Then Franklin's World is a production of the

O'Mahandro Institute. We're looking at one of John Adams letter books and this one was actually one he picked up in the 1780s in London.

We know that from the book plate that points out it was purchased in Cheapside and it's fairly large and bound in what's now a

rust-colored leather. It's full of a lot of different handwriting. Some of it is John Adams. Some of it is that of his nieces and nephews and

secretaries and anyone who helped out in his retirement years.

John Adams begins to keep a letterbook that holds copies of his outgoing correspondence during the 1770s when he's at the Continental Congress and he does so with an eye on history.

The Adams family always writes for the archive, but they travel a lot,

and if you're John Adams, you need a reference point for what you wrote to whom.

And so this kind of functions as his reference log of information and views that he sent. Hello and welcome to episode 231 of Ben Franklin's world.

The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the present

day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.

Historians use archives to create the histories that we love to read, watch, and listen to.

So today, we're going into one archive to investigate both how historians use archives to create

histories and to discover more about early American experiences with religion. Sarah Georgini, series editor of the Papers of John Adams and an early friend of this podcast has invited us to join her

inside the Massachusetts Historical Society so that we can take a closer look at

the historical details provided by the Adams Papers and the role that these

manuscripts played in helping Sarah write her first book, Household Gods, the

religious lives of the Adams family. In fact, Sarah and I recorded this conversation while we had the manuscripts that proved so important to her book displayed about us on Senator Charles Sumner's desk.

Yeah, it was a superhistory geek moment and it's what I wanted to

include you in too which is why as you've already heard I recorded Sarah talking

about these specific documents we looked at and place these bits throughout the episode.

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