Education: The Adams Papers

Of all the nation's first families, none has witnessed more of U.S. history than the Adamses. But for more than a century, scholars have had to wait for the entire collection (300,000 pages) of Adams papers to be opened. Last week, in cooperation with the Massachusetts Historical

Society and Harvard University, the trustees of the collection—Vice President Thomas B. Adams of the Sheraton Corporation and John Quincy Adams of the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company—announced that the big day had come. With a ten-year gift of $250,000 from LIFE, a group of historians will edit the papers for the Harvard University Press, will also make them available in microfilm to 16 U.S. libraries. Among the items in the collection: the complete diaries of Presidents John and John Quincy and Diplomat Charles Francis; letters and manuscripts of Historians Brooks and Henry; family correspondence with everyone from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to the Duke of Wellington.