison in 1846. Along with the image of the forsaken prisoner kneeling in his cell, the lyrics of the song document the religious motivation of many behind prison reform campaigns during this period:

Phillippi’s dark dungeons with anthems are shaken,
And notes of thanksgiving peal thro’ the night air;
O! what can such joy in a Prison awaken?
The friends and the spirit of Jesus are there;
There angels mercy paints,
Mid rising songs of saints,
The rainbow of Hope on the cloud of despair.

Women in prison (the subject of “Orange is the New Black”) were then, as now, their own particular topic of concern. In a circular tentatively dated from 1849, the Prisoner’s Friend Association reported to its membership:

The design of the Charity is, to furnish to female prisoners, on their discharge from the House of Correction, a temporary home, to encourage them to reform, and to enable them to do so by procuring for them honest means of support.

Examples of successful “reform” and subsequent participation in society are detailed in explicitly gendered (and in one case racialized) terms:

One, who in the moment of temptation was guilty of theft … was returned to her family [upon release], where she has since, for a period of eighteen months, faithfully discharged her duties as a wife and mother.

A young girl, also, whose heart had not been hardened by crime, after a short imprisonment, was taken by our Agent and furnished with a place of service, where she remains.

A colored girl, with few acquaintances and no friends, was sent to a family in the country, where she has given such evidence of fidelity and capacity as to merit and receive from her mistress the highest encomiums.

At once progressive in the assumption that former criminals may be rehabilitated, the reformers in the Prisoner’s Friend Association also paint a very clear picture of the limits of that rehabilitation: who it is possible to rehabilitate, and what the former prisoners might be suitably rehabilitated for: the roles of wife and mother, the position of servant.

Researchers interested in the history of prison life, prison policy, and prisoner advocacy are invited to explore our collections to see what other primary sources we have to offer!

By Nancy Heywood, Collection Services

John Quincy Adams (JQA) had a remarkable life and over the course of almost 70 years assembled an extraordinary number of diaries.  JQA began keeping a diary in 1779 at the age of twelve and continued writing diary entries until shortly before his death in 1848.  All in all, his diary entries fill 51 volumes, over 14,000 pages.  JQA’s diaries are part of the Adams Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS).  MHS shares this American treasure in many ways:

By making page images of the entire set of diary volumes available

By making the Adams Papers Editorial Project’s authoritative transcriptions of JQA’s diary entries for 1779-1788 available as part of the Adams Papers Digital Edition

By tweeting his succinct line-a-day diary entries about his life 200 years ago via a Twitter account

The diaries are important because they share the life and thoughts of a man who held many important public offices and interacted with many world figures.  John F. Kennedy summarized JQA’s significance this way:

John Quincy Adams—until his death at eighty in the Capitol—held more important offices and participated in more important events than anyone in the history of our nation, as Minister to the Hague, Emissary to England, Minister to Russia, head of the American Mission to negotiate peace with England, Minister to England, Secretary of State, President of the United States and member of the House of Representatives.  He figured, in one capacity or another, in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the prelude to the Civil War. Among the acquaintances and colleagues who march across the pages of his diary are Sam Adams (a kinsman), John Hancock, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lafayette, John Jay, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Hart Benton, John Tyler, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Lincoln, James Buchanan, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew Johnson, Jefferson Davis and many others. (John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, NY: 1956, pages 35-36.)

John Quincy Adams often kept several different types of diary volumes simultaneously, and for many dates there are several entries—long entries, short entries, lists, draft entries, and also “line-a-day” entries.  The line-a-day entries are short –the words describing one day fit on one handwritten line, and each page contains entries for one month.  These succinct summaries of JQA’s activities fit within Twitter’s 140-character limit and in on 5 August 2009 MHS began tweeting JQA’s line-a-day diary entries 200 years after the day he described. 

We enjoy hearing from JQA’s followers and thought we’d share a few tweets that we’ve received via the JQA Twitter account:  

@JQAdams_MHS I look forward to the tweets every morning. 🙂 I feel as if I actually know him. lol.   [From Susan T. @marypoppins68 9:41 AM – 19 Jul 13]

@JQAdams_MHS has been dead for 165 years and he still tweets more than most people I know. [From Sean Junkins  @sjunkins 5:04 AM – 15 Jun 13]

@JQAdams_MHS it is amazing that these entries can be so old and still stir such emotion. This project has really humanized JQA for me.   [From JD Miller @jdudemill 7:18 AM – 15 Sep 12]

By Andrea Cronin, Reader Services

“Dear Brother Nathaniel. It is now sixteen years since you left England, from whence, while you were there, I had often refreshing letters from you,” wrote Salem merchant John Higginson to his brother Nathaniel Higginson on 16 April 1699, in a letter contained in the Higginson Family Papers held by the MHS. John Higginson and Nathaniel Higginson were both sons of Rev. John Higginson of Salem. While Nathaniel Higginson ventured off to England after graduating from Harvard College in 1670, John Higginson remained in Salem to become a merchant and member of the Governor’s council. The elder brother continued his letter, echoing sentiments that occur with repetition in the family letters:

But now, what climate have you got into that makes you forget your Father’s house? I have not received one line from you since you left England, though you have had so many opportunities by England, Holland, Barbadoes. What is it that we have offended you in, that you will not afford one line in so many years? Have the honours, profits, &c., of the world quite swallowed you up?

What climate did Nathaniel Higginson find himself in? After his education at Harvard, the young New Englander traveled to England in 1674 where he acted as  steward and tutor to Lord Wharton’s children for seven years. This departure from New England happened just before King Philip’s War, when troubled relations between the Native Americans and colonists perhaps factored into the young man’s decision to visit his relatives in England. Higginson was later employed under Lord Wharton in the mint of the Tower of London. In 1683 he left England and sailed to India. In his early thirties at the time, he established himself as a merchant at Fort St. George in Madras, eventually becoming the colonial governor of Madras. He was handed the keys to the garrison and city of Madras by Elihu Yale, the namesake of Yale College, on 23 October 1692.

Nathaniel Higginson never returned to New England, despite his brother John’s pleading to come home. On 20 June 1697, John clearly demostrates his wish to see his brother again, writing to Nathaniel:

Dear Brother,
I request you to give me a particular account of your circumstances; and I hope you do not intend to spend all your days in India, but will return into England, and so into New England. We want such men; and now you have gotten you an estate, the business is to contrive how to lay it out for the glory of God and the good of yourself and yours; which, I conceive, may be done as well in New England as any where.

The nomadic brother did make some effort to return to New England. In 1700, he sailed with his wife and five children from India to England to settle his affairs with plans to sail to Salem or Boston. However, Nathaniel Higginson died in London on 31 October 1708, in the same year as his father Reverend John Higginson died in Salem.

Of Reverend John Higginson’s other sons, Thomas Higginson became a goldsmith in England and later left for Africa, after which he was never heard of again. Francis Higginson went to England, was educated at the University of Cambridge, and died of small pox in London in his mid-twenties. Henry Higginson became a merchant in Barbados and died of small pox in 1685. Reverend John Higginson’s eldest son, the letter writer John, was the only son to remain in New England. He lived until 1720 to the age of 73, flourishing in Salem as an East Indies trader.

Interested in the Higginson family or East Indies trade?  Visit the library at Massachusetts Historical Society to check out the Higginson family papers. If you are not located within the Boston area, the Hathi Trust has provided a digital edition of the transcription of these letters from the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3^rd series, Volume 7 (1838).