President John Adams papers project awarded $3M grant from feds

Flint McColgan, Boston Herald on Feb 1, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

The life of America’s second president, Quincy’s John Adams, will be further illuminated thanks to a new $3 million grant.

The Massachusetts Historical Society announced it has been awarded a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that will allow it “to accelerate the editing, annotating, and publishing of John Adams’s public writings.”

“By making these documents widely accessible and carefully contextualized, we not only preserve an extraordinary historical record but also invite new generations to engage with the ideas, debates, and human experiences that continue to shape our democracy,” MHS President Lisa Krassner said. “This generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities affirms the enduring national significance of the Adams Papers.”

The Scholarly Editions in American History: Chairman’s Special Initiative grant awarded to the MHS is part of a $75 million investment by the NEH this month for 84 humanities projects nationwide for the nation’s 250th birthday this year.

Three other $3 million grants were awarded to advance the editing and publication of the collected papers of fellow early presidents James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren, according to an NEH statement.

“This funding will accelerate the publication of authoritative editions of the public and private papers of presidents who played significant roles in the Founding Era and the evolution of the American democracy by allowing these projects to hire additional staff, travel to collections to identify and verify source materials, and invest in digital publishing infrastructure,” the NEH said.

The MHS says that the grant money will go toward increasing access to the papers of Adams and his family, Adams programming for the celebration of this milestone birthday of the U.S.A., as well as building digital infrastructure for the MHS’ Adams Papers and Primary Source Cooperative projects.

In all, Massachusetts organizations and individuals were awarded $5,621,117 across six projects, with the MHS grant making the bulk of that.

Also awarded in the Bay State was $300,000 to the Northeast Document Conservation Center, which is a regional archival preservation and conservation group, for the “continuation and expansion of field services activities”; $2,001,208 to the Abigail Adams Institute to develop and implement humanities seminars and fellowships at Harvard University; and $149,909 to UMass Amherst to fund “a one-year project to expand an undergraduate program focused on deep reading.”

Two fellowships were also funded, at $60,000 each, in order to support the research and writing of books: Northeastern University’s Philip Thai for “Front Companies and Red Capitalists: How China Circumvented Economic Containment in the Cold War” and College of the Holy Cross’ Denise Schaeffer for a book “on Albert Camus’s view of tragedy and its implications for his understanding of ethics.”

________